Alex in Virginia
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2012
- Messages
- 145
Sharing My Retirement Journey
I want to share my financial independence (retirement?) journey through posts on this forum. How I got to financial independence. What I do with it. What I have learned (and continue to learn) that could help others reach and enjoy their financial independence. And in the process to learn even more from the feedback I hope to get.
Some of my posts will be about money management. About what I call frugality without sacrifice. About how I manage to lead a pretty nice lifestyle for less than $18,000 gross a year.
Some of my posts will be about my investment “adventures.” About how my $400,000 stash yields me $28,000 to $32,000 a year in passive income. And about the risks that involves.
And some of my posts will be about what I do with my free time and my surplus money now that I have (or think I have) full control of my time and money to do something with it.
My core money management strategy is frugality without sacrifice -- what I call playing the frugal game. Cutting the waste and getting more for my money every time I spend any of it. I know that sounds like a “duh” statement. But I’ve been amazed (and you might be too) at just how much money can fall through the cracks when one takes one’s eye off the frugal spending ball.
My investment strategy is based on creating and maintaining a high yield stream of dividend and interest payments. That also means that my strategy is more high risk than a lot of people are willing to accept. But it works for me. And many of my posts will be about how and why that is so.
I put a good deal of my time into investing and money management so that I can have the financial freedom to do what I want. But actually taking the time to do fun things is something of a problem for me. If left to myself (so to speak) I have a strong tendency to either let my time go to doing more chores (since there’s always more) or to plop down to watch a DVD movie. And that’s not how I really want to spend what’s supposed to be my free fun time.
So I am continuing to develop scheduling and routine setting tactics to “force” myself into actually using my time to hike, take trips, write these posts, do serious history reading, and develop some real hobby-interests. And I’ll be writing posts about how that is working out.
In short, it is very important to me to feel that I am in control of my life, to have goals, and to actually accomplish them. When all of that comes together, I feel good about my life and about myself. I’ll be writing these posts to help me stay on that course.
Along the way, I hope some of what I’ve learned and what I will continue to learn helps you in your quest for financial independence. And I’m pretty sure I too will learn a lot from your responses to my posts.
Alex in Virginia
I want to share my financial independence (retirement?) journey through posts on this forum. How I got to financial independence. What I do with it. What I have learned (and continue to learn) that could help others reach and enjoy their financial independence. And in the process to learn even more from the feedback I hope to get.
Some of my posts will be about money management. About what I call frugality without sacrifice. About how I manage to lead a pretty nice lifestyle for less than $18,000 gross a year.
Some of my posts will be about my investment “adventures.” About how my $400,000 stash yields me $28,000 to $32,000 a year in passive income. And about the risks that involves.
And some of my posts will be about what I do with my free time and my surplus money now that I have (or think I have) full control of my time and money to do something with it.
My core money management strategy is frugality without sacrifice -- what I call playing the frugal game. Cutting the waste and getting more for my money every time I spend any of it. I know that sounds like a “duh” statement. But I’ve been amazed (and you might be too) at just how much money can fall through the cracks when one takes one’s eye off the frugal spending ball.
My investment strategy is based on creating and maintaining a high yield stream of dividend and interest payments. That also means that my strategy is more high risk than a lot of people are willing to accept. But it works for me. And many of my posts will be about how and why that is so.
I put a good deal of my time into investing and money management so that I can have the financial freedom to do what I want. But actually taking the time to do fun things is something of a problem for me. If left to myself (so to speak) I have a strong tendency to either let my time go to doing more chores (since there’s always more) or to plop down to watch a DVD movie. And that’s not how I really want to spend what’s supposed to be my free fun time.
So I am continuing to develop scheduling and routine setting tactics to “force” myself into actually using my time to hike, take trips, write these posts, do serious history reading, and develop some real hobby-interests. And I’ll be writing posts about how that is working out.
In short, it is very important to me to feel that I am in control of my life, to have goals, and to actually accomplish them. When all of that comes together, I feel good about my life and about myself. I’ll be writing these posts to help me stay on that course.
Along the way, I hope some of what I’ve learned and what I will continue to learn helps you in your quest for financial independence. And I’m pretty sure I too will learn a lot from your responses to my posts.
Alex in Virginia
