Continuing our posts on your FIRE questions, such as when you are late to saving, when you and your spouse disagree or when you don’t want to pinch pennies, we come to another savings obstacle – the high cost of elder care. How do you insure for long-term care?How do you budget for the unknown costs of elder care – your parents and your own?How can you use geo-arbitrage when your parents, spouse’s parents, or both are located in a high cost of living area? Elder care requires time, energy and attention, not just money I had a colleague whose [...]
Thanks to the feedback we received on your FIRE questions, we have tackled how to make FIRE possible when you and your spouse disagree or when you don’t want to pinch pennies. Now, we’re tackling another question, this time about retirement in general, not just early retirement: How do you make FI possible when you’re later in life and still haven’t saved enough for retirement? Specifically, the questioner shared that they: Are a 60-year old married coupleKeep expenses low and are close to prepaying their mortgageHave one stable job with benefits, and one established freelance career (though a major project [...]
The purpose of our visit to Cleveland was to attend the Real Wealth Network Income Property Showcase event. You can read all about that event over here. We added a 2nd day to the trip so we'd have more time to sample what Cleveland has to offer! Fun fact about the hotel hosting the Real Wealth Network event: it was also host to the National Yo-Yo Championships! Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to watch any of the competition, though Scott did catch some of the players warming up in the hallways. Serendipitously, the Real Wealth Network event kicked off with [...]
Scott and I took a work/ play road trip to Cleveland for the 2019 Real Wealth Eastern Income Property Showcase Event. Real Wealth Network is a real estate education and referral network that partners with turnkey providers in various markets. Based in California, they do most of their conferences out west, but once a year they go further east to capture investors on our side of the country. This post is all about the Real Wealth Network event, but you can click here to read about the other things we did on the weekend-long trip. Real Wealth Network also has [...]
These days, Barbara Corcoran is probably best known for judging the start-up pitch show, Shark Tank. As a native New Yorker and real estate fangirl, however, I will always think of Barbara Corcoran as the founder behind New York City real estate agency, The Corcoran Group. After splitting with her boyfriend and first business partner, she went out on her own with half the remaining team (seven agents) and built the agency to become the largest in New York City before selling it for $66 million in 2001. You would think that after such a successful exit, Corcoran would be [...]
If you saw the press around how Jay-Z is hip hop’s first billionaire, you might have glossed over it for the entertainment value but missed how important it is to your FIRE plans. Sure, Jay-Z and other celebrities have outsized paychecks that bear little resemblance to the money you and I have to work with. However, the way he and other astute celebrities have managed their career, time and money yields important lessons. Be an owner, like Jay-Z Jay-Z isn’t just the worker; he’s the owner -- a musician who owns his catalog, a brand representative who owns stakes in [...]
After four full days in Provence and just under four days in Lyon, we had a 10+ hour road trip for our final stop in Paris. We were scheduled to spend our final days in Tours in the Loire Valley, but changed to Paris because of the heat wave. Temperatures were projected to exceed 100-degrees each day, and the Loire Valley activities would be mainly outdoors. In addition, our AirBNB in Tours would not be air-conditioned (most residences don’t have AC), so we opted for a modern, Marriott hotel instead. The heat didn’t keep us away from the Eiffel Tower [...]
After just under four days in Lyon, we hit the road for our next stop in Aix-en-Provence. We picked this region because lavender is in season June through August. As it turns out, sunflowers also bloom in July and August, so we would get to see both! We did see some impressive sunflower fields along the way, but as the drive was several hours, we didn’t stop for photo opportunities. We also loved looking at the classical trees that overhang many roads all over France as seen in the image at the top of the page. After checking into our [...]
Recently I wrote about making FIRE possible when your life partner isn’t as committed to FIRE as you are. This was inspired by several questions that came up from a survey of participants of our course, Making FIRE Possible. Another common concern was how to reach FIRE when you don’t want to pinch pennies or deeply cut your expense level. One course registrant mentioned she wants to save money, but “not feel deprived” – a reasonable goal. After all, isn’t the point of having all that FIRE flexibility so you can enjoy it? Extreme saving is a legitimate FIRE strategy. [...]
We have been to Paris once before for a few days, but exploring the rest of France was high on my bucket list. Thanks to the flexibility that FIRE affords, we were able to jump on a ticket sale and ended up paying just over $600 per Paris/ NY round-trip ticket in July! We scheduled 12 days in total to go around the French Alps region, the lavender fields of Provence, and the Loire Valley. Another movie marathon kicks off the trip As I tend to do in long flights (witness my 8-movie marathon going to the Philippines and my [...]
