You've got cause and effect backwards: my concern about taxes results in our low effective tax rate. As far as your question about what good tax planning is - I'll leave it to you to investigate that as it often means different things to different people depending on their situation and goals. FInally, just because you don't understand how budgeting and expense tracking doesn't have value for other people, doesn't make it a waste of time. Many others have value for these activities for different reasons that they have tried to explain. At some point - it's not worth trying to further explain it to you.
Not much work at all. Less than an hour a month total once I had the spreadsheets set up. I know our day-to-day spending habits without tracking them in detail and they have been pretty consistent. The primary role of the tracking is to stay on top of regular monthly expenses such as utilities, insurance, and taxes. It's also good for planning bigger ticket items like travel and home maintenance/upgrades. This helps me plan our withdrawals. We are not on Medicare and are not collecting pensions or social security yet and have yet to tap our tax advantaged retirement accounts. All spending comes from our non-retirement savings, so I need to manage withdrawals in a tax efficient manner. With good tax planning I can have an effective federal tax rate of less than 3%. Additionally, health insurance in early retirement is about 10x more expensive than Medicare. We pay more in a month than most retirees pay on Medicare in a year. Also, the inflation rate on health insurance for us has been huge,(20% last year 33% this year). There definitely needs to be budgeting and planning for that. Essentially, the low effective tax rate helps offset the high health insurance costs.
Not only do I track spending, I track income. I do this primarily for tax planning purposes. I track medical expenses including insurance premiums as well as taxes paid as they are high enough to sometimes make itemizing more advantageous than the standard deduction, If we have high medical expense in a given year we will have preplanned medical expenses pulled forward to take advantage of the additional tax breaks. We also do capital gains harvesting, so knowing our income is important in planning how much capital gains to take to stay below the 0% cap gains rate. Finally, knowing our spending habits and plans allows us to manage our withdrawals from our brokerage account to maximize interest on accounts. That's just off the top of my head. Bottom line is if you know your spending habits, i.e. track spending, and have an idea of your spending needs, i.e budget, you can more easily optimize your financial situation.
To paraphrase Richard Feynman - Experiment is the sole judge of theory. You can model it all you want but in the end, you have to experience it. Our approach was similar to yours - model our retirement to death with very conservative assumptions and seek outside confirmation. In the end after 5 years of early retirement at 55 it has worked out pretty well.
The bottom line is that many of dealership service shops are pretty shady. I've had my share of unnecessary recommendations: air and cabin filters, brakes, wheel alignments etc. Key is to know your OEM recommended maintenance schedule, find a reputable service center you trust and get a second opinion. Very few maintenance suggestions are time critical.
Hard to see what your point is in all this. As far as I'm concerned rich and wealthy are synonymous. If your point is that there is a difference between income and assets, I'm pretty certain most HD readers understand this.
I have to correct myself also. Vanguard in the US only reports yields on their domestic funds. You really have to dig for dividend yield info on their international funds. They have a high yield international fund with what appears to be a yield of about 3.5%
More or less agree - but I have to point out that the highest yielding stock fund at Vanguard is only yielding 2.16% right now (VHYAX). The comparable ETF (VYM) is yielding 2.2%.
If you have high cholesterol or any of the other risks, a CAC score determination is very helpful. It's quite possible to have high cholesterol and a low or 0 CAC which is typically pretty low risk for heart disease. Unfortunately, insurance often doesn't cover the test. However, it is fairly inexpensive and avoiding the cost and side effects of statins if you can more than pays for the cost of the test.
The problem is the debt has doubled in the last 10 years, while GDP has only grown about 66% over that time. So our debt is growing faster than out economy - that is not sustainable.
Comments
You've got cause and effect backwards: my concern about taxes results in our low effective tax rate. As far as your question about what good tax planning is - I'll leave it to you to investigate that as it often means different things to different people depending on their situation and goals. FInally, just because you don't understand how budgeting and expense tracking doesn't have value for other people, doesn't make it a waste of time. Many others have value for these activities for different reasons that they have tried to explain. At some point - it's not worth trying to further explain it to you.
