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

How To Make Japanese-style Mabo Tofu

April 17, 2019April 17, 2019 Mr. Tako 14 Comments

When it comes to cooking meals at home, absolutely no-one wants to cook a separate meal for the kids and a separate meal for adults. Yet adults often prefer bolder, spicier flavors with more exotic ingredients. Kids tend to enjoy simpler fare — carb heavy dishes with much milder flavors. At least my kids do — pizza, spaghetti, macaroni & cheese, sandwiches and so on.

It definitely puts smiles on their little faces, but I can only eat so much of it before I’m craving something more exciting…

Kids Uncategorized

Spring Breaking-It

April 10, 2019 Mr. Tako 30 Comments

Ah, spring is in the air! It means the kids are out-of-school on spring break… and that means I need to take my stay-at-home-dad duties a lot more seriously.

While many families choose to travel somewhere warm or exotic during spring break, we’re just hanging-out at home. Both of our boys can have a great time even if we don’t travel somewhere, and as I mentioned in a recent post, they don’t fly particularly well yet…

Dividends Investing Saving Uncategorized

Wealth Is All In Your Head

April 6, 2019April 6, 2019 Mr. Tako 20 Comments

When you think about it, money is a pretty funny thing. For a couple thousand years humans used precious things to represent this idea of “money” — ivory, colorful shells, precious gems, livestock, silver, and most notably gold. This worked well for humanity for a very long time… as long as the values were small.

The general inconvenience of physically carrying a whole bunch of “precious stuff” eventually gave way to paper certificates…

Dividends Food Investing Saving Uncategorized

March 2019 Dividend Income And Expenses

April 3, 2019April 3, 2019 Mr. Tako 19 Comments

Wow, what a difference a month makes! This time last month, the Tako family was buried under a veritable mountain of snow. Now, one month later, spring has definitely sprung.

Temperatures are warmer, and there’s more natural light due to the annual daylight savings time shift. This has made a huge difference in how much daylight we have, and I find myself itching to get yard-work done and prep the bbq for grilling season…

Uncategorized

Why Don’t We Travel More?

March 30, 2019March 30, 2019 Mr. Tako 54 Comments

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile now, you’ll have noticed that I don’t have a huge travel focus in my posts. The Travel category is in fact fairly sparsely populated with travel posts, and the last big travel post I did was a year ago.

What’s the big deal? Many other financially independent bloggers are constantly traveling… So, why don’t we travel more? Is it a money thing? Do we hate traveling? Are we not actually financially independent?

Investing Investing Ideas Uncategorized

Defensive Stocks: A Investing Strategy For Mr. Market’s Bad Mood

March 27, 2019 Mr. Tako 15 Comments

Once upon a time and not so long ago, I told a fairy-tale about Low Beta investing. It’s one of those great investing fairy tales backed up by plenty of research which attracted lots of attention and money. When I looked at the actual results of the strategy, it didn’t fair so well. It made for a good bedtime story however.

Fortunately, there’s plenty more investing bed-time stories where that came from! Today we’re going to look at one of the classics — a equity investing strategy used to protect the investor during recessions and other market downturns…

Investing Saving Uncategorized

How To Prepare For The Next Recession

March 23, 2019March 23, 2019 Mr. Tako 31 Comments

It’s been roughly 10 years since the last recession in the U.S. Historically, that’s a long time to go without a recession. Some people say its been too long.

On Friday, the US treasury yield curve inverted, which is considered a leading indicator of a recession. Could an economic slump be right around the corner?

Dividends Investing Uncategorized

The Obvious Mistakes

March 20, 2019March 20, 2019 Mr. Tako 32 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.

Saving Uncategorized

Reader Question: Don’t You Ever Splurge?

March 16, 2019March 16, 2019 Mr. Tako 49 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…

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