Since I’ve started my quest to retire early and become financially independent, I’ve had to look closer into our budget, something that I hadn’t done much so far in my life (my motivation used to be “make enough money that I don’t have to care about it”, and that kind of worked up to a … Read more
I was literally 3 weeks away from announcing to my manager that I would leave “soon”. And then stuff hit the fan. Back on February 20, about a month ago, when the market was at its high, I created a draft for a post on this blog. It was entitled “a very anticlimatic finale” (very … Read more
Carrying a 42”, 60 lbs TV cost me $13.94. I believe that was a pretty good deal. Read along. My family and I recently moved to the US. We’ve decided lately to go the “frugal route” on our path to financial independence, and that involves trying to minimize costs in all ways possible. We chose … Read more
It’s a bit late for new year’s good resolution, but I didn’t have a choice: lots of things changed for us this year, and I needed additional data before I could commit myself to reducing expenses one way or another. My family just moved from Japan to the US. That’s a very big change, and … Read more
I recently had to change phones (and carrier), and in the light of my new commitment to spend less and save more money, I decided to go the cheap route. T-mobile seemed like a great opportunity, with their $30/mo for unlimited internet and 5GB of LTE data. (spoiler: it *is* a great deal if you … Read more
I thought it would be easy to talk about my current assets here. It turns out it’s not: I realized while typing this article that I am not willing to disclose how much money I have. I can however state that I feel reasonably close to retirement, hoping to generate enough passive income of my … Read more
I’ve been thinking of retiring early for quite some time now. I have accumulated a reasonable “nest” (invested in the stock market) that is providing me with a significant amount of investment income. Way not enough for a living, but enough that I started thinking: “Hey if I keep doing that, I could retire in … Read more
I’m a noob when it comes to finance, and this is one of the reasons I set up this blog: to share my journey, my mistakes, and hopefully, ultimately, my success at becoming financially independent and retire before 40. Somehow I had been lured into believing that my brokerage account would net me an average … Read more
Curious about RL360? Don’t want to read this whole blurb of text? Here’s a quick summary 2 years ago I got sold a life insurance policy (RL360 Quantum), a product that is often sold to expats around the world. I believe this is a very bad financial product, and to avoid completely destroying my financial … Read more
My job used to be interesting enough that I was happy to go to the office daily. But this hasn’t been the case in a while. Jobs can become boring. And, we all have a different experience of course, but I believe I’m a fairly creative person. I would probably strive with my own business. … Read more