Tag: Blogging

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?” →

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!” →

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 <—

Guest Post on Budgets are Sexy: My Top 7 Disagreements With Personal Finance Experts

J. Money, the personal finance blogger who runs Budgets are Sexy and RockstarFinance asked yours truly to write a guest post! Wow, what an honor! And, it turns out, this is actually my first guest post ever (not counting the “Christopher Guest Post” on the Physician on FIRE blog two months ago because that’s actually an interview). What did I write about? Initially, I proposed to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Tahiti to review some luxury resorts and report back, uhm, some time later this year. But J$ had another brilliant idea: write about my favorite finance pet peeves. And it got published today:

My Top 7 Disagreements With Personal Finance Experts

Of course, to read it all, you’ll have to head over to Budgets are Sexy. But please see below for supplemental material, i.e., some of our blog posts on the seven topics:

  1. Safe Withdrawal Rate:
  2. Robo-Advisers:
  3. Emergency Funds:
  4. Bonds to diversify equity risk:
  5. Bond vs. Stock Risk:
  6. Cash as bear market insurance:
  7. Tax loss harvesting:

 

 

 

My Interview on the Physician on FIRE blog!

My interactions with medical doctors normally involve the question “on a scale from 0 to 10, how much pain do you feel?” So, I was relieved when my blogging friend Physician of FIRE invited me over to answer questions about blogging, personal finance, and life in general as part of his “Christopher Guest Post” series. But given Dr. PoF’s strange fascination with “spinal taps” and the number 11, I was a bit nervous at first:

pain-scale-0-11
Coming soon to a hospital near you?!

Continue reading “My Interview on the Physician on FIRE blog!” →