Portfolio Update: March 2019

Awesome, spring has arrived! It's April Fools day and once again time for portfolio update. Exciting stuff right? To be honest, it was rather uneventful, which is not a bad thing. There were no major ups or downs and my company stock is a slight 1,5% up compared to last month. But up is up …

The Power Of Stories

I do it all the time. Here on my blog. Go over all the numbers and charts related to my journey to FIRE I mean. Every month, one portfolio update after another. I often think it must be dreadfully boring to read them. Who cares whether my net worth is 1% up or down or …

What Doesn’t Kill You…

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Or in German: "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker" (Nietzsche wrote this in 1888). Don't worry, this is not going to be a long and boring philosophical dissertation. On the contrary, I want to tell you a true story. A story about one of the most embarrassing …

Portfolio Update: February 2019

No! Is it March already?! What happened to February? That's how I feel. February is a few days shorter than other months, but what made the difference is that last month was so utterly uneventful - from an investment perspective that is. Well for me it was. January was about recovery, February about...well...further recovery. Everything …

Thought Experiment: Wiped Out

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness - Henry David Thoreau I thought of Thoreau's words (fuck that sounds intellectual, like I am at an Ivy …

La Dolce Far Niente

La dolce far niente; Italian for "the sweetness of doing nothing". In our modern,  supersaturated and connected world many people are freaked out by the mere thought of doing nothing, of having no particular business or activity they can engage in.  They rather throw themselves off a bridge or get drunk or subject themselves to electric …

Portfolio Update: January 2019

Time flies when you are having fun! We're in February already; Time to look back again. The days are still depressingly short and my town flirts with freezing low temperatures, but we're in much calmer waters as far as the financial markets are concerned. The volatile and rather stress-inducing see-sawing that we witnessed in the …

FIRE Aside: Building A Vintage Vacuum Tube Radio Receiver

Some time ago I built a mining rig for mining crypto-currencies ('Ether' to be more precise). I am not going to explain all the technical details, but it's a very powerful computer that does only one thing: Running a so-called hashing algorithm. Hashing is the transformation of an input into a usually shorter fixed-length output …

Returns, Dividend Or Interest?

I found that many people appear to gravitate towards 'safe income' producing assets, like dividend-paying stocks. A dividend strategy can generate a "permanent" (more or less) form of income which can either be reinvested to boost wealth or be consumed without really impacting already accumulated wealth. Opting for a dividend strategy as opposed to relying on …

FIRE! The Ultimate Charts

What do you do if you aspire financial independence and early retirement and have a little time to spare? Do you go out to catch some rays? Or meet friends in town for a beer or two? Or will you just sit back and relax and feel fabulous because you know you're on your way …

About Tulip Mania And Other Bubbles

Amsterdam was even more glorious than in the postcards and wandering along its elaborate canal system with the narrow seventeenth and eighteenth century gabled merchant houses was like getting lost in a painting by a master of the Golden Age. It was astonishingly beautiful and romantic. Green, healthy trees lined the canals, shielding people from …

Portfolio Update: December 2018

We've reached January 2019. Happy New Year to you all! Most people look ahead and make New Year resolutions. You know, quit smoking, quit drinking whiskey when you are alone and depressed (never!). For me however it's time to look back again and assess the previous month for yet another portfolio update. December was chaotic. …

Drunk Reflections In The Eye Of The (Financial) Storm

It's miserable outside. A full-blown storm rages. Howling winds and the sound of rain lashing against the windows. I turn back to my computer screen. It's not only chaos in a meteorological sense. The markets are also in turmoil. Trump, Brexit, trade wars, interest rates and the economic slowdown are taking its toll and have …

Financial Independence Abroad: Braga, Portugal

A shortcut to financial independence is cutting your costs (drastically). Easier said than done of course, but for those of us who live in (relative) expensive countries, moving to a cheaper place may be a way to achieve it. In the post series 'Financial Independence Abroad' I will put my investigative hat on and look …

Thought Experiment: One Way Ticket To Childhood

The year is 2030, you’ve just spent your life savings on purchasing a ticket to ‘reset’ your life. You’ve gone back in time to your first-day of school. You have a chance to live your life again. You have all of your current memories. What would you do differently? It's a new great thought experiment …