Tag Archives: Financial Independence

Learn why you should Buy This, Not That

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By Mark Seed, myownadvisor

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Let’s face it, saving and investing should be simple.

  1. Save, automate your savings to buy stocks.
  2. Invest in stocks and/or low-cost products that invest in stocks to avoid mutual fund salespeople.
  3. Disaster-proof your life by having some cash stashed.
  4. Rinse and repeat.

But simple is not easy.

All too often, we humans love to make things far more complex than things need to be.

We’re wired that way unfortunately. Egos often get in the way. 

Given many people continue to struggle with personal finance, every day, there are tens of thousands of books published out there on this subject – building and maintaining a responsible investment portfolio is only part of the personal finance success equation…

Learn why you should Buy This, Not That

Sam Dogen (aka Financial Samurai) knows a thing or two about personal finance success.

Sam founded FinancialSamurai.com in July 2009 during the depths of the global financial crisis.

Sam’s goal through that site was to deliver and share a cathartic way to make sense of the chaos at the time. Fast forward to today, more than 90 million people have visited Financial Samurai, and tens of millions more have read his work on publications such as CNBC, Yahoo Finance, and Business Insider.

Sam was previously at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse for 13 years – but he’ll share more details below!

When Sam is not writing or playing with his kids, you can find him on a tennis court or softball field in San Francisco, or on My Own Advisor giving away a book!

Sam is a graduate of The College of William & Mary and received his MBA from UC Berkeley.

I got a chance to chat with Sam recently about his new book: Buy This, Not That – How to Spend Money Your Way to Wealth and Freedom.

Here is our interview below before Sam:

Sam, welcome to the site – I know you’ve left a few comments over the years and nice to see you back!

Mark, a pleasure. I enjoy reading about your personal finance independence journey in Canada and seeing you help others with their journeys at the same time as well!

Sam, maybe not everyone is aware of your financial journey and Financial Samurai beginnings. Can you share a bit of your bio with my readers? Where do you live, what have you invested in, and “how did you get here” to writing this book?

Sure thing, Mark.

I grew up in The Philippines, Zambia, Japan, Taiwan, and Malaysia before coming to America for high school and college at William & Mary. My parents were in the U.S. foreign service.

After college, I joined Goldman Sachs in NYC in their international equities department. It was a dream job, except for the fact I had to get in at 5:30 am and often leave after 7 pm! As a result, I decided to save and invest 50% of my after-tax paycheck so I could one day have options to escape.

In July 2009, I started Financial Samurai and helped kickstart the modern-day FIRE movement. It’s been great to see so many people embrace their financial independence journey since then. My definition of financial independence is having enough passive investment income to pay for your basic living expenses.

I decided to write Buy This, Not That because I felt it had to be written. When I started Financial Samurai, there weren’t a lot of personal finance bloggers with finance backgrounds. I noticed when I first got my book offer in early 2020, there weren’t many finance authors with finance backgrounds either! So, I decided to fill this hole and provide my perspective.

Instead of scratching the surface, I decided to go deep into many financial topics. I then tackled some of life’s biggest dilemmas many of us all face.

Learn why you should Buy This, Not That! Sam Dogen

Great stuff.

Sam, in your book, you wrote:

“My first hope with Buy This, Not That is to help you let go of the fear of making a wrong financial choice. Let that sink in: there are no wrong money choices, just as there are no perfect choices, only optimal or suboptimal.”

Talk to me about your investing and wealth-building journey. What mistakes did you make? What successes did you have? What did this teach you and what do you hope to pass along to others in the book?

Mark, I made the suboptimal choice of buying a vacation property I didn’t need in 2007. I got it for 15% off, but it ended up declining by another 40% during the financial crisis! Luckily, most of its value has recovered and I’ve been taking my kids there since 2018.

Not extrapolating my income into the future was my biggest lesson learned. I was paid very well in 2007 and thought my income was just going to go higher. Life is full of ups and downs. Therefore, please be conservative with your income and return forecasts.

One of the key takeaways from the book is to encourage readers to think in probabilities, not absolutes. Don’t think you need 100% certainty to make a choice. Otherwise, you’re going to miss out on a lot of great opportunities.