Post: Dickies simplistic view of personal finances
Link to comment from November 7, 2026
Not much work at all. Less than an hour a month total once I had the spreadsheets set up. I know our day-to-day spending habits without tracking them in detail and they have been pretty consistent. The primary role of the tracking is to stay on top of regular monthly expenses such as utilities, insurance, and taxes. It's also good for planning bigger ticket items like travel and home maintenance/upgrades. This helps me plan our withdrawals. We are not on Medicare and are not collecting pensions or social security yet and have yet to tap our tax advantaged retirement accounts. All spending comes from our non-retirement savings, so I need to manage withdrawals in a tax efficient manner. With good tax planning I can have an effective federal tax rate of less than 3%. Additionally, health insurance in early retirement is about 10x more expensive than Medicare. We pay more in a month than most retirees pay on Medicare in a year. Also, the inflation rate on health insurance for us has been huge,(20% last year 33% this year). There definitely needs to be budgeting and planning for that. Essentially, the low effective tax rate helps offset the high health insurance costs.
Post: Dickies simplistic view of personal finances
Link to comment from November 6, 2026
Not only do I track spending, I track income. I do this primarily for tax planning purposes. I track medical expenses including insurance premiums as well as taxes paid as they are high enough to sometimes make itemizing more advantageous than the standard deduction, If we have high medical expense in a given year we will have preplanned medical expenses pulled forward to take advantage of the additional tax breaks. We also do capital gains harvesting, so knowing our income is important in planning how much capital gains to take to stay below the 0% cap gains rate. Finally, knowing our spending habits and plans allows us to manage our withdrawals from our brokerage account to maximize interest on accounts. That's just off the top of my head. Bottom line is if you know your spending habits, i.e. track spending, and have an idea of your spending needs, i.e budget, you can more easily optimize your financial situation.
Post: Dickies simplistic view of personal finances
Link to comment from November 5, 2026
To paraphrase Richard Feynman - Experiment is the sole judge of theory. You can model it all you want but in the end, you have to experience it. Our approach was similar to yours - model our retirement to death with very conservative assumptions and seek outside confirmation. In the end after 5 years of early retirement at 55 it has worked out pretty well.
Post: The Leap of Faith
Link to comment from November 5, 2026
The bottom line is that many of dealership service shops are pretty shady. I've had my share of unnecessary recommendations: air and cabin filters, brakes, wheel alignments etc. Key is to know your OEM recommended maintenance schedule, find a reputable service center you trust and get a second opinion. Very few maintenance suggestions are time critical.
Post: The Repair I Didn’t Need
Link to comment from November 5, 2026
Hard to see what your point is in all this. As far as I'm concerned rich and wealthy are synonymous. If your point is that there is a difference between income and assets, I'm pretty certain most HD readers understand this.
Post: Rich or Wealthy?
Link to comment from October 7, 2026
I have to correct myself also. Vanguard in the US only reports yields on their domestic funds. You really have to dig for dividend yield info on their international funds. They have a high yield international fund with what appears to be a yield of about 3.5%
Post: I will still take the dividends
Link to comment from September 16, 2026
More or less agree - but I have to point out that the highest yielding stock fund at Vanguard is only yielding 2.16% right now (VHYAX). The comparable ETF (VYM) is yielding 2.2%.
Post: I will still take the dividends
Link to comment from September 13, 2026
If you have high cholesterol or any of the other risks, a CAC score determination is very helpful. It's quite possible to have high cholesterol and a low or 0 CAC which is typically pretty low risk for heart disease. Unfortunately, insurance often doesn't cover the test. However, it is fairly inexpensive and avoiding the cost and side effects of statins if you can more than pays for the cost of the test.
Post: On Being a “Healthy” Person
Link to comment from September 9, 2026
The problem is the debt has doubled in the last 10 years, while GDP has only grown about 66% over that time. So our debt is growing faster than out economy - that is not sustainable.
Post: Federal debt
Link to comment from August 20, 2026