Category: General

Does Big Ern really exist?

Psssst? Can you read this? I’m not supposed to do this but I secretly logged into the EarlyRetirementNow WordPress account. I’m not Ern! I’m a whistleblower! Big Ern doesn’t actually exist. It’s all a big sham! This blog is created by a Macedonian content farm. We got five people here working around the clock, churning out blog posts, answering emails, commenting on other blogs, writing tweets, posting on Facebook, SEO, you name it! The whole shebang!

Don’t believe me? Ask yourself: have you ever actually met Big Ern? Have you seen him? Yeah, there are some photos on the blog and you heard him on the ChooseFI podcast. But that’s an actor! We found him on Fiverr! And since we’re running things on the cheap we went with some dude who doesn’t even speak proper English. So, we conjured up that whole story about Ern being an immigrant.

How about the financial analysis and the Safe Withdrawal Rate Series? Well, all of that work is indeed legit and original research. But it’s all contract work! With the money we haul in from the blog every month we could buy the entire Finance department at Macedonia National University. So, we just “rent” two assistant professors to help with the simulations! You should see our profit margins!

And back to the Big Ern actor, do you know why he couldn’t come to the FinCon in Dallas in 2017? He has no training in Finance! You talk to him for two minutes and you figure out the guy doesn’t know anything about finance! He wouldn’t know the difference between a Safe Withdrawal Rate and a mortgage rate – he’s an actor for Chrissake! When he doesn’t pose for the pictures on the blog he’s doing clown gigs at kids’ birthday parties in Tulsa, Oklahoma! At least for the upcoming CampFI in April they coached him enough to not make a total clown out of himself. But ask him how the calculations in the SWR Google worksheet work and you’ll see a blank stare! Try it!

But there’s more…

Continue reading “Does Big Ern really exist?” →

Meet the ERN family!

Well, the day has come! I have finally announced at work that I will be retiring! We have talked to family and friends about our plans. No turning back now! One way I ensured that I’m not going to get cold feet was to do the ChooseFI podcast that I knew will broadcast on March 12. Since I spilled the beans there I might as well do so here on the blog as well! Continue reading “Meet the ERN family!” →

Meet Mr. Millionaire Math! (Plus Three Year-End Smart Money Moves)

Welcome! We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! Between the holidays when we are all still digesting all the excess calories there’s probably less demand for heavy-duty safe withdrawal rats simulations, so let’s do something on a lighter note today. I have always been wondering, what is it with MMM? Mr. Money Mustache started it all, of course. Now we have Mad Money Monster, Millenial Money Man, and Miss Millenial MD. Am I forgetting anyone? Even some obscure corporation up North, Minnesota Manafucaturting & Mining, jumped on that same MMM bandwagon, no doubt to leech off Pete’s fame. Obviously their lawyers were smart enough to put the label “3M” instead of “MMM” on their little post-it notes packages, otherwise, they’d probably get a nasty letter from the lawyers in Longmont. OK, just kidding about 3M. But still, it got me thinking, if I hadn’t picked “Early Retirement Now” as the blog name what would I have picked in the MMM universe? Easy!

Mr. Millionaire Math!

That seems to convey the essence of the blog pretty nicely, don’t you think? I also got a nice project for Mr. Millionaire Math: How much (or how little) effort and how much time would it have taken to become a millionaire by now? We’ll do some (light!) number-crunching on that topic today. And I’ll throw in some last-minute, end-of-the-year smart-money moves as well…

Continue reading “Meet Mr. Millionaire Math! (Plus Three Year-End Smart Money Moves)” →

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is going to be a short post today. With the Thanksgiving holiday around the corner, who wants to think about Safe Withdrawal Rate research, when you’re digesting vast quantities of turkey breast, turkey legs, fillings, and beer? So, on a lighter note, I want to say Thanks to all the folks who have made blogging such an enjoyable experience over the last year!

Specifically, … Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving!” →

Good and Bad Reasons to Love the Mortgage Interest Deduction

Welcome back to the Early Retirement Now blog! I hope everybody had a safe and relaxing Fourth of July holiday. And if you don’t live in the U.S. and had to go to work yesterday we hope you had a nice Fourth of July, too! We are currently on vacation in Paris and I am sure even here I smelled some barbecue in the air yesterday, so folks seem to celebrate worldwide!

