Read this before you introduce yourself!

[Nords]

Welcome to the Early-Retirement.org discussion board, where thousands of self-professed experts (and a few real ones) are ready to help answer all your questions and solve your problems. Here's how you can attempt to keep the process on track. Using the "New Thread" button in the upper left hand side, please create a new thread for yourself following these suggestions:

1. Please make the subject of your post something unique. "Hi", and "Hi there" gets quickly lost in all of the other posts. Something like "Hi from Ceberon"* is better. The best would be something descriptive, such as: "40-year-old parent of four wants to learn more", or "Young student just opening my first accounts."

2. Post as much information as you feel comfortable with, but the more specific the data then the more & better responses you'll get. Especially useful are your age, desired retirement age, assets, asset allocation, income, expenses, spouse, kids, and relevant location. If you say you have $900,000 in assets and you want to know if you can retire, you will not get many good responses. If you explain that you're age 45, would like to retire at 50, you have $900,000 in 50% stocks, 40% bonds, and 10% cash, you earn $55K/year and spend $60k per year, you're married with two teenagers and want to retire in San Antonio, then you will find that our responses are much more helpful.

3. If you have more questions after introducing yourself then please post them on a different board ("Young Dreamers", "Fire and Money", etc). More people will see your question on those boards and you'll get better responses than from the "Hi, I Am..." board.

4. This is a moderated discussion board that receives a lot of spam. Please don't make your very first impression with phrases like "Visit my website!!" or "Check out my blog". That information is acceptable in your signature or your profile, but please don't push it. We aspire to early retirement, not to being pelted with advertising. Commercial, repetitive, or offensive postings will be ruthlessly deleted.

*Thanks to Ceberon for suggesting this post!