Posts in category "post-retirement" - page 17
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My Expenses Compared with MMM
Some of you might have heard of Mr. Money Mustache (MMM), who retired at the age of 30 in the US and is quite popular in the F.I.R.E world. I have always wanted to compare my expenses with him and see if I can be as good as him with my expenses. I always believe that there are some similarities when I compare myself with him (like workouts, DIY, minimalism etc). My expenses should also be similar then? You know that I have this habit of looking back at my expenses in the past year and write a post on it in the beginning of the new year. This year, MMM also posted his expenses on his blog, so it was easy for me to compare my expenses with his. So am I better at managing my expenses compared to him? Lets find out. The results may surprise you!
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Hundred Posts and Counting
I passed a wonderful milestone today. This is my 100th post on this blog. I did not realize that I was so close to this milestone. When I first started I did not have any intentions of doing it for the long term. It was supposed to be just an online dairy. I wanted to pen down my daily activities and thoughts so I can recollect the memories and rediscover the days gone by. But thanks to encouragement from friends and family it grew into a blog for helping others :)
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Tax Audit
I was recently audited by the Income Tax Department and thought that the whole faceless scrutiny process was interesting. So here is something about it. It seems like I was one of those people who got randomly selected for Limited Scrutiny (Computer Aided Scrutiny Selection). It was the government's way of testing out the e-Proceedings facility.
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What To Do During The Crisis and Lockdown?
The Indian government has called for a lockdown for 21 days. So you must all be at home with family including kids. So I am guessing you must be experiencing a taste of my life! Meanwhile the markets are doing things they are best known for, i.e. being irrational. Well, actually if you ask me, the markets seem more rational now than before. On the other hand, government and RBI are doing lots of things to overcome the negative impact of COVID-19 on people and economy. While analysts, bigwigs and news personnel are scaring the pants off us, complaining that governments are not doing enough and that there is an impending recession. It does not matter what everyone is doing, thinking or how irrational the market is, you can be more rational during these trying times and take it as an opportunity.
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Year In Review – 2019 Net Worth
The final post in 2020 Year in Review series, is my net worth. Like last year, I took stock of my investments and asset allocation. As a reminder to the readers, the idea is not to know how much I am worth, but mainly to understand my asset allocation. Even so, it is fun to check out the net worth, so here it goes.
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Year In Review - 2019 Expenses
This is the continuation of my 2019 year in review series. See my previous post if you missed my returns report. As you probably know, I maintain two set of expenses -- one for monthly expenses and another for annual expenses. The monthly expenses include expenses that occur more frequently than once a year and the rest of the expenses go into annual expenses. Lets dive deeper into the report.
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Year In Review - 2019 Returns
It is that time of the year again when I do a review of my investments, expenses, net worth and also plan for the upcoming year. This year is special because I also have to do my 10 year planning as this is the start of a new decade. Anyway, enough banter, on to the good stuff. As usual, this will be a series and this is the first of them which covers my returns in 2019.
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Everyday Movements
No, I am not talking about stock market movements, I mean physical movements. In this day and age, people are moving less and sitting on their asses more. I don't mean being lazy, but the demands of today's work are so different from the previous generation's that we are getting much less physical activity than is required. The reason I bring up this topic is because I routinely hear people complaining of lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain or any of the numerous body pains associated with tight muscles. To fix this, they have undergone surgery or got needles inserted.
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Sold My Car!
I might have mentioned in passing on this blog that I own three vehicles. Now, having started on my minimalist journey, I have been wanting to get rid of an expensive and yet not so used car. And that finally happened yesterday! It is sort of a bitter sweet moment really. On the one hand I feel like a part of me is gone now and all I am left with are the memories. On the other hand, I am happy to have reduced "stuff" from my life. Read on to know the whole story.
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Tax Deductions
As I am doing taxes for the recently concluded financial year, I am realizing how much of tax saving one would be forgoing once you retire :). Without income there is no more section 80C deductions, no more savings from interest paid towards home loan via section 24, no exemptions for HRA under section 80GG. These things only hit you once you retire. Of course I went into retirement knowing that, so nothing to worry, but you don't realize these until you do your taxes. During your earning phase, every paycheck is a reminder for saving taxes and claiming as much deductions as possible.
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