In any case, as we detailed last week, we plan to rent during early retirement, at least in the beginning. But even if and when we buy a house we’d likely pay cash and forego the mortgage deduction. Won’t we miss the deduction? Probably not! We found a few reasons to really appreciate this tax deduction but also two very bad reasons. Let’s start with the bad reasons! Continue reading “Good and Bad Reasons to Love the Mortgage Interest Deduction” →

The Other Student Loan Crisis: Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement

[It’s a pleasure to introduce Laur (Lauren) Davidson today. Laur is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in English and Communications. She wants to build a portfolio as a freelance writer and agreed to write a guest post for us – perfect timing because the ERN family is on vacation this week! The post is on a very timely topic: student loans and how they threaten even the parents’ finances if they cosigned their kids’ private student loans. Take it over from here, Laur!]

Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement

By Laur Davidson, a soon-to-be graduated freelance writer for hire

The sheer magnitude of the mountainous $1.4 trillion of debt weighing down 44 million Americans is rightfully grabbing headlines as a looming financial crisis. The devastating economic and social impact of student loan debt on borrowers, their families, the communities in which they live and the nation is well documented. Less known, but no less devastating is the impact student loan debt is having on well-intentioned parents who are suffering financially for having helped their students by cosigning their private educational loans. With the number of students unable to repay their private loans increasing each year, more and more parents are having to rethink their retirement plans.

Continue reading “The Other Student Loan Crisis: Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement” →

Five Unfortunate Facts about Student Debt in America

Our first guest post on the ERN blog! Ever! Let me introduce Drew Cloud who runs the fascinating blog studentloans.net. Not too long ago, I remember U.S. student loans surpassing one trillion dollars (a one with 12 zeros!) for the first time. Now we’re at $1.4t and the amount just keeps growing. Make sure you check out Drew’s blog, too, especially the treasure trove of data on the topic. Take over, Drew!

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A quick online search of student loan debt in America reveals the astonishing truth about the widespread, increasing expense of attending a college or university. Currently, more than 44 million borrowers have amassed over $1.4 trillion of student loan debt, and each year, the total continues to climb. While taking out student loans is now firmly embedded in the college experience for the majority of students, the picture remains bleak for borrowers. Here are five unfortunate facts about student loan debt in America to prove that point.

StudentLoanChart
Student Loans Owned and Securitized, Outstanding. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Continue reading “Five Unfortunate Facts about Student Debt in America” →

You want to know our savings rate? Which one?

Last week, I read a nice post on Chief Mom Officer on the challenges of calculating savings rates. Right around that time I was also revisiting our 2017 budget and the projections of how much we are going to save this year. This is the last full calendar year before our planned retirement in early 2018 and it’s imperative that we stay on track and keep a high savings rate on the home stretch. But how high is our savings rate? Is there even a generally accepted way of calculating a savings rate? What are some of the pitfalls? We were surprised about how easy it is to mess up a calculation as seemingly trivial as the savings rate.

Continue reading “You want to know our savings rate? Which one?” →

Our interview on “From Cents to Retirement”

My blogging buddy Ben Davis who runs From Cents to Retirement invited me to participate in his interview series. Ben lives and works in Germany and plans an early retirement at the age of 36 to become a real estate mogul in Portugal. Here’s the link to the interview. Enjoy!

—> Interview with ERN from earlyretirementnow.com <—

This place has extreme wealth inequality, yet everybody is happy!

We are taking a short break from our Safe Withdrawal Rate Series (see the latest post here) to look into some pretty fascinating data we came across the other day. There’s a small place on earth with rampant wealth inequality. If you had just one single dollar in your name you’d be worth more than the entire bottom 27% of the wealth distribution combined. The bottom half of the population owns only about 8.6% of all wealth, while the richest 10% own 40% of all wealth, and the richest 20% own about 62% of all wealth.

Despite the wealth inequality, there is surprising harmony. There’s no call for building walls. And no call for redistributing the “ill-gotten” profits of “evil capitalists” either. There is no envy! Folks in the lowest wealth bracket would regularly compliment their richer counterparts and say “Geez, you are rich. Good for you!”

Where on earth is this place?  Continue reading “This place has extreme wealth inequality, yet everybody is happy!” →