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January 2012

Carnival of Retirement – 4th Edition

01.30.2012

Welcome to the 4th Edition of the Carnival of Retirement. If you want to submit a post for next week’s edition, please use the submission form. Next week’s edition will be hosted by Financial Success for Young Adults. Retirement is a long-term game. There are so many things you need to do to prepare for retirement and it’s not just saving and investing. Of course having a great retirement portfolio is best, but to get there we need to live within our means and build wealth along the way. This edition includes many retirement articles along with posts that will [...]

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Dividend Income Portfolio Jan. 2012 Update +RDS.B

01.27.2012

royal dutch shell rds.b dividend income portfolio

Disclaimer: I am not a finance professional and all materials below are for informational purposes only. I do not endorse any of these companies and you need to do your own research before investing in any stocks. Dividend income is going to be a big part of my early retirement plan. The target is to generate about $500/month of dividend income from my after-tax portfolio. This income will help pay for cost of living after I quit my full time job. Here are the stocks in my dividend portfolio. Intel yield % dropped quite a bit because the stock [...]

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How Much We Spend On Coffee, Gas, Pets, Beer, And More

01.25.2012

Recently, I read an article on Time.com about how much the average American spends on coffee, gas, and other neccessities. This made me curious about how we compare to the average consumer. Coffee – The Consumerist cited Accounting Principals’ latest Workonomix survey and said the average American worker is spending about $1,092/year on coffee. Really? That is a lot of money! I drink a cup of French Pressed coffee in the morning with breakfast and that’s about it. Once in a long while, I would need an extra jolt in the afternoon, but my work place has free coffee so [...]

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HARP 2.0 Is Not Working For Us

01.23.2012

UPDATE: If you are looking to refinance, be sure to keep an eye on the National Foreclosure Settlement. It should be rolling out soon and you might be able to get a good deal. The qualifications are different than HARP 2.0 so you need to see which one will better for you. I refinanced with Quicken Loans and got 4.25% on a 30 years fixed rate mortgage. My LTV was around 100% and I didn’t have PMI. If your bank won’t work with you, check with Quicken Loans to see what they can do for you. It’s amazing, but mortgage [...]

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Where Should I Stash $50,000?

01.20.2012

I have to meet a few of Mrs. RB40′s conditions before I can quit my corporate job. One of them is for us to save $50,000 in cash. (I negotiated down from 100k because I really think that is way too much cash.) We’ve been working on it for a while and we finally made it this month! We have been diligently socking away my paycheck every month into the ING Orange Savings account. The interest rate on the Orange Savings account recently dropped to .8%. We’ll get $400 of interest per year if we keep the money at ING. [...]

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