• Follow-up to Virtual Meetup #5

    Thanks to everyone who joined the virtual meetup. We had a lot of good discussions which extended beyond the scheduled one hour. I was not sure if I answered all the questions clearly. So here is a post that clarifies things a little bit in case I was not clear earlier. Here are some questions that were asked and my responses.

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  • Trimming Expenses

    In my last post I mentioned that I was confident of my approach to early retirement. In addition I wrote about a couple who have been retired for 30 years by just following the 4% rule. One of the learning from that post is that there could be a huge drop in market that may hit my investments badly. In that case my investments may not keep up with my expenses. For example if there is a prolonged market slump. And I need a plan. The plan starts with cutting down my expenses temporarily so that my investments can catch up.

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  • Thirty Years Into Retirement

    It's been barely three years into my early retirement. So, no I am not talking about myself here. I recently came across this article about a couple who retired 30 years ago. And they were 38 then. What great clarity they must have had of their future to retire in 1991!

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  • Optimal Conditions For Self Directed Education

    I spend a lot of time on Youtube trying to learn something or the other. And from time to time I arrive at some interesting videos shared by others. Most recently I watched the talk on Self Directed Education by Peter Gray. I suggest anyone interested in unschooling go watch it.

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  • Virtual Meetup #5

    Here is an invite to join me in a virtual meet-up to discuss random things on the topics of financial planning, early retirement, home schooling or sustainable living. We can share our stories and ask each other questions or give suggestions. As a group we can learn from each other's experience, learnings and pit-falls. Since I post a lot about myself on this blog, you probably already know everything about me. But if you ever wanted to ask me something and did not bother to comment, this is your chance.

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  • One Year Since COVID, Franklin, Sensex And Other Lows

    It has been a year since I have seen all kinds of lows of 2020. That year turned out to be quite bad. However, it seems like 2021 is not going to be much better when it comes to COVID. But not everything is as bad. This post is a look back at what happened since the last year lows (from my perspective) and how things are now compared to one year ago.

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  • Living a Semi-Urban Life

    Some of you might know that I live on the outskirts of Bangalore. The reasons were two-fold

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  • Friends Roster – Presubmit, Continuous Integration, Deployment And Hosting

    This is the continuation of “how I built the Friends Roster app” saga. If you missed the previous parts in this series, do check them out — part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6part 7part 8 and part 9. I know it must be getting pretty boring reading about the app for so long. But I promise this is the last one in the series.

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  • How and When I Decided To Retire

    A friend and reader of my blog asked me this question -- I don't know if you covered this in the blog, but could you write about how you arrived at a number for net worth where you felt comfortable retiring. I have written about my retirement journey which is scattered across many posts. So I thought I should consolidate and revisit the topic for the benefit of new readers.

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  • Friends Roster – Testing In Flutter

    This is the continuation of “how I built the Friends Roster app” saga. If you missed the previous parts in this series, do check them out — part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5part 6part 7 and part 8. So far we have seen the code that runs the app. What about testing? Normally when I work on these hobby projects I don't write any tests (gasp!). I know. I sometimes did feel the need for tests, especially if it is a large project with lots of moving parts. They help you when making changes to the code. You can be confident that your changes will not unexpectedly break something.

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