2023 was a fantastic year for people who held on to their stocks–up ~25% for the year. Despite interest rates, the cost of housing, and the cost of cars still being high, it was an overall good year for investors. As long as you were in crypto, bonds, or stocks it was pretty hard to have lost money. In this post, I will go over some of the highlights of my year. Are you ready? Standby. 6. S&P 500 is up 25% on the year A good portion of my portfolio is in the S&P 500, so this really helped my overall net worth. More on that later. 5. My IRA account is up 125.43% on the year I own a dece ..read more

Over the last 8 years as a manager of engineers and having been in hundreds of conversations about promotion candidates, I have learned that there is a huge disconnect between employee expectations and reality. Specifically, there is a gap in understanding of the employee’s role in the promotion process vs their manager, of the employee’s impact vs how hard they work, and of the employee’s behaviors vs how they are perceived by others. If you are frustrated about your lack of promotion or just want to learn how the sausage is made, this post is for you. Are you ready? Standby. Tip #1 - You are ..read more

It’s been 6 months since my last post and a lot of positive things have happened at the macro level. Inflation went from 6.0% in Feb 2023 to 3% in June 2023. The S&P 500 index rose 14%, FB up 121%, TSLA up 60%, MSFT up 39%, AAPL up 37%, GOOG up 36%, and AMZN up 31%. These are all significant gains and it makes me wonder if I should continue my long breaks in blogging to keep this streak going. But I cannot not blog about my personal update tonight because I’ve reached another personal milestone. Are you ready? Standby. Changing jobs Back in April, I took on another job, which will likely b ..read more

For many, 2022 was a disaster year. Especially for me. I was set back by $1.84 million–yikes! Many people believe we still haven’t hit bottom yet and even fewer people believe that we will recover to 2021 levels in 2023. My prediction is that SP 500 will continue to hover around 3800-4200, mortgage rates will continue to hover around 6%, residential real estate prices will drop, but tech stocks will boom. Based on those predictions there are 3 areas I want to put my money to earn a positive return in 2023. Are you ready? Standby. FIRE Update Due to a good Jan 2023, I am somehow ahead of my net ..read more

8 years ago when I put pen to paper, I had marked the Winter of 2022 as my target date to retire. Like most multi-year estimations, I was wrong. 8 years ago I did not have a wife. I did not have 3 kids. I did not own a house. And I understood very little about personal finance. In this post, I will talk about how far off I think my estimation was and the lessons that I’ve learned as a result. Are you ready? Standby. Estimation As of 12/26/2022 I am off of my retirement target by $274,510.63. It honestly feels like a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but I am going to hold myself ac ..read more

I thought that when I hit my $4,000,000 FI number, I would immediately hand in my resignation letter and pack my bags the next day. After all, I’ll be financially independent. I’ll have enough f-you money to do whatever I want. Why would I care what my employer has to say? Well, I reached my FIRE number in the middle of 2021 and I’m still working 9 months later. Over the last year, as I quickly approached my FIRE number I learned a great deal on what it takes to retire early. I’ve been overly focused on achieving FI and it came so fast, that I was left ill-prepared to RE. In this post, I’ll ou ..read more

Do you and your spouse make more than $150K a year? If so, I am offering free financial coaching to you! I know that personal finance is hard but there’s no reason why you need to do it alone. Your traditional Financial Advisors will not know how aggressive you need to be in order to achieve FIRE or have the proper experience to coach you through difficult financial decisions while still prioritizing FIRE. As someone who has achieved the FI of Fat FIRE, as a leader in a big tech company, and as a seasoned career coach (that’s half of my daytime job) I believe I will be able to have a meaningfu ..read more

8 years ago when I officially started my road to FIRE, I didn’t know what to expect. I can’t say that I truly believed it was achievable before 50 years old. And by “it” I mean amassing $5 million in net worth. If memory serves me, the original plan was $5 million by 45 years old. I remember telling my mom about this ridiculous plan to retire early. She didn’t give me much of a reaction. Kind of like when you told your parents you were going to the NBA in middle school or that you were going to be a YouTube star. It’s how parents react when they don’t want to bust their kid’s unrealistic dream ..read more

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a self-made multi-millionaire? Or does it feel too distant that it’s just a dream? Is the American Dream dead for millennials and Gen Zers? Unquestionably, the world is rapidly changing, and our generation is left to navigate it with very little guidance. The jobs that our parents’ generations did to become rich most likely won’t make our generation rich. With that said, I strongly believe that the American Dream is still alive and that the recipe for success is a set of behaviors, not a set of instructions. My family came to America in the late 1 ..read more

At the beginning of 2020, I started a new M1Finance portfolio where I picked several dividend stocks to invest in. The goal is to achieve similar returns to the SP 500 index but beat it in terms of dividends. As of the writing of this article, I’ve contributed $62,000 of my own money into this portfolio. By the end of this year, I will have contributed $77,000 ($25,000 initially and $1k contribution per week). In this article, I’ll share my M1Finance portfolio, how I’m doing against the market, my thoughts on the current stock market, and how I am doing against my FIRE schedule. FIRE update As ..read more