The NoCo Financial Freedom Journal

  There are many opinions out there about whether to take social security when first eligible at age 62, wait until full retirement age (around age 67 for most folks), or even wait until age 70 when the social security benefit is at its maximum.  So, I thought I would throw my own opinion (about how I am doing it for ME) into the mix and give my reasoning so that you can see how it applies to my particular situation.  This will give you an idea of what factors I considered, and what issues you may need to consider for your own situation. Basically, the mainstream schools of thought out there are to take it as soon as possible so that you can maximize the amount of total money drawn over your expected longevity, or take it as late as possible so that you can maximize your monthly income.  Then, there is the issue of how soon that income is needed.  If you are married, that will also affect when you want to start taking it.  Whether or not your spouse worked, and how much social security

I hate car payments! For one thing, a vehicle depreciates immediately the minute you drive it off the lot.  For another, if you find yourself buying a brand-new car every few years, you have doomed yourself to never-ending car payments and the debt that comes with it.  And I better not find out that you are LEASING a car every few years, or man - I will hunt you down!   Do you really need that new car every few years?  Or would you rather take that car payment and turn it into a "vehicle" (pun intended) where you are paying yourself each month?    One of the ways that you can pay yourself each month is by not going into debt.  My philosophy is that once you have saved that emergency fund, start saving up for expenses like this where instead of buying a brand new car (and taking on car payments) every few years, you pay cash for a really good used car, keep it well maintained, and make it last for a while. Since "retiring" from my old 9-5 job, my new endeavor is buil

Some of the things that we can learn from doing a financial needs analysis (FNA) are what your budget looks like, developing a budget (if you don't have one), debt amounts and monthly payments, and money coming in versus money going out to pay living expenses.  If the money coming in doesn't cover all of these expenses, then there are basically two remedies: reduce expenses and/or increase income.   Part-time jobs (working as a W-2 employee) and working for yourself as a "freelancer" (1099 contractor) offer some pretty good alternatives.  Part-time jobs, such as working at your local store or delivering pizzas for an established company give you the simplicity of earning income as a W-2 employee where the company takes care of all the tax deductions and paperwork.   There are many types of 1099 contractor "side gigs" out there to help with earning more part-time income as well.  Driving services, such as Uber and Lyft, delivering food, such as Doordash, and

Much of this past year has been spent pondering retirement or at least exploring new opportunities that involve giving up the full-time rat-race.  With all the reorganizations at work, plus the potential new opportunities with financial coaching, I decided to go ahead and pull the plug and call it quits.  So with the new year, having just retired from my job, and waiting for those retirement checks to kick in, my wife and I have had some time to really take stock of our new income sources and our new lifestyle.  My wife will still babysit our grandkids, and I will enter the uncertain world of freelancing.  All of this has really caused us to take a good hard look at our monthly expenses and get more control of that which we are certain in order to accommodate our new lifestyle.   When it comes to making ends meet, you basically have two choices - increase income or reduce expenses.  Having chosen to retire, it's a given that the income will actually be reduced, for a while, anyway,

Budgeting for monthly expenses is usually pretty straight forward.  You have expenses that occur regularly every month, and many of them, such as a mortgage, insurance, and cell phone, are all the same amount every month.  These fit into the monthly budget fairly regularly and are easy to plan.  You know that you have a certain amount of income, and you know that you have regularly occurring expenses (usually of the same amount), and you pay them.  You have budgeted for food and household expenses that are fairly regular and predictable.  After paying yourself, of course, through regular savings, whatever is leftover you can budget into categories such as entertainment and "mad money." But what about those expenses that only occur a few times throughout the year?  My bill for the trash removal is over $125 dollars but only occurs every four months, for example.  We usually owe on our income taxes, and that only occurs once a year.  Automobile registration in Colorado is kind