• Be Prepared For Retirement

    There are many reasons one might want to retire early. Some may want to travel, some may want to sit and dream, and yet others might want to work on a startup or hobbies. Whatever the reasons might be, be prepared if the plan does not pan out. But more importantly remember that early retirement is not for everyone. I know a lot of people who have realized that early retirement is not for them. They don’t know what they would do if they retire early. For them, work is the thing that keeps them busy. That is a very good reason not to retire early and I am glad these people have a clear idea. While a few others want to retire early because the thought of freedom to do whatever you want sounds nice, or they are in a very stressful job. These kind of people can land up in trouble if they don’t have a plan.

    ...continue reading
  • Converting a USB printer into a WiFi Printer

    We have an old USB laser printer which was purchased in early 2012. It has been in fine working condition since then. I rarely use it because usually there is nothing much to print. We do the occasional flight ticket print outs. Once our daughter was born there was a little bit more printing. I changed the toner just twice in these 11 years. Anytime anyone in the family needed a printout, they would connect their laptop to the printer via USB and print. Although it wasn’t that much of a hassle, I wanted to make the printer a wireless one. This post is about how I achieved it. As you can imagine, it can get technical and if you are not into computers and software, it is better you skip this one :).

    ...continue reading
  • Revisiting My Stance on SGB

    A reader asked if I could share my views on Sovereign Gold Bonds. I have already expressed my views on SGBs more than 3 years ago. Since it has been a while I thought I should revisit and see if my views have changed. Although nothing has changed from my perspective, it may still be a good investment for some. So I decided to do another post on SGB with the latest information.

    ...continue reading
  • How Debt Fund Taxation Affects My Planning

    Debt funds are taxed differently after changes to the Finance Bill 2023. This is old news I know, but I did not plan on writing anything about it because it does not change anything in my financial plan. But a reader asked my opinion and I thought I will do a quick post. Remember that anything that I write in my blog is not financial advice for people at large. It is just a recount of my experience and how various investment opportunities or taxes are applicable to my specific situation. Even if some one is exactly in my situation, my advice or experience may not apply to them because it also has to do with the mindset. So unless you are in my exact situation both financially and mentally, most of what I write may not even be relevant to you.

    ...continue reading
  • Revisiting My Stance on NPS

    It has been a while since I talked about NPS. At that time I did not consider NPS to be a good investment choice or an interesting asset class for a few reasons. A few things have changed with NPS and I have become older and perhaps wiser. Did my stance on NPS change now? Time to find out.

    ...continue reading
  • Blogs I Follow And Why

    A reader asked if I can share a list of blogs I follow. So I thought I should write a post about how I ended up with my subscriptions. When I was a kid I used to love to read books. A lot of books actually. Most of them were just story books initially, then I started reading “how things work” and computer related books as I got interested into computers and science. I used to enjoy our semi annual trip to Jyoti book stores back in the town where I grew up. I would go on a long walk through the collection of the books in that large book store while my parents waited patiently until I am done reading a few pages of several books and finally picked some. Not sure what happened, but as I grew up I stopped reading. I don’t read much these days. I have become more of a hands on guys and learning things on the job. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and I don’t mind either.

    ...continue reading
  • Over Planning and Under Planning

    I am the kind of person who tends to over plan and execute according to it. I hate deviations in the plan. But since retirement I am trying hard to change this style. You see, early retirement is all about enjoying life as it comes, but here I am programmed to execute according to a plan. Don’t get me wrong, my incessant planning and careful execution is what got me to retiring as early as I did. So it is not like I am going to throw away this trait. It helped me a lot. At the same time, I don’t want to be a carefree soul without a plan. That would be quite careless if not reckless. Instead I want to try something different, a middle ground if I can call it that.

    ...continue reading
  • My Daily Routine: 2023 Edition

    It has been a couple of years since I gave my last “daily routine” update. A reader of my blog also asked me to give an update, so here it is. There is almost no change in my routine since about 2 years ago which is nothing to be surprised about since that was the whole plan in retirement. Just chill, take it easy and live life on the absolute slow lane. Almost nothing in our life is urgent since early retirement. Things will happen when they happen :).

    ...continue reading
  • How To Think About Return On Investment

    Sometimes we may want to compare two investment opportunities and figure out which is a better one. Say for example should we rent or buy a house? One way go about it is by using the return on investment method. Basically we calculate how much return we might get going with each opportunity and pick the one with better returns. It is usually not as cut and dry especially if we are dealing with different risks. Yet, it is a good practice to at least find the numbers and later decide if the difference in returns is worth the risk. So in this post, I will discuss how I go about calculating the return on investment. You may have other metrics or different way to look at things, so don’t consider this to be the only option.

    ...continue reading
  • Solar System Comparison with MKBHD

    Some of you may already know MKBHD, a popular youtuber in the tech world. He recently posted a video about the going completely solar and not having to pay an electricity bill for a whole year. It is a very well made video which explains how the solar panel system works with batteries (off grid) and with net metering (on grid). Although I don’t have net metering and I am not completely off grid, so mine is a hybrid approach. Still, if you watch the video it will help you understand how my setup works (sort of). My setup is closer to the hybrid system explained in another video. Anyway, I wanted to compare my puny setup with MKBHD’s setup and see how I compare. So here goes.

    ...continue reading