Happily Disengaged

With markets pushing ahead full steam, inflation seemingly tamed, unemployment hovering at record lows, I can’t help but stop, look around, and just admire the landscape around me. For anyone pursuing financial independence, now is a damn good time to do so. Pretty much anything thrown into a broad domestic index fund will produce a return. For cash savers, 4%-5% interest rates don’t look so bad. I know I’m enjoying my HYSA after years on just avoiding cash. There was…

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The kids are out of school now. My oldest will be starting 5th grade next fall and my youngest will be going into 2nd grade. Both good ages. They run around the house, footsteps and laughter, sometimes cries, echoing through the house. They leave a mess everywhere. Remnants of their play. But it’s enjoyable. I tell myself that I will miss having a messy, noisy home once they are out of the house. Which is right around the corner if…

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For a few years now I’ve been putting off replacing two columns in front of my house that hold up a roof overhang over my front porch. There’s a big tree in my front yard, a hackberry, that loves to spill its leaves each fall into my gutters. I’ve since screened over the gutters, but years of clogging the gutters, before I even moved here, had allowed water to overflow at times from the gutter. This overflow created water damage…

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I’ve noticed a change to my daily routine that I can’t really explain and I’m not sure whether to embrace or fight. The problem started in January and has yet to resolve itself. The change is; I don’t get up as early as I used to. I sleep in an extra 45 minutes each day. Which doesn’t sound like much, but in the morning, when every minute counts to get on the road before the commute and be at the…

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After I parked I realized that I made a mistake in not bringing with me an umbrella or raincoat. An unceasing frigid mist sprayed down from the dark sky. The wind pushed the mist into a sideways spray that soaked everything and made being outside an unpleasant, head turning, eye squinting affair. There was no way I was going to walk around the dealership lot browsing cars in this weather. I already didn’t want to be there. The misty rain…

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I’m not sure exactly when I realized that I needed to start taking retirement seriously. By this I mean traditional retirement at age 62. Sometime in my mid to late twenties an internal switch flipped. The light randomly came on in some nether region of my brain. I suddenly understood that I would not be in my twenties forever and that my future self solely depended on me to take care of him. I began to worry about a tomorrow…

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We got our tree up right before Thanksgiving this year. With family coming over for Thanksgiving we wanted to have the festive spirit alive in the house. Our fake tree has proved to be a worthwhile purchase. I remember for years I resisted against the idea of a fake Christmas tree; images of Charlie Brown’s Christmas coming to my mind as I rejected the idea. But my wife eventually talked me into getting a fake one a few years back…and…

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I hung out with a few friends recently for a kid’s birthday party. My friend has a nice set up in his backyard, perfect for hanging out. Fire pit. TV mounted on the wall. Nice furniture. Well built deck. The weather has turned colder in recent days out here in the Bay Area and we had the fire pit going. A few cold drinks. Hot pozole soup. Conversation turned to how cheap travel trailers and RV’s have become. It looks…

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