Planning

The stock market is down, reflecting the dim prospects for companies trying to turn a profit in a quickly declining economy. Decisions need to be made while you are under heavy duress. Should you sell an investment, or maybe buy? Is early retirement or collecting Social Security early a good move? How does your business survive if it has been deemed non-essential? The financial decisions you make today will have consequences for years to come.

Camp Accountant is officially in the books and there was money to be made and taxes to be cut. There were lots of smiling faces …

Blogging is a business. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but it is true. Along with podcasting, speaking and every other form of training and education, blogging is a business. Sometimes a really big business. And businesses take work to manage and grow.

It is easy to forget that those friendly bloggers you communicate with work some serious hours to bring you information and perhaps a laugh or two. Most people don’t realize bloggers are sweating it out at the keyboard in the wee hours of the morning to get a post out on schedule. 

And then there is the invisible work. It seems like blogging is about the cheapest hobby going until you realize that every part of the platform demands a fee and usually loads of time. And that is where this blogger enters.

I originally planned a detailed post of the coming collapse of China when the IRS released another 249 pages of regulations on Section 199A. The ink wasn’t dry before the calls flooded in for a brief post on the IRS release. The good news is we finally have a definition for a trade or business as it applies to 199A. The bad news is those 249 pages contained a lot of material and one simple post wasn’t going to cut it. A series was in process before the next hammer fell.

Recently I discussed my net worth and how I went from a poor farm boy to an eight figure net worth. To keep the discussion moving I glossed over a few issues, most notably some of the vehicles I use to invest and protect my net worth from taxation. My sole mention of using trust instruments to protect net worth and save taxes caused several requests to hit my email inbox. People wanted to know more about trusts and how they can be used to super-charge net worth, provide guaranteed income, reduce taxes and protect against lawsuits stealing your hard earned money.

How long does it take to crawl out a hole you dug? How long to formulate a plan? Execute it? Reach your goal? Financial independence (FI) is a goal most people have. Some want it bad at a young age and work toward that goal. Others wait until Father Time ticks closer to the traditional retirement age. Still others get a wakeup call when their body fails in some way.

Before this blog I was a tax Endorsed Local Provider (ELP) for the Dave Ramsey organization. His story resonated with me. I agreed with Ramsey that debt is the acid which destroys the vessel that holds it. Ramsey is fanatical against any kind of debt; I am a bit more moderate in the faith. Still, debt is a problem for many people.

Before FI can be achieved debt first needs to either be eliminated or seriously curtailed for most people. The Ramsey plan is to eliminate all debt and invest in actively managed mutual funds offered by a financial advisor. If you read that last sentence carefully you will begin to understand why I could no longer in good conscious be a Dave Ramsey ELP. Ramsey’s philosophy is right on so many levels and wrong on so many more.

Old dogs can learn new tricks. Preconceived notions are not reality or facts.

Several years ago life was going fine for me. Business was good, the sky was sunny and I thought I had a firm grasp on how the world worked. An avid reader, I chanced across a blog that pulled me in deeper than any before. Normally I read several blogs with no blog standing out from the crowd. I digest what I can and move on. Then along came Mr. Money Mustache.

Some blogs are better than others. Quality is frequently an issue, but personal taste is too. To make matters worse, this Mustache guy had a serious following. High quality suited to my tastes with a massive audience started me questioning some of those preconceived notions.

Just when you find someone really good word gets out and they get busy/popular/semi-famous or some other bullshit. A great tax guy stops taking new clients and is slow as hell because he has too much work to do. An awesome blogger is discovered by the world at large and is inundated with requests until she burns out. The story is repeated again and again. They get good, then discovered and then wore out.

The worst part is what fame and fortune does to these people. They lose touch with reality as the world builds a wall around them, built with bricks made from the flesh of living and breathing human beings. They get callous because it becomes impossible to respond to every request, none the less, honor the request.

Or maybe it isn’t them. It could be you! Maybe these people are seeing the world for what it really is for the first time. Maybe they have always had a firm grasp of reality. It might explain why they are where they are and why you are where you are. Think about it.

There are two kinds of stories people like to read in the personal finance community: personal finance reports and “What am I doing” stories. Pete over at Mr. Money Mustache released his spending report for 2016 this past week and Jim at jlcollinsnh provided us with a report on life in the comfortable Wisconsin south woods.

Spending reports/progress reports toward financial independence interest me, too, even though my financial situation has been solid for a few decades. Spending reports motivate me, giving me ideas to cut consumption without sacrificing quality of life. Progress reports are always interesting. The writers of such reports usually express an emotion with where they are at on the scale of financial independence. From my viewpoint it seems so obvious they are in much better financial shape than they imagine. It is intoxicating watching these good people make their way to the Promised Land.