Below we have listed an outline of topics we are working on or thinking about. Some of them already have a link to a blog post. Others to come soon, so stay tuned! We also like to hear about suggestions for things to write about!
Latest posts:
How crazy is it to invest an emergency fund in stocks?
Inflation Risk for Early Retirees – Part 4: Hedging
My best investment ever: Homeownership?!
Inflation Risk for Early Retirees – Part 2
Market Timing and Risk Management, Part 1 – Macroeconomics
The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 23: Flexibility and its Limitations
How much of a Random Walk is the Stock Market?
Ten Lessons From Ten Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Studies
Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. and Mrs. Shirts”
Meet Mr. Millionaire Math! (Plus Three Year-End Smart Money Moves)
U.S. Equity Returns: History and Big ERN’s 10-Year Forecast
General:
- A short introduction
- Some of the things that keep us motivated to achieve (and maintain!) financial independence
- The ABC (and D through J) of Early Retirement
- Top 10 reasons for targeting more than 25 times annual spending
- Happy Birthday, USA
- The dangers of getting close to retirement: “Yeah, I’ll do that when I’m retired!”
- My Interview on the Physician on FIRE blog!
- Happy Thanksgiving!
- Grand Canyon Rim to Rim Hike
- Guest Post on Budgets are Sexy: My Top 7 Disagreements With Personal Finance Experts
- Our Interview on The Green Swan
- This place has extreme wealth inequality, yet everybody is happy!
- Our interview on “From Cents to Retirement”
- You want to know our savings rate? Which one?
- Our Net Worth (as of 3/31/2017)
- Five Unfortunate Facts about Student Debt in America
- The Other Student Loan Crisis: Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement
- Good Advice vs. Feel-Good Advice
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “John Smith”
- The ERN Family Early Retirement Capital Preservation Plan
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Captain Ron”
- Check out ChooseFI today for Big ERN’s first podcast appearance!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Rene”
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for Mrs. “Wish I Could Surf”
- Our Net Worth as of 9/30/2017
- Guest Post: Why geographic arbitrage is so important to retire early and what you can do to about it
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate”
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Ms. Almost FI”
- See that house over there? It’s an investment!
- Happy Thanksgiving 2017!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate Refugee”
- Meet Mr. Millionaire Math! (Plus Three Year-End Smart Money Moves)
- Our Net Worth as of 12/31/2017
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. and Mrs. Shirts”
- Ten Lessons From Ten Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Studies
- Guest Post: Should you invest in Stocks or Bitcoin?
- Some of my Thoughts on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
- My podcast appearance on Millionaires Unveiled
- Meet the ERN family!
- Does Big Ern really exist?
- Our Net Worth as of 3/31/2018
Asset Allocation:
- Our most recent Asset Allocation 3/2016
- Some really bad investment ideas to avoid. If it’s recommended on TV, it’s probably a bad idea!
- List of index ETFs and Mutual Funds
- Early Retirement Math 101
- Our $0.00 emergency fund strategy
- When bonds are riskier than stocks
- How to create a no-limit Synthetic Roth IRA in a taxable account
- Saving for a House Down Payment
- The ultimate retirement account comparison in one single Google Sheet
- Gold vs. Paper Money: A Rant
- Lower risk through leverage
- Why an emergency fund is a bad idea in one single chart
- Beat Behavioral Bias: Mental Accounting
- The Great Bond Diversification Myth
- Trading derivatives on the path to Financial Independence and Early Retirement
- Top 10 reasons for having an emergency fund – debunked (Part 1)
- Top 10 reasons for having an emergency fund – debunked (Part 2)
- We just went from millionaire to dead-broke with one simple accounting maneuver
- Passive income through option writing: Part 1
- Passive income through option writing: Part 2
- Shorting an inverse ETF? A bad idea! (Or: Why “Beta-Slippage” isn’t alpha)
- Cash Management in Early Retirement
- Why would anyone have a mortgage and a bond portfolio?
- Seven reasons in defense of debt and leverage: Yes, you CAN have too little of a bad thing!
- An addition to the ERN family portfolio: Preferred Stocks
- Happy Birthday, Bull Market!
- The end of CAPE Fear? What happens to the Shiller CAPE ratio when we roll out the weak 2008/09 earnings?
- Have bonds lost their diversification potential?
- The scariest week for the stock market is also scary profitable!
- How to invest a windfall: Lump Sum or Dollar Cost Averaging?
- We are so skewed!
- Active Investing: Opportunity vs. Futility
- U.S. Equity Returns: History and Big ERN’s 10-Year Forecast
- How useful is international diversification?
