July is a month of abundance. Mother nature provides an abundance of sunshine that produces wonderful fresh food, and families get to spend an abundance of time together on vacation.
The Tako family enjoyed the abundance of life in July on both fronts…
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Has it really been two weeks since I last posted here? Time flies when you’re having fun I guess! With the kids are out of school, and summer well underway, we’ve been on vacation for the past two weeks!
Our most recent adventure took us to Arizona, where we soaked up loads of the southwestern sunshine and plenty of mesquite grilled tacos…
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With most of the population in Washington state getting vaccinated by the end of May, things have finally started to open back up again. The pandemic is subsiding here, and it seems like life is (slowly) returning to normal.
As you might expect, our travel adventures resumed in May as well. We took full advantage of the fine May weather, and went camping on Washington’s coast, near a small town called Ocean Shores…
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Ahh spring!! Spring really starts to hit the Pacific Northwest when April rolls around. Things finally start to green-up again. It’s also the time of year when our weather starts to turn towards “dryer” and “slightly warmer”.
This is typically when I emerge from my winter hibernation, and start spending a lot more time outside…
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Have you noticed? The cost of a trip to the grocery store or hardware store has risen in recent months. This has the news media doing plenty of fear mongering about inflation.
To be fair, prices of commodities like corn, soybeans, lumber, and iron ore have all more than doubled over the last year. This is an undisputed fact, and certainly concerning…
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If you’re one of the many young people just starting-out on the path to financial independence (or even an older person just trying to catch up), the numbers can seem a little daunting. Using common retirement rules like the “4% rule”, a $1 million dollar portfolio can safely generate a mere $40,000 of income per year.
For many, this seems like a ridiculously small amount of income to earn from such a large amount of saved money. Perhaps you were hoping for a much larger income in retirement…
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People can pick up and move homes for many good reasons. Sometimes it’s a job, sometimes it’s to be closer to loved ones, and occasionally it’s to retire to cheaper location.
This process of moving to ensure a wonderful retirement is commonly known as geo-arbitrage. It’s very common for retirees to move, and something the Tako family has been considering for quite awhile now.
Along with a cheaper cost of living, we’ve been looking for a nice, safe, quiet place to finish raising our kids…
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February is always an interesting month. Not only is it the shortest month of the year, but it’s also right smack in the middle of winter.
Like many other families living in the northern hemisphere, we received a giant blast of winter weather this February. We got “snowed-in”…
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Another month another dollar. That’s how I like to think about these regular monthly reports anyway. Every month we turn the crank one more time on the Wealth Machine. While our net worth actually increases a whole lot more than $1 in a single month, I like to think in simple terms — Dollars at a time.
It’s the KISS principle applied to wealth building!
Turning the crank means saving, investing those extra dollars, and then compounding any additional value…
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