Frugal Professor

Another month, another update. A few random comments. Tax refund finally came through. I denoted this as “other income”. As expected, EITC hacking / tax optimization proved to be wildly profitable this year. All low/middle income families with several kids should be doing this. I’ve drafted a guest post on the topic on GoCurryCracker which will … Read more

Another month, another update. A few random comments. Thanks to aggressive tax sheltering in 2016, we’re getting a $8k refund in a few weeks. I filed taxes for free using Turbotax’s Freedom edition (turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/), which is available to those with low incomes who qualify for EITC, etc. What’s nice about this edition is that it … Read more

Another month, another update. Some random thoughts this month. The humbling mathematics of retirement savings. The mathematics of retirement are daunting. In order to retire, you can only withdraw 3-4% of your investments annually. This is known as the safe withdrawal rate. 3% is a more conservative number. 4% is less so. Good discussions on … Read more

Another month, another update. A few anomalous expenditures for November 2016 to point out: $1k for new tires & brakes for car. Cars are expensive. I didn’t fully appreciate it until tracking my spending on this blog. $1k for home gym. I convinced my wife to cancel our YMCA membership ($80/mo) as a result. Break … Read more

The steps to accumulating wealth are dumb-simple, as described here: https://frugalprofessor.com/start-here-the-recipe-for-wealth-accumulation/. In those 3 posts, I’ve essentially exhausted my ability to say anything more on the topic. Step 1.) Be frugal. Step 2.) Minimize your tax burden. Step 3.) Invest your savings wisely. In an effort to have this blog contain more than 3 posts, I’ll track our … Read more