- This fund returned over 100% year-to-date. I’m still not buying it!
- The Shockingly Simple/Complicated/Random Math Behind Saving For Early Retirement
- Nervous about sky-high stock prices? Five ways to cope with “CAPE Fear”
- How much of a Random Walk is the Stock Market?
- Joined at the hip: The Macroeconomy and the Stock Market
- Market Timing and Risk Management, Part 1 – Macroeconomics
- Inflation Risk for Early Retirees – Part 2
- Guest Post: Farmland Is The New Gold
- My best investment ever: Homeownership?!
- Inflation Risk for Early Retirees – Part 4: Hedging
- How crazy is it to invest an emergency fund in stocks?
Financial Planners and Robo-advisers:
- Why we don’t trust financial planners
- Be your own zero-cost homebrew Robo-adviser
- Why we don’t use Robo-advisers
- We just saved $42,000 by not switching to Betterment
Withdrawal Rates:
- Pros and cons of different withdrawal rules
- The 4% Rule is not as good as we hoped:
- Cash Management in Early Retirement
- New research on sustainable withdrawal rates:
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 1: Introduction
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 2: Capital Preservation vs. Capital Depletion
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 3: Equity Valuation
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 4: Social Security and Pensions
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 5: Cost-of-Living Adjustments
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 6: A 2000-2016 case study (or: Welcome to the Potemkin Retirement Village)
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 7: A Google Sheets Toolbox
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 8: Technical Appendix
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 9: Are Guyton-Klinger Rules Overrated?
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 10: Debunking Guyton-Klinger Some More
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 11: Six Criteria to Grade Withdrawal Rules
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 12: Six reasons to be suspicious about the “Cash Cushion”
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 13: Dynamic Stock-Bond Allocation through Prime Harvesting
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 14: Sequence of Return Risk
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 15: More Thoughts on Sequence of Return Risk
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 16: Early Retirement in a Low-Return World (and why we don’t worry about Jack Bogle’s return prediction)
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 17: More on Social Security and Pensions (and why we should call the 4% Rule the “4% Rule of Thumb”)
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 18: Flexibility and the Mechanics of CAPE-Based Rules
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 19: Equity Glidepaths in Retirement
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 20: More Thoughts on Equity Glidepaths
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 21: Why we will not have a mortgage in early retirement
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 22: Can the “Simple Math” make retirement more difficult?
- The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 23: Flexibility and its Limitations
- Case Studies:
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “John Smith”: Seven-figure net worth, but not quite ready for FIRE yet. Big ERN would recommend a few more years in the workforce!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Captain Ron”: Early retirement on a sailboat. How much can they withdraw from their $3m portfolio to stay afloat (pun) in retirement?
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Rene”: No need to worry about the recent layoff: You are more than ready for early retirement!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs. Greece”: More than ready to retire due to large portfolio size and moderate living expenses, especially if the husband keeps working!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs. Wish I Could Surf”: Alternative investments (real estate hard money loans). Keep the mortgage or pay it off? Either way, more than ready to retire!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate”: Geographic Arbitrage by moving to a low-cost European country. Roth Conversions and zero tax liability!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Ms. Almost FI”: Your name is a misnomer. You are ready to retire now even when self-funding substantial long-term care expenses in the future!
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. Corporate Refugee”: How to deal with a large portion of the net worth tied up in a house in a high-cost-of-living area.
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mrs. Wanderlust”: Substantial supplemental cash flows due to buying an RV and then selling it later.
- Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Mr. and Mrs. Shirts”: Ready to retire this year, but should Mr. Shirts work for another nine months for some additional big payday?
- Wrapup and summary of the 10 case studies: Ten Lessons From Ten Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Studies
Real Estate:
- Real Estate: Buy or Rent? Includes: The hidden tax benefits of renting (seriously!)
- Why we’re not optimistic on REITs
- Why would anyone have a mortgage and a bond portfolio?
- Housing Choices in Early Retirement: Rent vs. Own
- See that house over there? It’s an investment!
- My best investment ever: Homeownership?!
Taxes:
- That sneaky 30% Federal Income Tax Bracket
- Tax Loss Harvesting: what is it and how large is the expected benefit?
- We just saved $42,000 by not switching to Betterment
- Good and Bad Reasons to Love the Mortgage Interest Deduction
Derivatives:
- How to create a no-limit Synthetic Roth IRA in a taxable account
- Trading derivatives on the path to Financial Independence and Early Retirement
- Passive income through option writing: Part 1
- Passive income through option writing: Part 2
- Our Interview on the Amber Tree Leaves Blog
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