Adventures In Deep (Crypto) Space

Investing in digital - or crypto - currency is somewhat of a taboo in the FIRE community. Say Bitcoin and you are frowned upon. You want to be one of us?  Denounce your deeds of darkness! Repent your evil ways! Follow us on the true path to FIRE. I exaggerate. But we do pride ourselves on making …

Time-Weighted Return

I've been struggling a bit with keeping track of the performance of my portfolio and specific assets and asset classes that I own. I am not an accountant. My initial approach to measuring performance was to take the difference between current portfolio or holding value (V), subtract the amount I invested (I) and divide the …

Investing: Embracing The Uncertainty

The other day I read 'the best investors are those with the patience and the perspective to do the opposite of what the masses are doing'. I've invested nearly all my invest-able money in one particular stock (my company's). The masses would never do that. The masses diversify. Now, it didn't only say 'those who …

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 …

Mintos Auto Invest Explained

In this post I will take a deep dive into the world of auto-investing on the Mintos crowdlending platform. It's a feature that allows you to let the platform invest your funds for you while you sit back and relax and  watch  your money grow. For those of you who are new to the concept …

A Guide To Getting Lost

Some of my fondest childhood memories are when my brother and I went on adventures and got lost. Not 'I can't find my way home' lost, but lost in the moment, lost in our imaginations. During summer time. It was when we imagined we were soldiers or pirates or space travelers. When we went exploring …

Why Invest In Index Funds?

Investing isn't my second nature and I am scrambling up a steep learning curve to master the fundamentals. I sometimes feel like an inexperienced mountain climber who just realized he is afraid of heights while hanging off a cliff. The good news? While a mountaineer has little tolerance for mistakes, I can afford them. More …

Early Retirement: Could A Bad Sequence Of Returns Annihilate Your Portfolio?

You had done all the right calculations. At least that's what you thought. And according to the math the accumulated invested capital was exactly what you needed to bridge the years from your early retirement until full pension age. Even the average return was very close to what you had used in your formula's. But …

The October Effect

The month of October is nearing its end and my company stock has been in some pretty rough weather. One day it was down, the next day it was up. But mostly down. I really feel like an inexperienced sailor on a tiny sailing boat, trying to cross the Atlantic. How should I interpret this? …

Diversifying My Portfolio: Yea or Nay?

Don't have all your eggs in the same basket. That's the saying. Don't base your hopes for a financially independent future on one particular asset. It's a sure-fire (!) way to lose everything you have ever saved. It will crush your dreams and hopes for early retirement. Not good! A diversified portfolio makes you less vulnerable …

How to invest in the ‘digital currency space’?

Update: This is a old post I wrote some time ago about investing in cryptocurrency. I am publishing it here because it is related to 'early retirement planning'. I am not actively investing in digital currency, but do operate a home made mining rig. Let's say you want to jump on to the cryptocurrency train …