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FDIC Insurance Limits Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US, nearly went out of business this past week when there was essentially a run on the bank.  Depositors rushed to get their money out, and it caused a liquidity crisis. At the time I am writing this, a solution is being floated and it seems that all depositors will be made whole.  But this wasn’t clear at the beginning of the crisis, because, by most estimates, over 90% of the nearly $200 billion of deposits at SVB were not covered by FDIC insurance. While this crisis most likely won’t impact you,

11 Simple Rules for a Wealthy Life I revisited an article I wrote nearly a decade ago called ‘A Lifetime of Financial Advice in Your Wallet’ on my original site Richmond Savers (that site’s claim to fame was the ‘Step-by-Step Guide to Disney World using Rewards Points’ article that we’ve since updated on ChooseFI). Though maybe with some slightly different wording than I’d use today, these ‘11 Simple Financial Rules for a Wealthy Life’ hold up quite well: How Long to Actually Double Your Money? I recently mentioned the ‘Rule of 72’ which is the simple calculation we use to determine

Real Estate Market Update We had Scott Trench, the CEO of BiggerPockets (the largest online real estate community), on the podcast this week in Episode 426 and it’s an absolute must-listen.  The first half was a fun thought experiment on how to look at what you want your ultimate FI portfolio to look like and then invert it back to what you need to do today to get there. But the 2nd half on a 2023 real estate market update was fascinating. I implore you to listen to it, but I did want to curate four of my biggest takeaways:

FI Community Events There are four FI Community events I wanted to make sure you were aware of: Important Book on Leadership I’m a lifelong soccer player and fan, and Abby Wambach is one of my all-time favorite players.  She was an inspirational leader on the field, a truly world-class player and someone who could dominate a match at will. Abby wrote a book on leadership called ‘WOLFPACK: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game’ that Brené Brown said “is on my top five must-read leadership books.” It’s a powerful book that I couldn’t put down (finished

Secrets to a Great Retirement I just recorded a great episode of the podcast that’s set to come out in 3 weeks on practical drawdown strategies, and had the pleasure of recording it with Karsten (Big ERN) from Early Retirement Now and Fritz from The Retirement Manifesto. You’ve asked me for an episode on drawing down your assets in retirement and after seeing their fun “battle” on Twitter and in their joint article “Is the Bucket Strategy a Cheap Gimmick,” I knew this was the duo to help me tackle drawdown strategies. In researching for that article, I came across

True Cost of Car Payments I saw a recent stat that the average car payment hit $777 per month, and I was absolutely shocked that people would willingly take on that large of a required monthly payment for something that sits idle 98% of the time! I wanted to look at the financial ramifications of that decision from the FI perspective in two ways: For people who constantly ‘manage the payments’ on their cars and intend to just keep rolling into new cars every few years, then this $777 (or more!) will always be there. First and most simply, let’s

The Skill of Spending Mr. Money Mustache was recently on Episode 377 of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, and he eloquently described something in a way I had not heard before. He talked about a lot of the fun of pursuing Financial Independence as developing your “skill of spending.” I’ve always referred to this in a related manner where I say pursuing FI is “living the same middle-class lifestyle as everyone else, but getting wealthy in the process.” MMM cut this to its essence when he described the ‘skill of spending’ as something worthy and laudable in and of itself. If

Keep Moving As part of making 2023 my ‘healthiest year ever’ I am making a concerted effort to get outside and walk at least a mile every single day. While there isn’t anything magical about 10,000 steps per day necessarily, I think it’s directionally accurate in the sense that most of us simply don’t move enough. And that’s even for people like me who exercise and consider themselves healthy.  When I started tracking my steps, there was no other conclusion other than this:  I simply wasn’t moving enough during non-exercise hours. I heard Dr. Peter Attia say the following on the Limitless

Mindful FIRE Resources This week’s guest (ChooseFI Episode 420), Adam Coelho was kind enough to create a free guide specifically for the Choose FI community. This guide builds on Adam’s experience teaching mindfulness, meditation and envisioning to over 2500 of his fellow Google colleagues around the world. The free guide includes: Free Annual Credit Report Cody Garrett from Measure Twice Money published a helpful post on Twitter that I wanted to pass along: “Time to check the annual credit reports from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax! Review your contact information, payment history, account numbers, responsible debtors, opening and closing dates, credit limits, and highest balances.

Secure 2.0 and the FI Community Sean Mullaney, the FI Tax Guy, just put out an article on the ‘Secure 2.0 and the FI Community’ that I think is ultra-valuable. I’m going to publish an episode with Sean on the podcast later this month to dive into the nuance of Secure Act 2.0, but I always want to get this info out as quickly as possible via the FI Weekly newsletter. The two most intriguing items to me are: Bold Move and Doing Hard Things I had planned to recommend the National Geographic series on Disney Plus called ‘Limitless with Chris

New Year, New Contribution Limits Happy New Year! It’s a new year, so that means there are new contribution limits for retirement and tax advantaged accounts and even if we maxed these accounts out in 2022, we’re back down to $0 contributed in 2023 and are ready to fill the accounts up again. My family can contribute to an HSA since we have a (very) high deductible health insurance plan.  I saw the recurring reminder in my ToDoIst app on January 1st to max out the HSA, then quickly googled what the new contribution limits are for 2023 ($7,750 for a

Year End Wins Episode is Live I’m going to keep the newsletter short and sweet this holiday week.  I hope you are enjoying some rest and relaxation and time with loved ones! The 6th annual Year End Wins podcast episode came out yesterday, so if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet, download ChooseFI Episode 417 and enjoy the community’s favorite episode of the year. Two Items of Note I promised to keep this email short, but wanted to pass along two things I’m keeping my eye on: ChooseFI Community Taking Action This Week ​