Posted by Tim Stobbs on November 4, 2011
TGIF! It’s my Friday off today and hence the later post than normal. Like any other good day off, I try to let myself sleep in a bit. Have I mentioned lately how much I love not working full time. 
Now onto the links:
Speaking of part time work you have to read this post from Mr. Money Mustache: The Joy of Part-Time Work.
JD over at Get Rich Slowly talks about what to buy and stuff. Given my recently challenge on not buying stuff it was interesting food for thought.
Preet has a good post over at the Globe and Mail on being wary of online financial advice…I hope that wasn’t including me!
Krystal has a good post which is debating are teenagers out of touch with financial reality…good points on both sides.
Boomer Echo has a interesting post on the penny. I’m personally ok with getting rid of it, if for no other reason that it costs 1.8 cents to make a penny!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Tim
Posted by Tim Stobbs on November 3, 2011
I find it sort of amusing when people bring up the issue of me failing to retire by the time I turn 45, because even if that did happen I would still win. How? Even in my worst case projection I still think I will retire by the time I turn 50. So even by losing, I can still retie earlier than most people.
Not to mention all the side benefits of trying for financial independence. I don’t worry about money at night and it has never kept me awake. How? I’ve got over $130,000 in investments right now and my house is almost paid off. The words ‘lay off’ or ‘being fired’ are annoyances now and not really serious threats to my family’s well being.
In a sense going after early retirement gives you freedom to choose what others can’t consider. I don’t have any credit card debt, so I don’t ‘have to’ keep working at a job I hate. I don’t have a huge mortgage, so I can look at buying a second property as an investment. The longer I’m on this path the more choices keep opening up.
Perhaps the one choice that mind boggles a lot of people is the ability to earn less. I don’t have to work full time to look after my family. I haven’t had a full time day job in 15 months now and I really don’t see the need to ever go back to full time if I chose to. Actually after the mortgage being paid off next year our income requirements to live are so low that I live with a $10/hour part time job if I want.
Perhaps that is the point of how to win even when things go wrong, my needs are very minor and I know what those cost. So I don’t bitch as much about losing on anything and always try to find the positive about it. Why? I can afford to make that choice.
So how do you win when you lose?
Posted by Tim Stobbs on November 2, 2011
Being an engineer for my day job does have some particular problems for me…I’m a bit of data hound. I like data to help make decisions (even when I don’t always follow what the data is telling me). This has lead me to try something rather extreme in my view, but regardless of that fact I really want the data. So for all of 2012 I’m going to track my spending…every damn cent of it. I did something similar before back in 2007 for a month (see here).
Overkill? Perhaps for some subcategories like our cash spending, but in general I will be keeping a closer eye on the outflows in order to give me a sold data set on what I’m actually spending. After all if you have read this blog or my book you will know the foundation of any retirement plan is not your income, but rather what you spend each month. What I find particularly interesting about this experiment is my wife wants to do as well. In her case, she wants some black and white information on where her spending cash going each month.
This tracking project is going to be one of my goals for 2012 along with the obvious one of paying off the remainder of my mortgage. Yes neither goal is particularly sexy, but that doesn’t bother me. After all, getting to financial independence isn’t about flashy goals, but rather a long hike where you get to enjoy the scenery and still get the job done.
I would like to personally thank everyone for helping out Sheryl last week with ideas on how to track expenses. I was taking notes as well for potential ideas. So far my plan is to use an existing spreadsheet I already have to help track our spending. What I’m struggling with at the moment is what graphs/reports should I generate from it? Do you use any reporting functions for your software? If so, what do you like to see (pie charts, line graphs…)? I’m currently leaning towards a classic wall chart style with income, spending and investment income per month.
