The most accepted rule of thumb for cashing out your retirement stash is to take 4% of your stash’s beginning balance each year and withdraw that to cover that year’s expenses. That means basically that for every $1000 of your annual expenses you need to have $25,000 socked away. And it is that little formula […]
Winter costs us money to heat our house. Over the last 14 years and at 3 different houses, we have heated our home using electric space heaters, a central electric heat pump, a whole house propane furnace, a wood fireplace, a whole house oil furnace and a fireplace propane gas log. The cost for these […]
There are very few groceries or household staples for which we pay full retail. It does not matter whether it is canned vegetables, packaged sliced cheese, fresh meat, soda pop or dish detergent. We almost always buy at a discount. And we almost never run out of something so that we are forced to […]
Mister Money Mustache has talked in several of his blog posts about the incessant one-stop errand running many of his neighbors seem to do. An early morning run for milk. A midday trip to the post office. Maybe even a late night drive to drop off an overdue rental DVD. I think that is nuts. […]
I detailed the financial “secret weapon” power of my 1996 Dodge Dakota pickup truck in another post (http://retiredtowin.com/my-oldie-goldie-thrifty-nifty-truck/). I explained how keeping it instead of buying a late-model vehicle every 5 years lowered my retirement “magic number” by $150,000. How its cheaper operating costs lowered that magic number by another $50,000. And how that moved […]
I drive a 1996 Dodge Dakota pickup truck. It has over 140,000 miles on it. It runs just fine. It is safe, reliable and comfortable. And it is one of the “secret” weapons that sped up my arrival at financial independence. The fundamental big deal here is that years ago I consciously made the […]
A couple of days ago, I was about two thirds through my errands run when I realized I was really enjoying myself. What’s this, I said to myself. How can I be having such fun just buying groceries or picking up a ream of copy paper? And then it came to me. I was […]
Frugality without sacrifice is the basic guiding principle of my personal finances. It is what has made it possible for me to have a very comfortable basic lifestyle on just $15,000 a year. But how do I actually practice frugality without sacrifice — as opposed to frugality as sacrifice? Or as opposed to disguised unfrugality? […]
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