Lazy Man and Money

The Best Financial Independence, Retire Early Articles of the Week (#2)

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Last week I started a new series of rounding up some of my favorite Financial Independence, Retire Early articles of the week (#1). My hope is to make it a regular Friday feature.

However, before we dig into the links, I’m going to take a deep breath to reflect on the week. It started off with a bang as MLMs got eviscerated in a once in a generation way. We have a new President-elect and for the first time in my life (at least as far as I can remember), the vote was a surprise.

In equally shocking news, the Count beat out Cookie Monster in my son’s class. He explained that the Count is smart and can count while Cookie Monster just wants to eat cookies. I score that as a small win for STEM and a small loss for the sugar industry.

We cap it off with Veteran’s Day. My wife is observing it with a real veteran, which is so cool. There’s never a bad day to donate to the USO, but this is a particularly good day. Like Columbus Day, I’m always confused about the status of this holiday. My kids don’t have school/day care. My wife doesn’t have work. However, the stock market is open and stores seem to have normal hours.

Now let’s get to the articles:

  • Hire my son!

    Go Curry Cracker wants to hire out his son for some baby modeling. I wrote a tax person about this years ago. The reason why? A person can only contribute earned income to a Roth IRA. That income would never be taxed and have decades to compound.

    Let’s run some numbers. Let’s say my 4 year old son earned $4000 somehow and put it in a Roth IRA. The money earns 7% a year for 65 years (69 will be the new 65 for him). However, we’ll adjust it to just 4% to account for a 3% inflation rate. He’d have over $50,000 in today’s dollars to withdraw. That’s not a bad deal, right?

    The only problem is figuring out how that income can be legitimately earned. That’s where the baby modeling idea comes into play.

  • Root of Good’s October 2016uUpdate

    Justin’s monthly reports are extremely detailed and I always learn something. What caught my eye this month is that he pays $35 for broadband internet service and that’s not even a bundled rate with a TV. I pay $65 with the bundle and it would be $80 without. Damn you Cox!

  • WalletHacks covers passive income

    Jim gives a detailed explanation of how money works. I can imagine this being the foundation of a book. There aren’t any secrets or “get rich quick” stuff, just some universal tips. This is the kind of stuff that I’d love see taught in school.

    • That’s a wrap for today. Did you have any favorite financial independent articles this week?

The Best Financial Independence, Retire Early Articles of the Week (#1)

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Years ago, I wrote weekly round-up where I highlighted articles from friends in the blogosphere. Each of those friends have moved on from blogging to do different things. Some became great BBQ chefs and others became real estate moguls.

Over the last 6 months, I’ve noticed there are a lot of new bloggers interested in financial independence and retiring early (aka FIRE). That brings me back to my roots as my original goal for this blog was to explore ways to retire at the same time as my wife. She’s eligible to retire with her military pension at age 43. I didn’t want to be working another 22 years after her.

Every week, I’m going to highlight some of my favorite articles from some of these great blogs. So let’s dig in:

  • Tawcan’s Guest Post via Physician on Fire

    • Why not kick this off with a double FIRE bloggers? FIRE blogger Physician on Fire posted a guest post from Tawcan. This gives you a great introduction to two FIRE bloggers. I recommend adding Adding Tawcan to your daily reads.

  • The Power of a Low Income in Early Retirement

    • This comes from Our Next Life who is one of my new favorite bloggers in the last few months. She can get into the weeds with some complex financial topics at times. I’m envious of her ability to use graphs and images to walk readers though the math and concepts.

    This article focuses on the advantages of keeping a low income in early retirement. Typically one thinks of low-income negatively, but under the right circumstances it can be positive.

  • How to Fund Your Early Retirement

    • Interested in learning how to retire early? Of course, who isn’t?!?! Joe from Retire by 40 gives a detailed article about how he’s funding his early retirement. My favorite tip in this article is how he plans to withdraw contributions from his Roth IRA. Those contributions can be withdrawn penalty-free.

This should be enough reading for a Sunday. If you’re looking for more, regular readers of Lazy Man and Money may appreciate tonight’s episode of John Oliver.