Conflicts of interest are my thing. My dissertation was on CEO bargaining in executive compensation contracts and my first academic publication dealt with how difficult financial advisor disclosures were to read. My favorite lecture to give students is on agency conflicts. Because of this, I see traps where people are or can be taken advantage […]
Tricking Yourself: The Case for a Big Tax Refund
Humans are not rational. Irrationality is the argument of behavioral finance, and the proof of this has been growing over the past two decades. Traditional finance theory is centered on rational humans participating in the markets. Rationality is a main driver of the efficient market hypothesis. From a personal finance standpoint though, the findings of […]
Is Working Allowed in Early Retirement?
There is this belief that once retired you cannot do another day of work…forever. It would be blasphemy. You can’t be retired and have a side job, that would be too much for the extreme early retirement disciples to handle. I see people blasted on blogs and forums for taking a part-time job or starting […]
Your Number: How Much You Need to Retire
Many factors need to be taken into account when deciding how much you need to have saved for retirement. Solving for this number is a significant step on your path to retirement, and the task can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. This post is lengthy but includes everything […]
Why Early Retirement?
Go to college, get a job, work for 42 years, retire, live for 13 years. That’s the path that has been laid out for us. That is the norm. But these are just numbers, not rules, but have unfortunately become the only path that people consider. A goal of early retirement is not a New Years […]
You Don’t Need a Financial Advisor
The finance industry has a bad habit of making things seem more complicated than they are. Financial jargon is riddled throughout websites, and financial disclosures are difficult to read. It’s not that these terms are made difficult by accident. The harder it is to understand something, the more people are needed to decipher the true meaning. […]