Ten Unusual Signs You’re Kicking Butt Financially

By world and historic standards, I’ve lived a charmed life. Great family, Norman Rockwell community, material comfort, plenty of opportunity, and plenty of freedom. I wasn’t an evil One-Percenter, mind you. Not by a long shot. My dad was a cop and my mom was a medical records clerk. But I never wanted for anything. …

Advice to Young People: Don’t Wait to Be Good

Achieving financial independence is easy. Look at me. Prior to turning 45, I was a financial moron. I had nothing saved for retirement, was brimming with debt, and thought happiness came via the accumulation of unnecessary crap. And then I said enough. Started saving 50-60% of my gross income—and boom! In eleven short years, less …

It’s the Culture, Stupid

The other day I came across a video about Jean Yang, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon who is developing a programming language with built-in security and privacy features. If you want to watch the entire video, which runs for slightly more than two minutes, you can do so here. The short snippet below captures …

It’s Amazing How Much Money You Can Save When You Own Your House Outright

I don’t remember the reason why, but I recently looked up what it cost us to operate and maintain our house in 2016. Here are the results. At $9,876.07, our housing costs amounted to 8.9% of our pretax income. Pretty neat. And that percentage would have been even less if Mrs. Groovy and I worked …