Travelling the Swamp
We left the Poquoson River Virginia area in the lower Chesapeake Bay and then spent a couple days in Norfolk, VA at the Waterside Marina. We watched the Orioles battle the Yankees in the American League Divisional Play-offs. We also spent a day grocery shopping in Norfolk and visiting the main attraction, the USS Wisconsin which is permanently docked in Norfolk.
Heading South
This week we threw off the dock lines from our slip in Annapolis, MD and pointed our sailboat Odyssey south for the winter. In The first leg of our trip we’ll head down the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, VA, where the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) begins. Our ultimate destination is The Abacos in the Bahamas.
Retirement Planning For Life
In today’s economic environment retirement planning is more important than ever. We are experiencing reduced equity returns, employer provided pensions are becoming extinct, our nation’s monetary policy erodes the value of our currency daily, and our government retirement programs are financially unsustainable, That does not mean that retirement is no longer possible, but it does mean that you must stay ever vigilant in order to reach your retirement goals.
The Biggest Financial Surprise in Retirement that I did not Expect before Retirement
One reader recently asked a question, “What was the biggest financial surprise in retirement?” You might guess that my answer might be the high costs of health care. But I had done a lot of research concerning health insurance before I retired, so I knew all the options and costs associated with this expense.
Answers to Some Early Retirement Questions, Part II
A couple other questions I received about early retirement were:
- How much does one need to save each year to retire early?
- How did my wife and I know we could live on what we had saved?
Answers to Some Early Retirement Questions
I know this will cause much misery (I say with sarcasm), but I am going to start winding down this blog. After all, if retirement planning is truly simple, then there is no need to keep writing a blog about it until the end of time. However, for those of you who are interested or just have a lot of free time to kill, next month I am starting up another blog about our sailing adventures this fall and winter as we travel down the east coast inland waterway and over to the Bahamas. This blog will also discuss what it is like to be retired and, since I am a numbers guy, I will occasionally discuss retirement living costs and how we stay on budget.
Retiring Early – Our Story
This post is about how my wife and I managed to retire about ten years earlier than the typical retirement age of 65. Some of the things we did will seem inconceivable to some readers, but the choices people make early in their working lives ultimately determine when they will be able to retire. Perhaps this post will inspire people to re-assess some of their life choices.
Should I Retire Early?
I have not addressed the subject of early retirement in this blog as I feel it is important for people to first and foremost understand and implement the basics of retirement planning. But over the course of writing this blog I have had more than a few people subtlety enquire as to how it is possible for my wife and I to retire early without an employer paid pension or health care benefits. As well I have gotten questions about what we do every day in retirement. Over the next few posts I will discuss what is involved in retiring early, how we were able to achieve it, and a few thoughts about retiring early from our experiences.
Reverting to the Mean
You have probably heard the phrase “Reverting to the Mean” before, but what does it really mean in the investment world? According to Investopedia, ‘Mean Reversion’ theory suggests that prices and returns eventually move back towards their mean or average. This mean or average can be the historical average of the price or return or another relevant average such as the growth in the economy or the average return of an industry.
The Low-Risk Anomaly
I ran across an interesting article this week that was published in early 2011 in the Financial Analysts Journal (FAJ). The article is an academic study on the long term returns of investing in high-risk versus low-risk stocks. The study was conducted by three professors of finance/economics who are also asset managers. If you have been regularly reading this blog, the conclusions of the study will not surprise you as I have been preaching an approach to stock market investing that is consistent with the results of their study. With this study, you no longer have to take my word for it.