October 9th marked the two year anniversary of Stop Ironing Shirts. This site was founded after I lurked in the financial community for years, posting on the Clark Howard message boards for years then eventually finding my way over to the MMM forums. In early 2017 I started discovering the number and diversity of financial independence blogs out there - This plus a little help from early interviews on the ChooseFI podcast sent me diving into content consumption. Health circumstances…
The third quarter was an eventful past three months for the Shirts retirement portfolio. I was able to extract my old 401k into Fidelity and slowly deploy the funds over the duration of the quarter. This allowed me to purchase a number of individual stocks, get our cash/bond target allocation right, and learn all about investing in US Treasury Bonds. We have been following the Equity Glide Path for our stock/bond allocation to reduce sequence of return risk and ended…
A question I received a number of times over the last year has been "Can you give me advice with my investments?" Leaving my job at thirty six exposed me to friends as someone who knew what they were doing with money. I've been talking to more people about FIRE in person and I also enjoy writing about advanced investing topics. However, the answer on investment advice is....NO. I'm not an investment adviser, have no desire to be paid to…
Yes, you read the title correctly. I decided to become *yet another* curation site. Okay, not really. Instead of being a dedicated curation site or running weekly round-ups, I wanted to post the best articles I've read and podcasts I listened to during the month. September included FinCon 2019 allowing me to meet many of these people in person. Politics in Personal Finance Speaking of Fincon, there was a trash fire of an article not even worthy of linking demanding…
I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Mamula at FinCon and received an advance copy of the newly released ChooseFI book. I've been an early fan of ChooseFI, finding the podcast in March of 2017 and still listen to every episode within a few days of being released. Even though I'm already financially independent, I enjoyed getting a copy of the ChooseFI book and read it while thinking about the books that set us on our path to financial independence.…
September 17th marked six months since I gave my early retirement notice and five months since I turned in my keys, laptop, and exited my employer for the last time. The first three months were chaotic between departing work and various boards, dealing with a rough home sale, and moving nearly 1000 miles. Now the pace of life is slowing down and we're settling into our new lifestyle. So what are some thoughts five months out from leaving my career?…
I was enjoying my first FinCon and someone came up to me and told me that my article on home ownership became a topic of discussion on Stacking Benjamins between Joe Saul-Sehy, Paula Pant, Tom Drake, and Len Penzo. I was excited to listen...and thanks to Paula for the shutout of never using an iron again! (Pssst to Joe and Len, I’m a dude, it was funny every time you said she) So what questions came up from the panel?…
The transition from homeowner back to renting has been an interesting and enjoyable experience. It was different to put ourselves out there in a rental application, tour properties, and ultimately finding someone who would rent to an early retiree without a traditional W-2 income. Giving up control of small things we would change has been an adjustment too, we value preparing food at home and would have already swapped out the stove and dishwasher if it was our house. Now…
I recently picked up a copy of Mastering the Market Cycle by Howard Marks from my local library after receiving multiple recommendations on reading. I'll admit I was skeptical and delayed reading it for a while due to the title - I'm a buy and hold investor and thought I would be reading something promoting market timing. The book turned out to be far more than market timing, but instead a great lesson on the history of the markets, how…
My posting has taken a couple weeks off. We made a trip to the Northeast to visit family, had a nice hurricane scare with Dorian, and I just got back from attending my first Fincon. FinCon is a massive convention geared towards all content creators in the financial space and at least 2500 people convened on the Washington Hilton in DC. The conference is business focused and becomes a must-attend so all the content creators that are serious about earning…