Even before starting My Money Design over two years ago, I was on what seems to be a never ending quest to find the secret to achieving true financial freedom or great key to early retirement planning. How is it that people my age, perhaps younger or older, are able to quit their jobs if they want and still maintain thriving lifestyles? I’d love to tell you that after all this time that I have all the answers. That there was some kind of easy solution or magic bullet. However, I’m still a long ways out and seem to have a lot further to go. The path to get there has been more of a puzzle than I originally thought. Each piece containing it’s own unique challenges and scarifies. Here are my observations on the various paths that … [Read more...] about There Are No Shortcuts to Early Retirement Planning
early retirement
How the Lower Taxes From a Long Term Capital Gain Can Work Into Your Early Retirement Plan
You know what I love about blogging? It’s that you learn about important things that you probably weren’t going to go searching for on your own. That’s exactly what Matt from Mom and Dad Money did for me when he wrote an epic guest post for My Money Design about two weeks ago. Even though there were a lot of great points buried within the text, one of the things I took away from it personally was the mention about how a long term capital gain (much like your dividend income) is taxed at a lower and more favorable rate than your ordinary income. Taxes? Time to Stop Reading This Post … Wait! Don’t leave. I promise not to bore you too much with a bunch of technical jargon. … [Read more...] about How the Lower Taxes From a Long Term Capital Gain Can Work Into Your Early Retirement Plan
Want Some Financial Motivation? Get Off Your Computer and Go Outside!
Stop reading this. In fact don’t read anything else. Reading these blog posts won’t give you financial motivation. You know what will? Going outside. The Simple Things Will Provide True Financial Motivation: Today is going to be a beautiful day outside. The sun will be out, the temperature will be right, and there will be a beautiful stillness just over the trees in the distance. Just for a little while forget about your problems, forget about work, and forget about making more money. Dwelling on those things isn’t what’s going to motivate you. Dwell on them for too long and they will simply control you. Instead, go outside and connect with the rest of the world. Laugh and have some fun. Take your kids to the … [Read more...] about Want Some Financial Motivation? Get Off Your Computer and Go Outside!
My Post Retirement Ideas for When I Become Financially Free
We spend an awful lot of time on My Money Design talking about not only how to successfully plan for retirement, but even some strategies for how to get there as early as possible. Why? Because I think that financial freedom and the ability for you to choose what you do with your time are some of the most gratifying things you can accomplish in your lifetime. The big question then is: What is it that I want to do with all this time once I finally have it? - That’s a very good question, and not one to take lightly. Having some post retirement ideas and goals for what you’ll do with yourself is just as important as the planning it took to get you there. … [Read more...] about My Post Retirement Ideas for When I Become Financially Free
Exploring My 401k Alternatives – Maybe More Dividend Stocks?
So I’ve been thinking … Last year I wrote a post about how I was thinking about diverting some of the money we were contributing to our 403b retirement fund towards our dividend stocks instead. This was somewhat of a controversial move because traditional personal finance advice is to invest in your tax-sheltered accounts, not your taxable accounts! After all, why would you want to save your money in an account where you have to pay taxes? But it wasn’t that simple. There were several more alluring reasons why investing in dividend stocks would make more sense: … [Read more...] about Exploring My 401k Alternatives – Maybe More Dividend Stocks?
Can the Dividend Payout Ratio Help You Pick a Good Stock?
In this month’s issue of Money Magazine, I came across an article entitled “When the Wilder Ride is Worth It”. The article was addressing how sometimes a company’s stock and dividend payment can be a better prospect for stable income than its bond. To make this comparison, they looked at the return of the bond against the dividend appeal (which was largely based on it's payout ratio) and any inherit stock risk based on the company itself. Whenever I find an article like this about semi-guaranteed income, I tend to pay extra special attention to it - and with good reason. Strategies such as taking advantage of dividend payouts will be important to my financial situation because it will be one of the key elements that helps me to … [Read more...] about Can the Dividend Payout Ratio Help You Pick a Good Stock?
My Stocks with High Dividends Income Report – December 2012
What a great time of the year to receive the next installment of my “truly” passive income. By luck, it just so happens that my next series of payments from my dividend paying stocks was scheduled to be paid in December. Couldn’t we all use a little extra cash right before Christmas as the bills start rolling in? Over on the left are the results of my third batch of quarterly dividend payments received for Quarter 4 (Q4). … [Read more...] about My Stocks with High Dividends Income Report – December 2012
My Money Design for How to Achieve Financial Freedom – November 2012 Update
I was very pleased with the level of interest and positive reaction I received for my previous post on how I plan to retire early in Money Design update in October. However, that update was only merely a sketch of where I wanted to be. As I’m sure any designer can tell you, no blueprint is ever really complete until you put numbers to it – even if it’s a blueprint for your plan on how to achieve financial freedom. In this update, we’ll seek to build upon my earlier retirement income strategies by making some assumptions about how much money my family could expect to take in from our multiple developing income sources. Please feel free to compare my decisions and estimations to what you think would be reasonable for your own … [Read more...] about My Money Design for How to Achieve Financial Freedom – November 2012 Update
