FIRE meet-up (2) Amsterdam with JL Collins

JL Collins (Jim) enjoyed his FIRE meet-up Amsterdam on the 20th July 2019 so much that he wanted to do another one. Woohooh!

Here’s the recording for you te enjoy: (I don’t have professional equipment and unfortunately there was a lot of background noise this time. Sorry about that, folks!)

My questions were the same as last week, plus one funny (at least, I like to think so) extra question in the end. Even if you already listened to the first recording of the FIRE meet-up Amsterdam, I think you’ll still find some nuggets in the second one even though the questions are the same. The questions that I asked Jim:

<01:15> Which personal decision you made has had the biggest impact on your path to FIRE?

<05:55> Which questions should somebody aspiring FIRE ask themselves at the start of and throughout their journey?

<08:40> You advised  your daughter to keep putting her money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund VTSAX. This is the fund she already owns and she should just keep adding to it. In which cases or trends would you advise her differently or change course? What signals should she look out for and what would you advise her to be a cross over point to something else? I know we can’t prepare for Black Swan events and flexibility is key.

<13:40> Recently Vanguard has indicated that they expect returns for the stock market over the next decade to be lower compared to the past couple of decades, about 5 percent annualized return instead of 8. What is your view on this statement and would you adjust your investment strategy if the stock market returns would drop considerably?

<17:00> The Dutch have to deal with a different kind of income and wealth tax system compared to Americans. What course of action would you advise the Dutch on their way to FIRE while dealing with things like capital gains tax and wealth tax?

<20:50> What lessons about money did your parents teach you?

<25:00> How do you and Jane talk about money and investing? And what kind of money and investment talk strategy would you advise couples who have just discovered the FIRE movement?

<31:45> Do you expect global trends like climate change to affect the stock market? Should an investor anticipate on these trends and if yes, how?

<34:45> Which topics are a waste of time to think about when pursuing FIRE?

<44:00>You mention Mike Tyson in your book? Has he ever gotten back to you?

From the audience (summarized by me):

<48:05> How do I invest wisely when I don’t like to think about investing all the time? Is it possible to reach FIRE without investing?

<54:30> What is your view on diversifying your investments between stocks, cash and real estate?*
* For the Dutchies around here I refered to the website geenbaanmeer.nl for more information on rental property investing in The Netherlands. You might want to go to one of his workshops.

<1:06:15> How does one meander in an ever evolving world as an early retiree? (Sorry about the blender in the background)**
In this part I mention Kristy Shen’s book, which is a must read: Quit Like a Millionaire

<1:14:45> How do you balance enjoying your money now and invest for your future self?

<1:19:40> How do you deal with the volatility of stocks compared to real estate?
In this part we mention Paula Pant’s blog Afford Anything.

<1:27:15> When and how do you add bonds to your portfolio when thinking about volatility?

<1:34:50> As a self-employed worker I have to keep money aside for taxes and it’s just sitting there earning next to nothing. What should I do?

<1:41:00> When do you know when enough is enough?

<1:46:45> How do you figure out what to retire towards?

FIRE meet-up (1) Amsterdam with JL Collins

Hello FIRE-friends!

On 20th of July 2019 there was a FIRE meet-up in Amsterdam with no one other than JL Collins, author of The Simple Path to Wealth and his blog of which the stock series are the Crown Jewels. Jim is the Godfather of FIRE (Kristy Shen conjured up that title, I hope it’s okay that I borrow it)  and has been FI since 1989. Yep, you want to read his book and his blog.

I had the honour of asking the first couple of questions through an interview which were mostly crowdsourced among the Dutch FIRE community. It was an amazing experience. Again, thank you Jim & Jane. You are amazing people.

Here’s the recording for you to enjoy:

Thanks to Zoku Amsterdam for hosting us.

The questions that I asked Jim:

<02:10> Which personal decision you made has had the biggest impact on your path to FIRE?

<03:50> Which questions should somebody aspiring FIRE ask themselves at the start of and throughout their journey?

<07:40> You advised  your daughter to keep putting her money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund VTSAX. This is the fund she already owns and she should just keep adding to it. In which cases or trends would you advise her differently or change course? What signals should she look out for and what would you advise her to be a cross over point to something else? I know we can’t prepare for Black Swan events and flexibility is key.

<14:30> Recently Vanguard has indicated that they expect returns for the stock market over the next decade to be lower compared to the past couple of decades, about 5 percent annualized return instead of 8. What is your view on this statement and would you adjust your investment strategy if the stock market returns would drop considerably?

<17:00> The Dutch have to deal with a different kind of income and wealth tax system compared to Americans. What course of action would you advise the Dutch on their way to FIRE while dealing with things like capital gains tax?

