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:
Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “Captain Ron”
Good and Bad Reasons to Love the Mortgage Interest Deduction
The ERN Family Early Retirement Capital Preservation Plan
Ask Big Ern: A Safe Withdrawal Rate Case Study for “John Smith”
Good Advice vs. Feel-Good Advice
The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates – Part 15: More Thoughts on Sequence of Return Risk
How to invest a windfall: Lump Sum or Dollar Cost Averaging?
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”
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!
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”)
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
- Private Real Estate (coming soon)
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
