Posts tagged with "expenses" - page 3


  • Mistakes To Avoid If You Plan To Retire Early

    There is no one straightforward way to reach the goal of early retirement. Although many people have attempted to streamline the process. And that includes me (see my 5 steps to early retirement) :). There are several other small things that you need to take care of before the grand picture emerges. One of them is expenses.

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  • Comparison With Another FIRE Couple

    You know how I like to compare myself with other FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) individuals. So here is one more of them. I do the comparison because there are very few of them and I just started my journey. So comparing with others helps me understand how they think, behave and spend. That way I can check if I am inline with them or whether I am an outlier. Either of those situations is alright with me, but it is just a fun exercise.

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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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  • 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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  • Year In Review – 2020 Expenses

    This is the continuation of my 2020 year in review series. See my previous post if you missed my returns report. As you probably already 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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  • Change Habits For The New Year

    It is almost the end of the year and it's time to reflect back on 2020. What is the progress on your goals if you made any at the start of the year. Did the events during the year upset your plans? What impact did COVID have on you? Did you come out stronger? Learned something new that you never thought about earlier? Usually I reflect back around this time of the year and make note of my achievements and failures. The details of which will come out next year as usual in my year in review series.

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  • How To Plan Your Financial Independence

    Several people have routinely asked me whether I planned for this or that before deciding to retire early. Well I planned the way that works for me under my circumstances. There is no one size fits all and no one comprehensive definite solution. None the less, since so many people have this question about how to go about planning for financial independence, I thought I should write a post about it.

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  • How Much Do I Make From Ads?

    This is sort of a continuation of my previous post -- truth about my passive income. Over there I mentioned that I have recently started showing ads to offset some of the expenses of running the blog. And I promised a follow up post explaining the costs and how much I am earning from ads. So here it is. I will try to keep it short because it is probably not relevant for you.

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  • How Much Will I Get From Franklin Ultra Short Term

    You have all read about the Franklin debacle regarding the closure of 6 Franklin India Debt Funds. Many have invested in those funds. Especially the Franklin India Ultra Short Term fund, lured by the excellent returns. I am also one of the investors in the ultra short term fund. And I have a significant portion of my debt portfolio in it. The fund came with a promise of "optimum balance between regular income and high liquidity". But now, it can neither generate regular income, nor does it have any liquidity at all. Talk about the irony :)

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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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