Search results

DS has a decent job and is living with his GF who makes twice as much, and they are content to rent for now. DD also has a good job, but she wanted to buy a house in an expensive area, so we gave her $200k as a big down payment for that and later about $30k to become a partner in her BF's new...

We have a new regional government in the part of Spain where we live. I don't like them much from a political point of view, but the other day I read that they are increasing the wealth tax threshold from <below what we have> to <above what we have>. This will save us about $1,000 this year. We...

Feeling pretty good this week. DD and her boyfriend just moved into their first owned home, in the (pricey) south-east of England. :dance: They paid about $600,000, of which we put in one-third. We looked at different ways to structure this (for example, as an interest-free loan, or as a...

As part of a research project, I am attempting to contact someone (anyone!) who is familiar with Lake City, Minnesota. Ideally they would have lived there in the 1950s, but it's possible that someone who lived there until the 1970s or 1980s would have the information that I'm looking for. I...

We're normally ~45% in equities, so the ~35% market downturn put our total net worth down about 20% in February and March. But we've regained half of that in April. I can't believe that the level of worldwide depression that we are likely to see is fully priced in at that level. (Maybe I'm being...

DW and I are finally moving to our apartment in Mallorca from our rented home in France. (We owned our house until 2006, but moved closer to town when our kids were 17 and 15 as the taxi service thing was getting ridiculous, and it made sense to rent at that point.) Oh my word, what a lot of...

I hold a couple of bond funds, one that invests in AAAs, the other in "high-yield" (government and private). For the last 3-4 years these have been bumping along a rocky bottom. But in the lest few weeks their value has picked up rather nicely. Did something happen? (As a "buy and hold forever"...

A year or so ago, my bank discontinued a mostly-stocks-based fund that I held, and I had 100K (Euros) to reinvest. I was looking to rebalance a bit, so I asked the adviser for something solid. He recommended this fund. The performances seem remarkable. There was a 3% entry fee (ouch) but I got...

One of my new definitions of a good year these days is one in which I don't have to go to a funeral. But generally that means the funerals of people older than me. Tomorrow I get to go to one for a former colleague, one of the nicest and most honest people I have ever met. He was just "a guy in...

I took early retirement in 2012, when a too-good-to-pass-up layoff deal came along. Since then I've finished a Masters degree, a coaching/counselling qualification, and recently handed in my PhD dissertation. (Oh, and I've been causing trouble...

So far, in nearly 7 years of ER starting at age 51, I haven't actually permanently lost anything. But I've misplaced things so many times. Is this early-onset dementia or just a series of CRAFT (Can't Remember A Thing) moments? Yesterday I couldn't find my house keys. No biggie, as I have lots...

[Yet] Another gloomy retirement article. (I hope this hasn't already been posted - I looked around a little and didn't see it.) When Growing Old Means Living in Your Car, Working in an Amazon Warehouse

Having been renting for the past 12 years, Mrs BigNick and I have taken the plunge and bought an apartment on the Spanish island of Mallorca. It gets hot here - 90s F and high humidity every day in summer. Plus although the winters are not very cold, the apartment has minimal insulation and...

I became an Irish citizen this week! I got the letter today, dated Tuesday. Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, which I will celebrate with something other than Guinness (which I hate). This is my Brexit plan B (I'm a Brit and I want to continue living in the European Union with all of the...

A friend (here in Europe) has applied for, and thinks he will get offered, a good job at a U.S. university. Whether or not he takes it will depend in large part on pension considerations, as he has a spotty pension record due to frequent job changes earlier in his career. He is 50 and intends...

Calling medical people... I promise this is not about me, or a friend! I am trying to find out more about atherosclerotic heart disease (AHD), which was the subject of this article that recently got a lot of press coverage. There are many things wrong with that article; one of the things that...

I had a headache for three days straight, which never happens, so I went to the doctor. The conclusion is that I most likely have occipital neuralgia. The doctor gave me ketoprofen (anti-inflammatory) and told me that this condition normally clears up by itself in a week or so. Wikipedia...

DW allows me to manage her online brokerage account (under the French system, we are each entitled to up to place around $150K with reduced capital gains tax on the profits, as long as we buy European stocks). Most of the money is in a German (DAX) index tracker, but a couple of months ago I...

Want to hide your insider trades from those pesky reporting requirements? Get your kids to do them! This study found very convincing evidence that 0-10 year olds are amazingly good at buying stocks shortly before they make dramatic gains.

"Another" as in, my first, but I see there are some older threads on similar subjects. In my case it happened after a 12-hour and 6-hour drive on successive days. Woke up in a motel when half-way home with acute right-side pain in the rib area. Managed to get to sleep and drive home, then...

I woke up in the night of Friday/Saturday last with an intense pain in the right side of my stomach/chest/shoulder. Managed to get back to sleep, woke early, drove home (I was in a hotel 250 miles away), and called the duty doctor. He suggested either my recurring back/pinched nerve issues, or...

This is a nicely-written piece. However, not being an American, I probably can't judge how accurate it is. (I can say that #7 and #9 did not come as too much of a surprise.)

Maybe this should be under "What do you do all day"... Some of you may remember that just under two years ago, a few months before my decision to FIRE, I became a student of psychology. To my surprise, at an early stage of my studies, I discovered something that was badly wrong and needed...

... Yahoo!. Wow. Regardless of the merits of the idea (I am personally a little skeptical about some of the hype surrounding the claimed benefits of working from home), the memo from HR on behalf of the CEO is a classic piece of who-are-you-trying-to-kid "upbeatness". It could have appeared...

[Mods: I hope that it's OK for me to post this here, as a forum member in good standing - if not, please be gentle with me!] As part of my psychology course, I am conducting a research project that aims to identify whether certain moods/emotions that people feel at the start of the day might...