Mr. Tako Escapes - Mr. Tako's Adventures in Early Retirement (with Kids)

The Obvious Mistakes

March 20, 2019March 20, 2019 Mr. Tako 28 Comments

Simple, yet profound. The longer I live and the (hopefully) wiser I become, the more I realize that the most of the important concepts in life boil down to just a few simple ideas. Simple, yet very very important.

Ideas like, “Spend less than you make”, “Optimize for the common case” or “Invest for the long term by buying and holding”. These are exceedingly simple concepts… yet when they’re practiced for an entire lifetime these ideas can lead to incredible financial success.

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Reader Question: Don’t You Ever Splurge?

March 16, 2019March 16, 2019 Mr. Tako 47 Comments

As a writer of a public blog about money and investing, I get plenty of feedback from the internet. Not all of it is positive. There are definitely trolls. Sometimes though, people ask really insightful questions that are worth sharing. Sometimes even the trolls ask really good questions.

Today’s post is about one such question. A reader recently wrote to me and asked…

Dividends Investing Investing Ideas Saving Uncategorized

Low Beta Investing: The Anomaly of Lower Risk And Greater Returns

March 13, 2019March 14, 2019 Mr. Tako 13 Comments

Greater risk means greater rewards. That’s the mantra we’ll taught about stock market investing. Take the risk of investing in the stock market and you could lose money… but you might also make considerably more than you would in a bank account, or money market fund.

“Without risk there is no reward.”

That’s the story we’re told as newbie investors anyway…

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Is The Internet Causing The World To Become More Faddish?

March 9, 2019March 9, 2019 Mr. Tako 33 Comments

Unique thinking has always been something of a rarity among the human race. Humans are social creatures that like to fit in. We love to talk, tell stories, share ideas, and even copy some of the best ideas. We also tend to follow the people we believe to be authorities.

This behavioral tendency leads to fads and faddish behavior. Take for example Tulip-mania…

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February 2019 Dividend Income And Expenses

March 6, 2019March 6, 2019 Mr. Tako 22 Comments

To understand how our February went down, you first have to understand that we were “snowed-in” for a significant portion of the month. The local news called it “Snowmageddon”, but my kids called it “fun”…

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Lessons On Investing: Kraft-Heinz

March 2, 2019March 2, 2019 Mr. Tako 21 Comments

Last time I wrote one of these “Lessons On Investing” posts, the chosen stock was a HUGE success. It was one of those successes that everyone dreams about investing in. The kind that make you rich. I still criticize myself for not investing in the company 20 years ago. That company was Apple, Inc.

Investing successes are great of course, but we can also learn from investing failures. Some people even say you learn more from failures than you do from successes…

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Not So Hardcore…

February 27, 2019 Mr. Tako 34 Comments

If you spend any time reading this blog (or other financial independence blogs), you might begin to develop something of a false impressions about this whole financial independence thing — specifically that we’re really hardcore people. Extremists.

Occasionally I get emails from people saying, “It’s great what you’ve achieved, but you’re so hardcore I could never do that…”

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Avoiding The Dunning–Kruger Effect

February 23, 2019February 27, 2019 Mr. Tako 23 Comments

In 1981 a researcher named Ola Svenson asked a series of students in Sweden and the United State how they would rate their driving ability. The result — a full 93% of the U.S. students rated their driving ability as “above average”, and 69% of the Swedish students did the same.

Clearly it’s impossible for the entire 93% to be above average…

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Our Geoarbitrage Plan To Lower Annual Living Expenses

February 20, 2019February 21, 2019 Mr. Tako 72 Comments

When you read blogs or news articles about geoarbitrage, it’s almost always the childless couples that travel the world. They leveraging the lower cost living of regions like Southeast Asia, Central or South American, and even Eastern Europe.

These “nomads” will stay in a location for a couple of months, enjoying that locale to its fullest…

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