Extreme Early Retirment

I have a confession, I have been reading this guys blog for the past couple days.  He seems like a really interesting person, with some very counter-culture ideas.  It is very inspiring, and I am happy to provide him some income by ignoring the ads on his site :)

He is a post that I enjoyed about how to spend very little money.  It is basically how the guy (Jacob, I believe), managed to retire at 32 years old.  If you want to learn (waste) about 2 days, start reading from the beginning, hey it doesn't cost you anything but time. :)

His book will though ;)

Historical Tax Rates

I was curious what the top marginal tax rates have been for the last century.  As you can see the last time we had rates this low it preceded the Great Depression.

There is a lot of interesting information on that tax policy website, unfortunately it could be organized quite a bit better.  The Times has an article by Paul Krugman explaining that corporation have ample cash right now, but the problem is a lack of consumers.  You can't trickle down to a not existent middle class.

Financial Independence Sale!

ING Direct is having a sale, with some pretty good deals today and tomorrow.

• $126 for opening a checking account and direct depositing into it.
• $76 for opening a Sharebuilder account.
• $76 for opening an IRA.
• $76 for referring 2 friends ;)  (Call / email me if you want a referral and I will split the bonus with you)
• $1776 off closing costs.

I decided to apply for a 5 year ARM @ 3.125%.  Unfortunately, our house probably won't appraise for enough to finance the whole amount anymore, plus ING required 75% loan to value, but we do have some extra cash in the bank at the moment so it might make sense.  Our payments would go from $2200 a month to $1700 a month, which would be really nice with Jen probably not working this year.

And who knows what it is going to be like in 5 years, worst case scenario interest rate raises to 9.125% after 8 years for a payment of around $3000.  So actually that should be doable as well (in 8 years). 

How about 6 tons of River Rock?

We are working on placing river rock about the house.  Looking at the cost of buying it bags from Menards (1/2 ft³ for around $2 on sale), Gertens, and Hot Rocks.   Hot Rocks seemed to have the best price, even though I have to go back and forth with the sales person (18 emails... she confused me once with another customer).  I asked for a 10% discount they listed on the website that had expired, but they gave it to me anyways.

I ended up paying $214.30 for 6 tons of river rock with delivery and taxes.  Now we just have to find the time to move it around :(

No Soda how about Hawaiian Punch

Since I quit soda for June (wow only 2 days left :), I have been drinking a lot more water, but also I have been using single packets for flavor.  My favorite has been Hawaiian Punch.  Target dollar spot usually has 8 packets for a dollar, which works out to 12 cents per packet.  I usually have 2 a day.  Now I have to go read a study on Aspartame...

If you don't have a Target near you, I have found you can also buy cases at Dollar Tree online for the same price (but in bulk).  Enjoy!

Lending Club

I joined Lending Club in January so I thought I would report.  According to lending club I have made a return of 9.8% since joining.  Pretty nice return, though I am not sure how they will report taxes.  If they report as income then it will be taxed more then if it is reported as dividend income.

In any event I put in 3k at the end of January and have $3200 now, 6 months in.  $100 of that was a bonus for investing over $2500 to start with, so it seems a bit high of a percentage, but they probably know better than I.

The promo they are doing is that if you sign up and invest $2500 you get $100.  I think you invest over 5k you get an additional 1% as well.  I think prosper has a promotion going on as well, I might look into that as well.

Backyard Patio

This is a project that we started last year and are in the process of finishing this year.  The patio was finished last year, the retaining wall was finished this spring and the grass was planted a couple weeks ago.  Here is the  material costs:

• Delivery $50
• Sand $175 (locking and leveling)
• Block $604
• Retaining Wall Block $477
• Compactor $121 (1 day, 4 hours Home Depot)
• Class 5 base $176
• Misc $80 (wood and rebar)

So all told for the patio we spent just over $1200.  This summer one of the corners of the patio sunk a bit, so I am not sure how successful I was with the compactor.

Patio block and Retaining wall
Thanks Menards :)

Area Prepped and Ready

In Progress in the middle of the night.

Not too bad