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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.
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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 :).
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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.
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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.
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Watch The Lifestyle Creep
Have you ever though about why your expenses keep going up year after year? Perhaps you say your expenses haven’t increased that much since last year. But if you compare your expenses today with expenses some 10 years ago, you will see a huge difference. Why is that? Well you can attribute it to inflation. However, that is not the only culprit. The other culprit is lifestyle creep. And because it creeps in so slowly you can be forgiven for not recognizing it. If you don’t watch the lifestyle creep, you are in for a surprise when you do your retirement planning.
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Is Investing Early Really That Important
Many financial planners and advisors including yours truly will have you believe that it is important to start investing early if you want to have a comfortable retirement corpus. In fact this is the first step I propose in my five step plan to early retirement. After all it makes sense right? You have a long runway if you start early and it will allow compounding to show its effects. Compounding needs time. But is it really all there is to it? The genesis of this thought was an article that I recently read on the internet. While there is a kernel of truth, it is not all its made out to be. Let me try and explain using the information from the article.
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Review Of A Reader's Retirement Portfolio
Every once in a while I receive emails from some of my readers asking for advice on financial planning or unschooling or other things. I have posted a couple (A Reader’s Dilemma, Should I Retire Early?) of emails along with my replies in this blog. Today I wanted to post one more such conversation I had with another reader. As usual, I took permission from the person. Most of the conversation is published as is and I tried to make minimal edits. Hope you might learn something from it or perhaps have better advice. Feel free to comment at the end of this post if you want to post your advice. Lets get started.
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Power Bill Is Zero, Thanks To Solar Panel
If you remember, I recently posted that I cannot add any more solar panels given my current setup. You might also recall that I have a lone 320 W solar panel. Surely that cannot generate enough power to reduce my electricity bill to zero. Yet, my latest electricity bill is exactly zero. Thats what happens when you mix politics with lifestyle. Some of you might understand what I am talking about. For others, here is the clue – Gruha Jyothi scheme. Unless you like reading about politics, or belong to Karnataka, one of the southern states of India, you might not know what I am talking about. Let me explain.
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This Blog Is 5 Years Old
I cannot believe that this blog is already 5 years old! When I first started, I did not know if I will have much to write. I just wanted to write about financial planning for early retirement because a bunch of friends and colleagues asked me for it. I thought I would be done in about 15 to 20 articles and stop writing. But here I am still continuing the tradition all thanks to my readers. As I kept writing, different people asked for different topics like home schooling, health, fitness, my hobby projects, sustainable living and so on. I started writing about varying topic and the blog evolved to what it is now. But every beginning has an end and so I am not really sure how long I will continue. There is absolutely no dearth of topics, but time is something that is hard to find.
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Cost Of Owning Something
Whenever I plan to buy something expensive, I go through this exercise of figuring out the cost of owning something. Remember that for most material things in life, the cost of owning it is not just the sticker price. There is more to owning it. After running through the exercise objectively if I still feel the need to buy something, I sleep over it. Gives a bit more clarity on the subjective aspects. Some things are an absolute necessity and I am not talking about those ones. Moreover, what is a necessity for me may be a discretionary spend for someone else. Finally, there is no point doing this exercise if the cost of the thing you want is cheap and doesn’t affect sustainability too much. Again, for some sustainability may be important, for others it is not.
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