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Weekly Linkage: Stockholm Trolls
Um… it’ll make sense as you read. Amanda Hocking’s Blog: Some Things That Need to Be Said – From a successful self-published author: "This is literally years of work you're seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me." The Very Rich Indie Writer – Novelr – Making People Read – Looking at the example of Amanda Hocking's financial success, will authors of web fiction start to close…
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Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Determining a Retirement $$ Goal
This is the first of my Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning series. The ultimate question is simple: how much do I need to have when I “retire” to be able to live for decades on the proceeds? It’s worth getting over the hump of the definition of retirement, because it always seems to come up as a side topic in retirement discussions. Retirement, to me, isn’t buying a boat and spending all day golfing. …Especially since I’d rather just take a group walk through a park instead of hitting and chasing a small ball in the process. To me, retirement is getting out of a 40 hour a week job and working…
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Bogleheads’ Retirement Planning: Hitting the Highlights
I finished The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning last week, and I have to say, it’s the single best resource on retirement planning that I’ve seen or read so far. Hands down. Other books might add more depth to particular areas or have different approaches, but this book has given me the crucial vocabulary and background to know where I need to research further. Each chapter is written by different combinations of writers (with repetition) and touches on everything from how much to save, how taxes work, retirement account and plan types, investment strategies, how to withdraw for retirement (including some tax minimization strategies), and what to do when fecal…
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Weekly Linkage: Politics, Money, and Some Music
The original posting of this was horribly borked. I may be switching link-posting plugins. Warm and Fuzzy Budgeting – "You have things that matter to you. Hopes, and goals, and dreams. This is going to sound cheesy, but I think it’s true: Your budget is simply your hopes, and goals, and dreams … on paper." Maybe those tax incentives for creating new jobs should be for hiring a currently unemployed person | Prometheus 6 – What? How are you only going to hire people who already have jobs? "Members of Congress had urged the commission to explore the issue, after reading press reports of numerous instances in which employers and…
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Financial Advisor: Not This One
My first financial advisor discussions have ended with a quiet crash and burn. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning warned me about commission-based folks. I listened to them and then called him on some junk. We met yesterday to catch up on some of the things we talked about the first time, such as pre-tax vs. post-tax investments, “real wealth” vs. “paper wealth”, etc. Showstopper: he was trying to sell me insurance. Lousy insurance at that. His ideas of safe, “real wealth”, tax-protected investments were whole life and variable universal life insurance. Which he’d get a commision on for selling me.