<19:30> What lessons about money did your parents teach you?

<24:30> After discovering index investing, how did you manage to stick to the path since there weren’t a lot of role model index investors back then.

<27:10> How do you and Jane talk about money and investing? And what kind of money and investment talk strategy would you advise couples who have just discovered the FIRE movement?

<31:30> Do you expect global trends like climate change to affect the stock market? Should an investor anticipate on these trends and if yes, how?

<33:50> Which topics are a waste of time to think about when pursuing FIRE?

From the audience (summarized by me):

<36:10> How did you handle college tuition for your daughter?

<40:50> What shouldn’t parents teach their children about money?

<44:30> How do you create a mindset in which you can ride out the storms during bear markets?

<53:20> What is your opinion on value cost averaging?

<56:30> What is your opinion on investing in index funds which also contain companies that one might find unethical?

<1:01:30> You tried to teach your daughter about money throughout her childhood. Is she on board now that she is an adult?

<1:10:50> You don’t have to work for money anymore. What motivates you to work on your current projects?

There was another meet-up on the 27th of July 2019 in Amsterdam. I will publish that recording ASAP.

September Numbers Revised

Hi friends,

So..,I forgot to include something in our September numbers.  Dividend was paid…and that’s income…right? However, I didn’t add that to our income…duhuh. Originally, these were the numbers:

September 2015
Mortgage: 34.40% (+0.29)
Emergency fund: 186.8% (-31.6% because we invested a bunch of stocks! Still…way too much cash for my liking….)
Stash (=EF + stocks): 18.76% (When will we pass 20%??)
Savings rate this month: 32% (Boohooh, October is going to be worse…we booked a holiday home for a week. However, that’s something we’re really going to enjoy! ❤ )
Savings rate this year: 43% (Ok)

Now that I included the dividend paid, we managed to boost our savings rate to 35% that month. Woot!

From now on, I will always add dividend to our income. Our VWRL stocks pay dividend in March, June, September and December. Our Meesman stocks will provide dividend mid-year, however the dividend is reinvested automatically. That’s still income, right?

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Dear friends,

These are last month’s numbers:

October 2015
Mortgage: 34.49% (+0.09)
Emergency fund: 100.01% (we’re ALL IN investmentwise! WOOHOOH!!! As of now we’ll keep our emergency fund at 100% and invest all our surplus money on top of our monthly investments. Yeah, baby! Oh, and the 0.01% was interest paid on these savings accounts)
Stash (=EF + stocks): 19.96% (+ 1.2% due to the stock market! And: ARGH, just 0.04% shy of 20%!!!)
Savings rate this month: 37% (Hey, not bad as we went on a weeklong holiday! )
Savings rate this year: 42% (Hmmm, I’d like to keep this above 40% this year…50% seems a bit too adventurous for us right now…)

I am VERY excited about the fact that we’re already at 1/5 of our FI journey!

And even MORE excited about the fact that we are now ALL IN!!! Which means that we’ll keep our emergency fund at 100% (unless an emergency requires us to dig into that fund, I can’t tell you the number, it’s somewhere between 0 and 50K 😉 ) and throw all surplus money at the stock market on top of our monthly investments. Woohooh!!!

Lots of love,

Mrs EconoWiser

 

Decluttering: Almost There…..And The Market Is At It Again!

In the rare moments I have some spare time to do something useful these days I choose to declutter. And the hubby is dragged into my new hobby, but he seems to be ok with that. We’re almost there in the sense that “there” means we went through all our stuff and tossed many things out. We still need to rearrange some things and we’re still in doubt about some stuff. I find it very intriguing that we seem to value our stupid stuff so much. I’m addicted to The Minimalists. I’m still a rookie, though.

This week our VWRL dividend was paid out. That, and the market is at it again. Last month the hubby chickened out…but he found faith and huge chunks of cash went to buying stocks. Next month it’s my turn and we’re getting closer to the point where we will have invested everything but our emergency fund. I’m very much looking forward to that. Oh, and I’ll be reinvesting the dividend, compound interest rocks!

Lots of love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Sometimes Things Don’t Go According To (My) Plan…

Soooooooo, last week I went into this stock buying frenzy. Which was awesome! I swiftly wired a lot of money to my brokerage account and got things going. I bought a lot of stocks at 55/56 euros each. Woot!

However, the hubby wasn’t able to wire a lot of money that fast to his brokerage account. He managed to buy extra stocks at around 55/56 as well. However, when the larger chunk of his money arrived, prices had gone up already….and he chickened out! Argh! So now he wants to go back to the original plan and stick to investing chunks on a monthly basis. Damnit! We were so close to lump sum and finally getting it all in there.

Oh well, sometimes things don’t go according to my plan.

