How would you advise this reader on her rent or buy question? I recently turned 50 and got divorced after almost 20 years of marriage. I have not worked for over 15 years so I will be living off of the alimony settlement, while I retrain for a new career. I know I want to return to New York City, where I’m from, and specifically Manhattan. Based on the assets I received in the divorce settlement, my financial advisor confirmed I could safely spend up to $1.25 million on an apartment, which would get me something in the neighborhood I [...]
What is the right amount of support to give your adult kids? That's a question we think about a lot, and related to another topic we recently wrote about: how we have approached financial fairness with our own kids. Let us know what family-related expenses are testing your financial plans, in the poll at the bottom of the post. A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression – Pew Research Parents interviewed for a Money.com post reported their grocery budget went up 250%, from $400 per month to [...]
About five years ago, a finance friend of mine mentioned that his much wealthier colleague was buying property on a high elevation in Singapore as a climate change hedge. (This same climate change hedger was also stockpiling gold – not just shares of a gold ETF, but actual gold – and this was well before the pandemic.) I filed that factoid about the Singapore purchase away, but it certainly planted a seed. Should climate change dictate where you buy real estate? Wherever you fall on the climate change debate, environmental disasters are taking their toll. Reuters covered how the West [...]
When we got serious about real estate investing starting in 2013 as a way to propel our FIRE journey, we turned to turnkey real estate companies to accelerate our growth. Scott was working a big corporate job, and my business was in growth mode. We felt maxed out on how many cash-flowing rental properties we could find ourselves, and so turnkey was alluring because turnkey providers do a lot of the work for you. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Turnkey real estate investing can be defined simply as buying an investment property that doesn't require any additional work to become [...]
Most people I know think of Labor Day mainly as an excuse for a long weekend or the unofficial end of summer. But the history of Labor Day is that it was born out of the labor movement as a tribute to workers. This pandemic and the demands it has placed on frontline workers should make this Labor Day particularly meaningful. I’m a cynic and assume that people will be too wrapped up in election news or the zig zag volatility of the stock market to give workers their full due. Another factor vying for attention is labor-related but not [...]
An important concept that makes achieving financial independence even more urgent is artificial intelligence. The keyword here is urgent….many times we procrastinate the notion of saving money because we think we have many years to build up our mountain of assets – from Overcoming AI by Scott Gamm But you might have fewer earning years than you think, so that quote sums up the thesis of Scott Gamm’s upcoming book, Overcome AI: How to Build a Secure Financial Future in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. (I think the subtitle of the book should actually have been the catchy title of [...]
Is it better to have a product or service to offer as a small business? There are pros and cons to each. Frankly, being a small business owner is difficult enough, regardless of the business you choose, that the best answer to the product v. service debate is whichever offering you care most about. There are so many times when you’re in the thick of your business that you’ll want to quit, and genuine desire for the product or service you offer can really help you stick with it. Having been in business for 13 years and counting, I have [...]
The 2020 IMN Single Family Rental (SFR) Virtual Forum was a two-day event that featured 2,000 attendees and 80 speakers in keynotes and breakout sessions. I was only able to attend Day One, since the next day we were en-route to dropping off our youngest at college. There were many sessions to choose from. I elected to listen to: the keynote, which gave a state of the SFR industry;a financing overview;an economic overview of where are we in the real estate cycle;a panel of CEO’s talking changes and future trends in real estate;a breakout on buy and hold acquisitions (since [...]
Related product in our Etsy shop: 40 motivational journal prompts for your FI journey Continuing our focus on good health (since August is National Wellness Month), I wanted to share one of my favorite stress management techniques. Managing stress feels good, and it’s also one of the five key factors in maintaining brain health. Being calm and collected, after properly taming your stress, is also helpful for negotiating – e.g., for a raise, more flexibility on the job – and in this way, stress management is helpful for your FIRE journey too. The acting teacher who originally shared this technique [...]
I scored an advance copy of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s new book, Keep Sharp: Build A Better Brain At Any Age, which aims to be a science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline. (If you’re an avid reader, look into building a profile on NetGalley, which is where I get many of my free review copies.) As August is National Wellness Month, it is timely to cover a health-related book, and I was excited to hear what Gupta, a CNN journalist and neurosurgeon, had to say. As it turns out, the recommendations that Gupta shared for keeping the brain healthy [...]