In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel wrote effectively:

You don’t have to be a perfect investor. Getting wealthy and staying wealthy is “about consistently not screwing up.”

I agree with this/have always agreed with this and this aligns nicely to your 70/30 decision making philosophy. Can you explain that for readers and why is that framework so important to you to convey in the book when it comes to investing and wealth-building?

Use my 70-30 decision-making framework to build wealth and make more optimal choices. The framework states that if you believe there’s a 70% probability or greater your choice is the correct one, go for it, while having the humility knowing that 30% of the time, you’re going to get it wrong. And when you do, you will learn from your mistakes and get better.

Once you start approaching everything with a probability matrix in mind, you’re going to gain a tremendous competitive advantage compared to those who don’t.

I like that.

Sam, I personally equate the definition of Financial Independence (FI) as your investments generate enough passive income to cover your day to day living expenses. I’m not into this Barista FIRE, etc. What’s your take? Agree? Disagree? Why?

Yes, since 2009, I’ve stated that being financially independent means having enough investment income to cover your basic living expenses. However, I think Barista FIRE is a reasonable stop gap where you can earn extra income and receive subsidized health care while working a traditionally lower-wage job.

But at the end of the day, don’t fool yourself. If you still need to work, then you are probably not financially independent.

When I left work in 2012 at age 34, I had about $80,000 a year in passive investment income. I knew I wouldn’t starve, but I also wasn’t 100% confident I was doing the right thing. Therefore, I had my wife, who is three years younger than me, keep on working until age 34. If everything worked out with my new adventure, she could join me. In 2015, she was also able to negotiate a nice severance and hasn’t been back to work since.

So, when did you realize FI (Financial Independence)?

In 2012 when I was 34. At the time, I had a net worth of about $3 million that generated about $80,000 a year in passive income. But the biggest catalyst was negotiating a severance that paid for 5-6 years’ worth of regular living expenses. My severance paid all my deferred cash and stock compensation over the next three years. I also had a private investment made in 2010 that wouldn’t come due until 2017 that was fully paid out. Continue Reading…

The 5 most important factors In your Decision to Retire

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By Fritz Gilbert, TheRetirementManifesto

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

A few years ago, I was working through my decision to retire. I was pretty obsessive about it and documented the many factors I was evaluating on this blog (stored in chronological order for your convenience).  After doing my homework, I decided to make the jump in June 2018.

In the four years since I’ve never regretted my decision.

The decision to retire is complicated and there are many factors to consider.  Consider them you must, however, so I’m listing the factors I consider most important and one which I consider essentially irrelevant.  To make your best decision on when to retire, it’s important to recognize all of the things that matter, as well as those that don’t.  Under each factor, I’ve included links to relevant posts for those of you who’d like to dig deeper.

The Most Important Factors

1.) Do you have Enough Money?

The first thing most people think about when they’re making the decision to retire is whether they have enough money to last for the rest of their lifetime.  Fair enough, and I’ll concede it’s way up on the list.  I’d warn, however, that having enough money is a necessary factor, but far from sufficient.

I’ve written many articles on evaluating whether you have enough money to retire.  Below are four that I’d recommend:

2.) Are you Mentally Prepared for Retirement?

Almost everyone thinks about money when they’re making the decision to retire, but far too few consider the non-financial factors.  If I were to choose one point to make from all the things I’ve learned in the 7 years of writing this blog, it’s that the non-financial factors are the most important for putting yourself on track for a great retirement. Important enough that I wrote an entire book on the topic.

If you’re thinking about retirement, the best advice I can give you is to spend time thinking about what you want your life to be in retirement.  Think about it at least as much as you think about the “money stuff.”  Once you’ve retired, I suspect you’ll realize #2 is actually the more critical factor.

If you’re married, have you and your spouse talked about your mutual expectations for your life in retirement?  How are you addressing any misalignments?  Trust me, you have some.  Take the time to find them now, and discuss how you’re going to work together to live the best years for both of you in retirement.

What Purpose is going to fill your days when you no longer have a boss telling you what to do?  Where are you going to live?  What are you going to do?  Important stuff, all, and a topic on which I’ve dedicated thousands of words.  If you’re still working, do yourself a favor and take a “mini-retirement” to think about the things that really matter before you take the plunge.

