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Proposed tax reform: What does it mean?

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The much anticipated GOP tax bill is hitting the news (link): Summary of changes to individual taxes: Massive standard deduction ($24.4k) makes itemizing irrelevant for most the US New 10k limit on property tax deduction (this is a big deal if you’re in a state with exceedingly high property taxes (bay area, CA)) No deduction … Read more

How to defeat your $100/month cell phone plan

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This post is long overdue, as cell phone hacking is low hanging fruit in terms of expense optimization. Here’s how I have done it for the past decade, saving us over $10k in the process.   Google Voice – The Key Ingredient Google Voice (https://voice.google.com/) is the critical component of our phone setup. What does … Read more

Frugal Analogs

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I’ve enjoyed the podcast ChooseFI very much. I like that the hosts are normal dudes (probably more normal than me) stumbling through life like the rest of us. The hosts talk a lot about the idea of frugal analogs, which is an incredibly powerful concept. Examples of frugal analogs in ***my*** life include: $100/month cell … Read more

You should have frozen your credit years ago

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Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you’ve probably seen the news that a crap-ton of people’s personal information was exposed through a breach at Equifax, one of the three credit bureaus. You can check whether you were compromised here: https://trustedidpremier.com/eligibility/eligibility.html It turns out that I was compromised. No big deal. Why? Because I’ve frozen my … Read more

Hierarchy of Savings

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Every single person should have a clear hierarchy of savings, primarily driven by tax arbitrage (link). On January 1, where do you put your first dollar of savings in the year? What about your second dollar? 10,000th dollar? Etc? I believe the following list should work for everyone, whether you’re making $10k or $10M per … Read more