I am curious as to how much we managed to invest in percentages. I’ll get to that this evening.

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Crash?!?!

Long time, no hear. I know! I felt like I didn’t have that much to add to the wonderful blogging community already out there. Plus, I was in survival and minimalist mode anyway. We purged our home Kondostylish, which was a bit of a challenge with the two little ones. We are now well on our way and most of the things on our to-do-list are done! Yeah! Oh, and tomorrow I’ll start something that’s called work again…

Anyway, I’d really like to talk about the stock market!!! Woopwoop! We lots thousands of euros this past week….and I’m thrilled and happy and excited I just want to get up and dance. Why? Am I a complete nutter? Perhaps, but ladies and gentlemen, STOCKS ARE ON SALE!!!!

Let me repeat that: STOCKS ARE ON SALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aaaaaaaaaah, this is what I used to feel during the end of season final sale for clothes, shoes and other crap. The big difference is that all the crap I bought on sale then is worth nothing now. Whereas the stocks we have bought and will buy shortly will be worth so much more a couple of years from now and will bring us FREEDOM, baby, yeah!

The husband and I have now decided to wire all our investible (is this a word?) money to our investment accounts and start buying VWRL in large chunks. Oh, yeah! And we’ve also made a pact that if we think stocks are still a good deal, we could use a part of our emergency fund (the amount we set I find too high anyway…the hubby likes to play safe) and throw that at the stocks sale as well.

Jlcollinsnh (need to find the specific article in order to place a link, it’s somewhere in his wonderful stock series) thinks a crash at the start (well for us, that would be a bit further than the beginning, but ok) of your investment career is the best thing that could happen to you. Again, thank you very much, Uncle J.!

I am not clairvoyant. I have no idea whether this is actually the start of another crisis, I don’t know how long things will last, I have absolutely no clue what forces cause ups or downs in the stock market. I do not give any advice, you are responsible for your own choices.

I’m off, buying more stocks.

Hasta la vista, baby!

Lots of love,

Mrs EconoWiser

P.s. As a matter of fact, I think the hubby and I are going to do a little happy dance tonight. Freedom, here we come!!!

Up She Goes

The stock market, that is. When we started investing in VWRL about a year ago we paid about €48 per stock. As we speak they’re about €61-somethingish. Wow!

At the start of this month I managed to buy a chunk of them at €56. February is the hubby’s turn again.

Yes, sometimes it is difficult to hit the “buy” button when you’ve paid less for the stocks a couple of months ago. Maybe this is also why wannabe-investors keep putting off buying stocks because they want to time the market?

This is also why I really like Meesman. Our money is transferred to them each month automatically and they’ll buy the stocks for us at a set moment in time. In that case do not know what the going rate is.

If you’re interested in DIY investing you need to be tough! And be daring enough to ride out the storms, but also buy at “peak prices”. (But of course you don’t know whether they’re peak prices or not!)

On a more personal note: I am dog tired. Next week Wednesday is my final day at work and I cannot wait. My back aches a lot and I need a lot of sleep. Luckily, I get a lot of help.

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Angry Investors

So, investors are angry with Alex because of disappointing results over 2014. For the non-Dutch: this broker has aggressively advertised during the past years about their investing performances in the past. They boosted about being able to beat the market. There were impressive tv commercials about how they would sell when stocks were about to drop and buy when they were about to increase, taking time-outs based on their technical analyses. However, as predicted in any book or study you pick up about index investing….active investors might be lucky for a while, many investors hop on and there you have it…they can’t meet expectations anymore. That’s exactly what happened here. The fees are killing investor’s capital growth and the investment approach is plain guessing. Well….duh…we know!

I have stated my opinion on investing with Alex before in a reader case study and, luckily, this reader decided against investing with Alex after all.

I just don’t understand why people don’t do their own research on investing, educate themselves a bit and then make a conscious decision instead of making a decision after wathing a commercial on tv. I mean, those are your hard-earned euros! Who’s going to take the best care of them? Right, you!

Oh, Meesman scored 19.3% with their world-wide fund. Snaps for index investing!

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

We <3 Dividend!

Yay, dividend was paid out today! I really love the fact that our Vanguard FTSE All World stocks pay out a quarterly dividend. You can watch this compound interest theory doing it’s thing, yeah baby!

Next month it’s “my month” to invest the bigger monthly sum the hubby and myself agreed upon.

I hope your Christmas was merry and bright and I wish you a wonderful and prosperous new year.

Lots of love,

Mrs EconoWiser

P.s. I am looking forward to my maternity leave early February. Hopefully I’ll find the energy to blog a lot more…and clear out the house….and set up this new business thingy I have been thinking about…oh….right….and having this second (and final!!!) baby! 😉