Wandering Money Pig - A journey of early retirement and FIRE (financial independence retire early)

  Money growing over time! Welcome back!  This is the fourth installment of ‘financial tools to master’ series.  In this post, I would like to discuss the importance of retirement accounts and how they can help in your path to early retirement. My first encounter with a retirement account was at my first job selling Toyotas/Pontiacs.  ***For benefit of those who don’t know what a Pontiac is, it was a brand of cars that General Motors sold.  It was discontinued around 2009.  My supervisor at the time mentioned it, but frankly I had no idea what it was.  Not knowing much about the 401k, I declined to open an account.   After I changed my job from selling Toyotas/Pontiacs to Acuras, I opened up a 401k account.  My colleagues at the Acura dealership were instrumental in getting me interested in a retirement account like the 401k.  They would show me how much they were putting away each pay check.  They were showing me how it worked. ...

  Budgeting! Welcome back!  I’m a recent early retiree who is a follower of FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement.  I started this blog (Wandering Money Pig) to share my personal journey of preparing for early retirement and living early retirement.   I felt basic lessons about money / finance were sorely lacking in our educational system.  I wanted to give someone basic knowledge of finance in the simplest way I know how.  I’m no professional, but through avidly reading about finances and applying what worked for me, I’ve managed to figure out how to retire early.   I, myself, did not really know much about finance until the middle of my thirties.  I encourage anyone to learn as much as he/she can and to get interested in finance, as this is the way I was able to retire early.  I hope to share what has helped me in my journey to become financially independent.   This third topic of budgeting is really important to master...

  Grey Towers, Milford, Pennsylvania  Welcome back! In this post, we’d like to share with you our recent trip to the Poconos area of Pennsylvania, more specifically, Bushkill Falls, in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, and Grey Towers National Historic Site, in the town of Milford, Pennsylvania. My wife and I (and our Pomeranian) took my parents on a 3 nights/4 days mini vacation.  We rented via AirBNB for this trip.  We paid about $150 per night to rent the whole house.  It had 3 bedrooms and 3 baths with a deck overlooking the wooded / mountainous backyard.   The drive from New York City to the Poconos is simply beautiful.  I have two favorite drives to mention:  first is crossing over on interstate I-80 New Jersey into Pennsylvania and the second is PA Route 209 which is a road that hugs the Delaware River.   The Delaware Water Gap and its surrounding hills are simply majestic.  Even during November, the fall foliage still had some life.  ...

  This is a second in a series of financial tools to master:  a savings account.  We will be covering basic concepts of WHY a savings account is an important tool to master and how to open one.  In regards to early retirement, it’s vitally important to have money readily available via a savings account (liquid assets), in the event the stock market is in a bear market (prolonged price declines of around 20% or more from the highs).   If you’ve missed the first topic ‘Importance of a checking account...’ please click here . One of the the most important things to have is an emergency fund .  Why?  Well, a thing called life will find a way to surprise you (not always in a good way) when you least expect it.  Just when you’re humming along, enjoying life, it’ll throw a curveball at you!  Your car might break down, your checkup at the dentist becomes a major root canal, or your water heater goes out.  I’ve had all 3 things happen in my life,...

  In this series of posts, I will be covering useful financial tools that have helped me to achieve my goal of early retirement.  I’m also writing this to help my nieces and nephews (and anyone else for that matter!) get a basic understanding of finance, in simplest way possible.   By the way, the word ‘finance’ is the managing, creating, and studying of money and investments.   First a little background: I don’t know about most of you, but I don’t think I ever had anyone sit me down to tell me what finance was.  My concept of money was whatever my parents said, which wasn’t much.  I remember my parents arguing over money more often than not, but they wouldn’t tell me anything about our family’s finances.  They wanted to shield me from so called ‘adult’ topics, and this was one of them.   School education was also lacking when it came to learning about finance.  There was no required course in high school or in college that prepared me for th...

  Sunrise at the beach, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina  In my previous post, I had shared with you my final days leading up to my resignation and few days after that day.  I guess the last day working for a paycheck was Day One of my early retirement.  In this post, I’d like to share how I did this so someone reading this post can be inspired to follow. When someone thinks about money, he/she may automatically assume making more money is the ONLY goal.  This is partially true.  Simply making more money is only useful if someone can also manage other facets of their money matters.  If someone makes $100,000 per year, but spends $110,000 per year, then this person is actually not doing well financially.   This way of thinking was how I got into trouble.  I also assumed, like most people, that making more each year would work out in the end.  The problem with this way of thinking is flawed.  There’s something called ‘lifestyle creep’, ...

  Sunset at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina My wife and I sold our home during the pandemic (August 2020), and we needed a place to stay long term.  We chose to travel and spend time with our family instead of looking for a permanent place of our own.  We chose Airbnb sublet eventually, and it’s working out great for now.  Here are our observations and our tips for traveling during the pandemic.   Observations: Once we knew our home’s closing date, we needed to start looking for a place to stay.  We looked into various travel booking websites, including Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire, Hotels.com, etc., but couldn’t find anything in our price range of around $800-$1000 per month.  What’s common with most travel websites is they almost always charge additional fees like taxes (state/county/municipality/hotel occupancy/travel surcharge, etc.), and resort fees.  Whereas a simple motel/hotel room may start at $30-$35 per night, with these fees tacked on,...