Recent content by ordway

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. I really like the idea, but it would be a really terrible financial move for us... driving typically under 5k miles a year. If the price were only slightly more than the car we would otherwise buy (a nice inexpensive $10K Hyundai Accent) I could justify it as...

I'm sure I could probably spend $200/day, but I'd have to work at it. My husband and I live on about $25k-35k (higher end now that we're in a pricier area) without counting taxes. Add in taxes on *that* amount (no fair adding in the expense of taxes on the 60% of our income that we're saving)...

I also read The Two-Income Trap and was motivated to write a review, but from a different point of view... I found the authors' logic to be highly problematic, to put it nicely, and on many occasions I felt like throwing the book across the room. This is what I ended up saying about it...

My husband and I have been together for about 12 years now... married for 6 of them. We've had totally joint finances from almost day-one. Sometimes one of us has made a lot more than the other, sometimes only one of us has been working, sometimes both, but in all cases it just went together...

The commute would kill the deal for me (or my husband, who hates driving even more than I do). But if I didn't consider that, the one thing that caught my eye is the vacation policy. If I were you, and I took the job, I would get the amount of vacation that you want *in writing* in your...

My first suggestion? Find out if she even wants a ring to begin with. Does she wear jewelry often? Rings, in particular? If she would genuinely enjoy a ring, great, but don't just assume that female=adores jewelry. OK, I'll be the first to admit that I am an outlyer on the "fashion, clothes...

Count me in as another person living happily on under $45K. At the moment (now that we moved to CA and our rent doubled) we're probably at about $35K, after-tax. (We save about 50% of gross income, pay about 25% in taxes, and live on about 25%). I don't feel deprived at all. I feel that I have...

Hell yeah. In 2000 we had about $10K in net worth. (OK, that's a shade more than 4 years depending on how you count, but it's the date I remember from Quicken) Now we just broke $300K. Most of that was savings, though the market doing well in 2003 certainly helped.

My husband took a 6-week unpaid sabbatical in the spring of this year. He was pretty burned out and fed up with his job and wanted to recharge his batteries a bit before going back to work. As it happens, taking the time off helped him get his head out of the rut of daily work and he ended up...

Hey grlcndream! It's nice to meet others who also plan on a super-early exit :). I'm 30, my husband is 32, and we're working on the "5-year plan" (down to about 4 years now) to pile up enough of a nest egg to support a modest ER. We have about $300,000 so far (all investments, no real estate)...

Then the Terhorst book would probably be worth it for you. A lot of it is about being motivated to ER, figuring out what you want to do other than work for pay, learning how to opt out of the rat race, etc. I got it out at the library and thought it was an OK read, but for me it was 99.99%...

Donner, one thing I noticed in your posts is that several times you mention things like "this is the standard of living around here" and "this level of spending isn't out of line around here." I may be wrong, but it sounds a lot like you're measuring your "needs" based on your neighbors. Fine if...

My husband and I split the financial duties according to interest, pretty much. First off, we have totally joint finances (and have had since well before we were married). It all goes into one big pool. Neither of us has allowances or anything like that - anything over $20 or so we usually...

As for paying back those who helped you... What's the difference between A) Working 30 years in a relatively low-paying job, paying relatively little in taxes before retiring, and B) Working 10 years in a high-paying job, paying lots in taxes, and retiring early? In both cases, the person...

I'm not really sure what the difference is. Maybe for someone who only tracks income/expenses loosely your method makes sense, but in my house we track *everything* - every single expense. It's easy to do since we use hardly any cash at all, and instead use the credit card for everything...