Lazy Man and Money

Our Early Retirement Plan: Introduction (Part 0)

by 8 Comments

I thought I’d switch things up this week and write about our retirement plan for the future. It’s going to be detailed, so I’ll have an article one day each week.

I need to get a few things out of the way:

  • Retirement planning at age 32 is a shot in the dark – Unless you really have tons of money it’s hard to plot a course for where you might be in 10 years. You think you have a plan and something could speed up the target date or slow it down right in a hurry. Still it doesn’t hurt to get things out there and make adjustments as life does what it does…
  • Luck will be a factor – I know it’s impossible to plan for luck. However, as you read where we are now, you may be jealous about previous luck that we’ve had. I don’t argue that we’ve been lucky to put us in the position we are. However, a lot of planning went into it as well. One of my readers has his e-mail quote as, “Luck is the residue of design” (Branch Rickey) and I believe that to be true here.
  • Annoying vs. Motivating – A friend of mine has a chart of his earnings. Last week over a span of 4 days or so, he sent me 8 versions of the chart. (It was an impressive chart). At one point, he asked, “Am I annoying you or motivating you?” It was such an insightful question as he was almost on the line of annoying. I’m pretty optimistic about our chances to retire early. I hope you take this week’s posts as motivating, not annoying.
  • “But I can’t do what you are doing” – It’s usually the first thing I hear with these kinds of posts. It’s true, where you are in your life is not going to be where we are. You may be ahead of us, you may be behind us. You will have different opportunities. Some of them will be better than ours. Some may not be as good. Everyone is going to be different. Instead of focusing on the very specifics of our plan, look at the generalities behind it. If you see that we are saving on taxes, ask yourself what might be within your ability to do the same.

Lastly, part of this series is inspired by this 9 month old Money Magazine article. We had talked about this plan way before the article came out, but the family and the plan may be similar to ours. Inspiration for getting this finally out this week was brought by fellow Money Writer, Madison DuPaix, who was interviewed by Yahoo Finance last week.

Start at The Introduction – Part 0. Alternatively, you can jump to Our Early Retirement Plan: Where We Are Now (Part 1), Our Early Retirement Plan: My Personal Income (Part 2), Our Early Retirement Plan: My Wife’s Plan (Part 3), Our Early Retirement Plan: Obstacles and Expenses (Part 4), or Our Early Retirement Plan: Motivation, Numbers & Tools, and Conclusion (Part 5).

Finovate Demos – Part 3

by 3 Comments

Here’s another round of my notes from yesterday’s Finovate demos. Since each company only got 5 minutes to show their stuff, my notes are short as well. I got to meet many of the companies afterward to get more detail.

Expensr – I thought this might steal Best of Show. It’s a personal finance management tool like Mint, but with a strong focus on widgets. The idea is that you can customize everything to your liking, which is one of the things that came up a month ago at a blogger meet-up they sponsored. They also have been acquired and will change their name to MoneyStrands. Shawn and Reman also put on a witty presentation ending with a humorous revelation that Mint must be scared of them because they bought an ad on Google for expensr.

SmartyPig – I’ve mentioned them in the past and hope to have a more complete review of their product in a week. They focus on three things as far as I can tell: making savings goals public so others can contribute, savings from their partnered retails, an interest bearing account earning a good rate.

Invesra – Retirement planning for financial institutions such as banks and credit unions. Not affiliated with a fund family which makes them unbiased. I believe they sell their product directly to the banks, so if your bank doesn’t buy it, you can’t use it.

Typhone – Mobile contactless payments with a great emphasis on security using industry jargon that I didn’t really understand. I don’t think I care about mobile payments much.

Wesabe – Wesabe had one of the most interesting demos in my opinion. So good that I went back after to see it again (and offer advice for how they can improve the product). They rolled out a new way to compare merchants and find better buying options. It’s much better than what they launched with originally. I could actually see myself using this, which may be the biggest praise I can give.

Wonga – This was one of the oddest entries of the show. It’s a UK-based company, with the URL of Samedaycash.co.uk. You can borrow money for the short term and pay them back at about a percent a day. Want to borrow money for 30 days, you’ll have to pay back 30% (though the interest rate wasn’t mentioned). Ramit and I turned to each other and said, “payday loan.” He made a good point that a credit card is a better deal if you have to pay it off within 30 days (as is the case here). You could pay no interest with the credit card.

Loanio – The much anticipated P2P lending company did show and demo the product. It looks like an unpolished Prosper.com. I have been waiting to hear what make them different than Prosper. It seems there are two things. You can have a co-borrower/co-signer on your loan and you can pay an additional fee to have a platinum listing (I’m not 100% sure what that got you).

Confident Technologies – Tries to the Internet of passwords. They partner with financial institutions to create a new way for customers to log into their accounts. Customers choose two categories like bikini babes and money. When you login, you type your username and up pops 16 pictures of various things like fish, hats, dogs, etc. Two of those 16 pictures will be a bikini babe and a picture of money. You select that pair and it knows it’s you. Bikini babe and money photo is different every time. Lots of scientific psychology studies back this up as a good thing for users. Not sure if bikini babes is one of the available categories – I would imagine it’s not.

IP Commerce – From my notes, “No idea what they do… energetic presenter.” I talked with a few people afterward and only one person had an idea of what they did, because it’s highly relevant to their day job.

SimpleTuition – Approximately from my home town in Massachusetts, they help students find loans and easily apply for them. It’s that “Simple” and useful.