Moving Forward After the Loss of a Spouse

During the month of March, I had the honor of being a featured guest on The Retirement Answer Man® Show to discuss “Going from Two to One”. We explore the difficult topic of losing a spouse from both a non-financial and financial perspective. No matter how well we plan for life after early retirement, twists and turns are inevitable, however, losing a spouse and moving forward may be one of the biggest challenges of all. Continue Reading →

Paying It Forward – An Early Retiree Case Study

I was recently asked to write a guest post for the Can I Retire Yet? blog about my journey to financial independence and what I have done since my early retirement at the end of 2015. This post required a lot of personal self-reflection where I discuss my early Money Mindset, some major inflection points in my financial journey, enlightenment from an unlikely source, and ultimately finding my path to financial independence. Post retirement, I did not have any specific Continue Reading →

Learning the True Value of Financial Independence

Over the past five months, during which I have been absent from posting on the blog, I have had a number of significant life experiences. My father passed away after a long battle with cancer, my daughter graduated from high school and then went off to college – my wife and I are now “empty nesters.” Experiencing these life changes has caused me to reflect on the value of financial independence. When my wife and I originally embarked on our Continue Reading →

An IRA for Your Child?

Did you know that anyone with earned income is potentially eligible to fund an Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA)? There are income limits that prevent high income earners from funding Traditional or Roth IRAs, but for a large portion of the population, funding an IRA is a viable option. Here is an interesting opportunity. Let’s say you have a teenager who works part time or has a summer job. As long as they have “earned income” (i.e. income reported on a Continue Reading →