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Ah, whoops, forgot that was a US thing. Probably not the right type of thing for him anyway, with a job that has put him in underdeveloped places. The idea was a radical lifestyle change, though that might not appeal at all either. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

Wow, for an early retirement board, it is interesting to see this much push back. Yeah, that's not much money for complete retirement. But it is impressive at that age, and the plan is feasible. People have already pointed out caveats that marriage/kids could change the whole lifestyle. Still...

I would stop paying extra into the mortgage for the time being. $100k in easily accessible savings plus $30k/year is great, but with an iffy job and your current expenses, I'd want more of a cushion. You can always pay it off later with the money you've saved. Just go with the flow... If you...

Heh. Different tastes. I visited Disney for the first time last year and found Epcot the most boring part of the trip. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

We've got an older Ooma with no monthly charge. Have had it for at least 6 years. Ported our landline number to it, and it came with us to Ecuador. Friends and family still seem weirded out that we moved to South America and our phone number stayed the same. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early...

I don't have any experience, but I am curious as well. My eyes are around 20/1000, so I would rather not carve out that much of my cornea either. My opthalmologist had told me that the current ICLs had a higher incidence of cataracts, but there was a slightly different placement that was in...

Learning Spanish in ER, but that's because I moved to a Spanish speaking country. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

You people have to much energy. 15 classes over 3 years is a lot of nights and weekends to devote to it. In my experience in the computer industry, a technical person getting an MBA was fairly useless unless that person wanted to transition into management. It might be the right choice for...

In regards to financial losses, those were mitigated by a couple of instances of good timing. Our first house that we were in from1998 until 2010 appreciated by about $150k over that span. When we bought the second house, we went from no mortgage to a large mortgage and invested the difference...

Woke to a sunny 70 degree day. DW and I walked a half an hour into El Centro to set up a CD, had a nice almuerzo (lunch) with soup, fruit juice, rice, beef, and some corn salad for $2.50. Stopped at a Mercado for oatmeal, stopped at a bakery for a few rolls, started watching our backlog of...

Grave digging! Okay, yes, this is Me. I started checking out the forum again a couple of weeks ago and see a number of familiar handles, so some people might be curious whatever happened to me. DW and I are now both 39, and we decided to cheat. In 2013, we sold our house, both cars, gave...

I personally have an S-Corp. Solo 401k at Vanguard. I pay myself a reasonable salary and then have the corp pay 25% of my gross W2 salary into my 401k. That's in addition to the $17k personal limit, so I contribute over $30k per year. It has worked out well for me for the last few years. I...

I figure all money in after-tax savings is emergency money. HSA and Roth money is desperate emergency. Selling the house is last-ditch survival. As it stands I'd probably have nearly 2 years before I hit the desperate stage. Really not sure how much value an "emergency fund" has to me...

Don't forget the $7500 tax credit that you get by purchasing a Volt. $33,500 is still a hefty price, though. The concept is cool, but I'm not going to be buying one.

Heh, a thread for a $15 expenditure. The best exercise equipment is what you actually use. I don't think I'd stick with an exercise regimen of pushing doorframes. Buy a couple, they are cheap. I've got a couple of different thicknesses. But you could mimic most of it by how stretched they...

Or you could pay off the $150k mortgage with the $200k after tax funds. You'd be left with $450k in investments worth $1500/month @4%. Add another $2k/month in rental and you are at $3.5k/month income to offset $2.5k of expenses. In that scenario, you'd be doing a 72t to get at your...

Blu-Ray player with network attachment (wired, not wireless). It plays Netflix, Pandora (internet radio station thingy), and You-Tube (and Blockbuster, I think). Netflix streams well, hardly any hiccups with that. No idea what the TV dongle does, so I can't speak to that.

Everybody likes thread updates, right? :) We closed on the stucco house in early May. We closed on our old house the following week. We rented a truck and moved just about everything (with the help of half a dozen friends) in a day. Getting the old house ready to go was a pain in the...

Our new house has a dining room -- but it also has an enormous eat-in kitchen area. We'll be buying a large table (around 10' long) as our kitchen table. We also have an island with stools for additional seating.. Going from the kitchen through the butler's panty leads one into the nominal...

DateWeightFat% 1/23/08196.817.1% 7/30/08191.816.0% 11/12/08195.217.1% 12/03/08198.217.8% 1/07/09200.617.9% 3/04201.817.7% 5/06197.416.7% 6/03200.217.6% 7/01198.417.7% 8/05195.217.0% 10/07194.216.9% 12/02201.418.4% 1/06/2010201.217.9% 1/27197.417.7% 5/26199.218.2% Goal190.015.3% Highest260May...

I've been happy with our ooma. Once or twice, the other party hasn't been able to hear us. Once, the whole system freaked out a bit and we kept losing the connection. Once in a while there has been a slight delay in the system. But then our POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line had...

DateWeightFat% 1/23/08196.817.1% 7/30/08191.816.0% 11/12/08195.217.1% 12/03/08198.217.8% 1/07/09200.617.9% 3/04201.817.7% 5/06197.416.7% 6/03200.217.6% 7/01198.417.7% 8/05195.217.0% 10/07194.216.9% 12/02201.418.4% 1/06/2010201.217.9% 1/27197.417.7% 2/17199.617.3% Goal190.015.3% Highest260May...

Do you have a Comcast converter box? They started stuffing more information over the cable so TVs can't interpret the signal without their (free) cable box. You need one on every TV.

I don't think the TV is the issue. Get a new wife.

Nope, brings a tear to my eye every time. :blush: