Years ago I read a quote from Thicken My Wallet, the Canadian lawyer and retired blogger, that “the financial industry preys on inertia“. It was true back then in 2007, and it remains true today in 2022. For whatever reason, once people have made a financial decision, they’re loath to revisit it. The financial industry […]
Business
What the Heck is a Reverse Mortgage?!?
At breakfast this morning my wife had a great question, “what is a reverse mortgage?” We see them advertised all the time, with happy old people enjoying life because of their reverse mortgage. A mortgage is something that helps you buy a house, so what the heck does a reverse mortgage do? A reverse mortgage […]
The Difference Between Real and Nominal Values
I took a single economics class during my undergraduate, and I LOVED it! There are a number of incredibly useful concepts that can guide your thinking in all sorts of situations. Opportunity cost is a great way to consider alternatives and has helped me make better, more rational decisions. The difference between real and nominal values is […]
Buying Real Estate For 20% Below Asking
The following is a free, easy-to-implement, legal, and moral approach to buying real estate that can easily let you buy for 20% below the asking price. This works for all types of property, including residential, condos, multi-units, or commercial. I have successfully purchased properties using this approach in radically different markets (once in Canada, many […]
The Meaning Of “Retirement”
I’m often interested in the meaning of words, phrases, or concepts. Semantics, nomenclature, whatever you want to call it, I find it interesting how much variability there is in what we all mean when we say different things. Think of words like “capitalism” or “feminism” – these probably mean something different to every person who […]
Goals Are Garbage
My thesis, both from my own life experience and from multiple authors I’ll cite later in this post, is that focusing on systems, your craft, or what you need to get done – how you do things – rather than a grand “dream” is a more productive way to accomplish what you want in life […]
Work as Insurance During Early Retirement
On an old blog that I’ve shut down, a reader named JD left a comment on my when can I retire post that I thought was interesting and worth revisiting. Ideas like the 4% rule assume that we commit to a particular strategy, slavishly follow it, and never deviate or make any course corrections. It would be impossible to model all […]
Negotiating After A Job Offer Has Been Made
As part of any successful job hunt, eventually, the company will contact you and make a job offer. This may be a formal written offer, a verbal offer, or a verbal offer with the details to be written up and sent to you upon acceptance. Some job candidates get stressed out at this point and […]
Managing a Contractor
My wife and I finished a home renovation years ago. I hired contractors for the bulk of the work. I’d heard all the horror stories, so I carefully prepared and thought I had myself covered. In the end, the last $3,000 of work was abandoned (out of a $20,000 job) after stretching from an initial […]
Breaks During Your Working Life
This was originally a guest post at Boomer and Echo. Thanks so much for posting it Robb! A number of times in my life I’ve found myself between jobs. Usually, this is a euphemism for unemployment, which at times it was for me, but typically it was a natural break between activities. An example of this was I […]