November 2020 Finances: “Cash Flow and Stock Picking”
In November, we reduced our after-tax auto investments into Vanguard by 80%. While it stung a bit to reduce these investments, seeing my Wells Fargo checking account fill back up felt even better. Mrs. Disengaged especially likes the “cash cushion” and I’m a happy wife happy life subscriber. Now that we’ve eased the cash burden…
Flipping Coins
The construction industry is unique in that we purposefully and dutifully work ourselves out of a job as fast as we can. That’s the goal. When a job is complete, the project team disperses across the company and new teams are formed. This constant churning allows me to become somewhat accustomed to change, not that…
Black Friday, Singles Day, and the Start of the Consumer Run
Winter and Thanksgiving are upon us. It’s a spendy time of the year for the entire world. Black Friday on this side of the world, and Singles Day in the most populous country in the world. In the Bay Area, daily highs this time a year hang out around the 50’s and 60’s with lows…
Saving More In A High Cost of Living Area
I live 42 miles from downtown San Francisco where I’ve worked for the vast majority of my career. My commute on average is 3 hours a day. 1 hour in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. This equates to 32.5 days of commuting a year. I believe I’m being as efficient as possible with…
October 2020 Finances: “Routine Maintenance”
For the first time since we’ve made a concerted effort to pursue Financial Independence, we have to temporarily reduce our after-tax investment purchases of VTSAX this November. An RV road trip vacation in September and our 10 year marriage anniversary weekend in Yosemite in October, sucked out all the buffer we had in our checking…
The Problem With Living For The Future
The hope that tomorrow will be better than today is the greatest motivator of all time. And for the most part, if we plan and strategize, this Living For The Future works out. If we work hard and sacrifice a little today: saving money, eating healthy, buying stocks, teaching our kids to behave, obeying the…
Will A Decade of Lower Than Average Returns Impact My FIRE Date?
Most major investment firms are predicting lower than average returns for the stock market in the next decade. Horrifying words like Lost Decade are being thrown around. Even the vaunted Vanguard stock outlook has market returns in the 5.5% to 7.5% nominal annualized range for the next 10 years. This Vanguard report was recently updated…
We Rented an RV and Drove To Montana. How Much Did It Cost Us?
Once a year we take a vacation abroad. In 2018, it was the tiny beach village of Chacala in Nayarit Mexico. 2019, we hit up South East Asia; Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Taiwan. This year we had a spectacular trip to Europe planned for March. Spain, Hungary, and the UK were on the itinerary. But…
Recovering Consumerist
We are ardent Capitalists here at Happily Disengaged. But we are also ardently aware of the problems associated with consumer culture in our society. There’s a problem with consuming items in ever-increasing quantities. Suffering inevitably results from the constant pressure we feel from advertisements and the need to show others we’ve made it. When you…
How to Make A High Salary With No College Degree
Sometime during the last decade of the cold war, America’s unions began to die. Blue-collar work in America, while respected and looked upon with nostalgic eyes by nearly all economic classes as the backbone of this country, just isn’t something that America aspires to be. And in turn, many young people are passing up what…