Personal Finance Archives - Page 15 of 23

How We Reached Financial Independence In Our 30’s

November 30, 2015 JustinRoG Awesome!, Financial Independence, Personal Finance

After posting the Zero to Millionaire in Ten Years post a few weeks ago, there’s been a huge amount of traffic visiting Root of Good (hello, new readers!). The article received top billing at Rockstar Finance (thanks, J Money!). Business Insider loved my story so much that they reprinted it and it’s received close to a million views in the last two weeks. My own article has been shared over 400 times (that I know of) on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, and the Business Insider article has probably been shared thousands or tens of thousands of times.

Along with great attention comes inane comments. It’s the Law of the Internet. Check out the comments at the Business Insider article if you don’t believe me! I put together a response to a few of the frequent questions and comments generated by the Business Insider article.

How Early Retirement Affects Social Security

November 18, 2015 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Personal Finance

This week I’m jumping into the inner workings of Social Security to answer a question about the impact of early retirement on how much Social Security early retirees will qualify for.

The usual question is: “Yeah but if you retire early you won’t get hardly any social security and you’ll be poor when you’re older. You should keep working till a reasonable age like 67 so you can earn a good Social Security payment”. Okay, grammarians, I confess. That’s not really a question but rather a complaint in the form of a declarative sentence followed by another declarative sentence.

The short answer is that the complainant has no clue how Social Security works, because early retirees typically qualify for really great SS benefits given how little they work. The long answer involves bend points and understanding the progressive nature of the Social Security system. And math.

Zero To Millionaire in Ten Years

November 9, 2015 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Personal Finance

Financial voyeurs of the world, rejoice! I dug out all our old tax returns, pay stubs, and my net worth spreadsheet to pull together the story of our ten year journey from nearly zero net worth to millionaire status (and early retirement).

This post answers a lot of questions like: How much did we earn? Did we have six figure incomes all of our careers? Did we work for a start up and make a million when our employer went IPO? Did we get lucky picking stocks?

October 2015 Financial Update

November 2, 2015 JustinRoG Personal Finance

October is over and our investment portfolio decided to celebrate Halloween by giving us a treat after offering nothing but tricks the last couple of months. Our net worth rose by $93,000 fueled by a recovery in the stock market. With $7,715 in income and only $1,015 in expenses, we’re still making way more than we spend each month.

I’ll have to make this monthly financial update relatively short since my ten year old requested a pre-bedtime game of Monopoly and I’m running out time. How can I turn down the opportunity to teach my kids about buying assets, leveraging those assets to generate income, and trying to bankrupt the competition by building hotels that they can’t afford to rent?

Going on a Cruise Part 3 – Save on Board and on Transportation

October 19, 2015 JustinRoG Moneyhacks, Personal Finance, Travel

This is part three of my series on cruise vacations. In my first post on cruising I talked about the basics of cruising. In the second post, I showed how to get the best deals when booking a cruise.

In this post I want to cover other ways to save money on cruises while on board and while traveling from your home to the cruise terminal.

Going on a Cruise Part 2 – Getting the Best Deal

October 12, 2015 JustinRoG Moneyhacks, Personal Finance, Travel

This is part two of my series on cruise vacations. In my first post on cruising I talked about the basics of cruising like what the cruise fare covers (and what it doesn’t) and life on board the ship.

In this post I reveal how to get the best deal on cruise fares.

September 2015 Financial Update

October 5, 2015 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

September is over and left us a little poorer but in overall great financial shape. Our net worth dropped by $36,000 in spite of $8,225 in income for the month and a meager $927 in expenses.

The older kids are back in school and we’re settling into the school year routine. I’m back to my normal weekly early retirement schedule. We returned home from our 7 week vacation in Mexico two months ago. Mrs. Root of Good had some excitement this month when she submitted her resignation letter to join me in early retirement. Instead of quitting outright, she’s now working from home four days per week with full time pay. Pretty sweet deal!

How To Save $375 On Air Conditioner Repair in Two Hours

September 14, 2015 JustinRoG DIY, Personal Finance

Back in May I mentioned that our air conditioner broke and I had to spend a couple of hours researching the issue on the internet and ten minutes installing the messed up part. I estimated the savings at $200-300.

It turns out I was being too generous with my estimate for an AC repairman’s charges. Steve at EscapeVelocity2020 wrote about paying almost $400 to fix his air conditioner. I realized Steve had the exact same issue as I did and the AC tech charged him $398 for the repair instead of the $25 I spent with my DIY repair.

August 2015 Financial Update

September 8, 2015 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Personal Finance

August showed us how net worth can fluctuate wildly while income and expenses remain fairly stable. August also reminded us that investments in the stock market don’t always go up.

Our net worth reversed course from the previous six months of generally upward momentum and crashed by $74,000 to $1,470,000. That sounds like a scary sum of cash to lose in one month but I’m not worried at all.

Income for the month was lower than normal at $2,016. Expenses of $1,701 were slightly less than our anemic August income. We’re finally settling back down into our lives here in Raleigh after spending June and July out of the country on an incredible seven week journey through Mexico (with three kids!).

Should Our Family Drop From Two Cars To One?

August 17, 2015 JustinRoG Awesome!, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

As Mrs. Root of Good’s retirement date comes closer, we have to revisit the question of whether we should get rid of one of our cars and become a single vehicle family.

First, let’s ponder the significance of the auto. Cars are an oxymoron. They are an incredibly convenient way to travel from point A to point B very quickly. However, owning and maintaining a car isn’t convenient at all. I’m approaching the question of whether we should drop to one car from this vantage point: convenience versus inconvenience and cost.