3.) Have you made a Realistic Spending Estimate?

In its rawest form, the decision to retire is a simple math problem.  Multiply your assets times a safe withdrawal rate, add any expected income, and see if the total covers your expected level of spending.  Given the importance of getting the correct answer to that formula, it’s critical that you spend some time developing a realistic spending estimate for your retirement years.  Since you’ve thought about what you’re going to be doing in retirement (#2), it’s a necessary exercise to track your pre-retirement spending for as long as feasible (I did 11 months), then make any adjustments for how you think it will change post-retirement.  Too many people “take a swag” on this one, but I strongly encourage you to resist that temptation and give it a lot of focus as you’re making your decision to retire.

Retirement Reflections during our 32nd year of Financial Independence

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Billy and Akaisha Kaderli on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli, Retireearlylifestyle.com

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

In January, 2022 we began our 32nd year of Financial Independence. Few people can say they have 30 years of self-funded retirement by the age of 68 and have a higher net worth after spending and inflation than when they started. This is something of which we are quite proud.

As we have aged, one thing we have learned is that long term is getting shorter every day. Life is to be enjoyed now, not someday:  the older we get the more we appreciate that view. Life is continuously full of opportunities and we want to take them.

Opportunities abound

For example, a couple of years ago we were approached by a startup company which sponsored us for several months in Saigon, Vietnam in exchange for sharing our past experience in the restaurant and service industry and for exposure to our readers through our popular website and blog. That was a fabulous trip, and it got us back over to Asia again.

Then we were approached for a partnership, offering tours to Europe and South America. Can you imagine? There are always opportunities!

These are just two examples of why we say that life is full of chances to grow and learn something new if you want to take them. And neither of these recent options could have been presented to us if we were still working.

Portfolio getting stronger

Since the 2008 financial meltdown the markets certainly have performed well, thereby increasing our portfolio. And for a longer term view the S&P 500 closed at 312.49 when we retired in 1991, producing a better than 8% annual ride plus dividends. So, our advice is to get invested now and in a couple of decades looking back you will have wished you had invested more. Probably a lot more.

We suggest people track their spending now, then multiply that number by 25 to get a rough estimate of the portfolio amount they need to retire. Once you know that amount, in simple terms, assuming the same 8% growth in the future and you withdraw 4% for living expenses, this leaves you 4% to cover inflation and growth so you are all set.

The 4% rule is a guide not set in stone and ours bounces around depending on the markets and our expenses, but on average we have been able to maintain it easily below 4%. Our data over 30 years gives us security knowing that if one year it is higher we can make adjustments the following year to correct it. Then again, the markets could move higher helping us out as well, which is usually the case. Plus, we now are receiving Social Security, so payments and dividends cover our expenses. You can read our reasoning behind this decision here.

Practical considerations

Another note is that because we have a good percentage of assets in retirement accounts, when we turned 56 years old we used IRS rule 72T to withdrawal an annual amount close to our estimated Social Security payments, thus creating a bridge until we actually qualified. Now that we are receiving benefits we have turned off that spigot and are letting the IRAs grow once again.

The age of 72 is now coming into our sight and RMD, required minimum distributions, are the next issue to deal with, but we still have time and no one knows what the tax laws will be then.

With that stated, we still maintain a core holding of buy and hold (DVY, SPY, VTI) which sends us a steady stream of dividends in our taxable accounts as well as tracking the market. But in our IRAs, where we have no tax issues regarding trading, we have been more active using market seasonality with the idea of side-stepping larger declines. Some years have been better than others but we have been taking about half of the market risk than being all in all the time and that is comforting.

Where to retire, cost of living and healthcare

We are not alone anymore, with Boomers retiring at 10,000 a day, we see more retirees everywhere! But in terms of the foreign locations that we visit, the retirement community of Chapala, Mexico is growing at a fast pace. The Colonial town of Antigua, Guatemala has also attracted its share of Expats, and there is a solid and active retirement community in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Panama.

