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I know a lot of people here deal with "one more year" and "golden handcuffs". I'm in a situation where I've more or less hit my number, but my business is doing very well and for the next couple years I should be making 2-3 times what I made the last five. Enough that, with some luck, I can...

A recent discussion around if $2M is enough to retire led me to think we should update a poll from a couple of years ago. What amount of money would be enough to make you personally feel comfortable retiring in the United States with no supplementary income, pension or medical benefits...

I know people aren't that interested in SWR any more, but I still am. What is the consensus for the safe withdrawal rate starting Jan 1 2000? We won't know for 20+ more years what the maximum withdrawal was, but it's fun to guess. For this game we'll use the default-options FireCalc (withdrawals...

Ten or fifteen years ago I thought it would be very cool to have a year where my investment gains were larger than my earned income. This happened in 2006, and it was cool. However, I just tallied up all my losses for this year, and, despite moving quite a bit of money to cash and making some...

With the recent rough stock market I was wondering the other day how our mythical 4%-withdrawing retiree that started in Jan 2000 would be faring. I cranked up FIREcalc with the default assumptions and got the results through 2005 (the last year FIREcalc will display detailed results). I then...

My impression is that most of the people around here are not very tempted by material things, and find it easy to save money. Recently FireWhen said "I REALLY HATE TO SPEND MONEY," and that seems to be a pretty common attitude here. Are there a lot of people who've had to work hard to save a...

Or: why your friends and family don’t want you to retire early. A few days ago I made the comment that early retirement is selfish, and this naturally provoked a harsh response around here! I’ve generally backed off of this position in the past because I’m not interested in a long internet...

Lately, whenever I use Gmail the scrollbar disappears on my IE, and I can't scroll down to read my emails. I've searched the internet to no avail, and you all seem to be experts in everything so I was hoping someone here could help me. Any ideas? I'm using Windows 98 and IE6.

All this talk about the value of a million dollars has me wondering what the distribution of wealth in the US has been over time. The 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances http://132.200.33.130/pubs/oss/oss2/2004/bull0206.pdf tells me what the threshold to get in the top 2.5% has been for the last...

I hear that the subprime mortgage backed debt is getting downgraded to junk status, and that all the pension funds etc will have to sell at "fire sale" prices. Assuming that these loans may get pushed below a reasonable valuation, is there any way for a little investor to buy a piece? I don't...

I have enough money and enough sense now that I realize that if I had a million dollars I wouldn't do or buy anything that I wouldn't right now. Despite this, I still find myself thinking / saying, "if I had a million dollars I'd. . ." The most recent one was "If I had a million dollars I'd...

Whenever I think about planning for ER I wonder how many people actually follow their plans. It seems like there are a lot of people on this board who had a sudden change of heart or circumstance and retired fairly quickly after they needed to or found out they could or were given a retirement...

I have about 40,000 british pounds in a brokerage account and I'm trying to figure out the best / cheapest way to convert that to US dollars. Calling my current broker and bank it looks like I could pay a fee of around 1% (in one case), or I can pay a spread, which also turns out to be around 1%...

What are some favorite cheap ($4-7ish) wines? There's a sale going on and I'd like to find a couple things that I like and stock-up. Unfortunately, I can't try them all before the sale ends, so I'm going to have to narrow it down to just a few. Any opinions on some of these brands? Banrock...

I was talking to my parents this weekend about investing (fraught with peril, but I think it turned out ok). I told them that I thought their actively managed funds were costing them ~1% more than an index fund would (plus trading costs), so they should switch. My dad said, "but that assumes the...

I came across this strange fund: http://www.dbfunds.db.com/dbv/index.aspx The idea is that you go long the three highest yielding currencies (among developed nations) and short the three lowest yielding. Past history and some academic research suggests that this will give you a 10% or so yield...

I found this strange and facinating: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15337932/ "Thousands of U.S. troops are being barred from overseas duty because they are so deep in debt they are considered security risks, according to an Associated Press review of military records."

I frequently read that you should start your kids on an allowance at a very early age. Some say 3-4 years old or “as soon as possible,” and they also tend to advocate getting out of the way and letting kids do what ever stupid things they want with their money. We tried this with our 4 & 5 year...

This may have been done before, but I can't find it. I get the sense that posters here have fewer children than the average person -- just wanted to check the data. If you want, you can put the number of children you plan to have. The funny groupings (5-6, 7+) follow the census.

I own a few paper savings bonds. For a couple of years now Treasury Direct has said that these can be transferred to electronic bonds on their site, but only after being notified in the mail that my turn is ready. I've been waiting for some time, with no sign of an invitation. Is anyone else...

I saw this comment about social security payments on a blog recently: "Collect benefits at age 62, but at age 65, withdraw the Social Security claim, pay back all Social Security benefits received, and resubmit a claim for maximum benefits." There was no other explanation. Has anyone ever...

Both my parents and in-laws use financial planners. One uses American Express (now Ameriprise), and the other uses UBS. The interesting thing is that they both swear that they don't pay anything for this. What do you think? Is it possible that they are avoiding the typical fees, or are they just...

I think there are a couple people on the forum who have mentioned wanting to set up a little financial planning business in "ER." Has anyone actually pulled that off? For those of us that think about this stuff so much for free it seems like it would be fun and easy, but there has to be a catch.

I finally got arount to reading ESRBob's excellent book Work Less, Live More, and I have a couple questions that y'all might have figured out. For the 4/95 method (where you withdraw the maximum of 4% of your portfolio or 95% of your previous year's withdrawal), are you limiting yourself to 95%...

Anyone here use linux?  I might be getting a free PC with no operating system, and I'm considering putting linux on it.  Any recommendations on which flavor and where to get it cheap?  My idea is get a book at the library with instal CD's in it.  On my (now dead) computer I used NetZero for a...