We would recommend Mexico, Panama and Guatemala for their proximity to the US and Canada as well as being on similar time zones as family and financial markets in the States. We would say that Thailand is attractive for its excellent medical care, warmer weather and uniqueness. All of these locations offer excellent lifestyle for cost of living. Continue Reading…

4 Retirement Planning mistakes and how to avoid them

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By Patricia Campbell, Cascades Financial Solutions

(Sponsor Content)

Retirement planning used to be less complex. People would spend their career working for a company, retire after 25-30 years, receiving a watch and a pension that would be enough to live on. With people changing jobs every 2.7-4.5 years, more individuals becoming self-employed or freelancing, retirement has gotten a lot more complicated.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to make mistakes when planning for retirement. Here are 4 mistakes to avoid:

1.) Expecting the government to look after you

If you’re at least 60 years old and have contributed to CPP, you’re eligible to receive the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefit. The payments won’t start automatically, you would need to apply to the government to start receiving it. The Old Age Security (OAS) pension amount is determined by how long you have lived in Canada after the age of 18. As of July 2022, seniors aged 75 and over will see an automatic 10% increase of their Old Age Security pension.

The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS) are guaranteed incomes for life but not necessarily enough to live securely in retirement. Assuming you’re 65 today and are starting payments for both, the combined total is $1,345.32 every month.

For the CPP, the maximum amount is $1,253.59 (2022), although most individuals don’t qualify to receive the full amount. The average amount for new beneficiaries (October 2021) is $702.77.

2.) Applying for government benefits too early

You could receive 8.4% more every year when delaying your CPP payment beyond age 65. That’s a 42% increase if deferred to age 70. For OAS, you receive 7.2% more for each year of deferral beyond age 65. That’s a 36% increase if deferred to age 70.

It seems like a good idea to wait, but before you decide, consider this: If you compare 3 individuals who are the same age, where Mark takes the CPP at age 60 and Tonya takes it at age 65 and Natasha at age 70. The break-even point where Mark and Tonya will both have received the same amount of money is age 74. Natasha, on the other hand, will not catch up until age 80. At this point, Natasha will begin to outpace the others considerably. But keep in mind, she would need longevity to actually use and enjoy the money. With this being said, the later you start, the higher your monthly payments will be.

3.) Spending Too Much Money Too Soon

Do you really know how much you spend each month? Unlike working, you will have a fixed income in retirement. Therefore, it’s important to plan your retirement including any vacations or large purchases. An important part of retirement income planning is knowing how much income you can achieve based on your savings. Cascades Financial Solutions is an excellent tool to use when determining your after-tax income.

Continue Reading…

Tips for moving out of your Parents’ House

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Photo via Pixels/Ketut Subiyanto

It’s about that time in your life when you feel like you need a change of pace and want to move out of your parents’ house. Now, this isn’t as simple as just moving out. There are a lot of steps you need to take in order to be prepared for this new venture in life. Taking on these few tips can help with a smooth transition when moving out of your parents’ and into your new home.

Finding a New Place

Once you’ve decided to move out, you’ll next have to decide if you want to rent or buy a place of your own. Many people lean toward renting since it’s a much quicker and easier way to get a place. Although renting may be easier, buying is typically the more financially responsible route to take.

As a potential new home buyer, you’ll want to do some research on tips for buying your first home. Although there are more hoops to jump through, you’ll be investing your money into real estate and a place to live, instead of throwing your money away by renting someone else’s place.

Before starting your home hunt, ask yourself “how much house can I afford?” Establishing this ahead of time will allow you to know exactly how much you have available to go toward a payment for your new home. Consider working with a real estate agent to help with your home search. They will know the ups and downs of the market and help you find the home that’s right for you.

Decluttering and Reorganization

Many people could agree that moving out of your parents’ house is when the most decluttering needs to happen. You have clothes from all different points in your life, trinkets, and memory boxes galore. Prioritize a day or two to declutter and get rid of the things you no longer need. Then once you start packing you’ll need to move a lot less.

Decluttering prior to your move will also ease the reorganization process in your new place. Researching organization tips can help you find the best ways to do this. Buying organizational cubes, stackable containers, and any storage-type product can help keep all your items in the right place and avoid new clutter.

Developing Financial Independence

Moving out on your own means being financially independent. You’re not relying on your parents to buy the groceries or pay the utility bill. Most expenses are now on you to deal with, and you’ll want to know how you can find your financial independence. Continue Reading…