Early Retirement Extreme Forums

White water rafters use something called a "paco pad" which is sort of like a thermarest on steroids. Available up to 30" wide and 4" thick, and can be rolled up. I sleep on one in the back of my van for about 6 months per year.

answer: By owning a multi-unit home (duplex, 4-plex, etc), living in one unit, and having the rent from the othe units pay all home expenses (mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, etc). Easy to find in some communities, impossible in others.

One thing to consider is that as a young single guy full time RVing is going to put a huge dent in your social life. I alternate between a house in utah in the summer and a sailboat in mexico in the winter, and it's basically impossible to find a woman interested in dating someone with this kind of ...

Besides fire fighting there are many seasonal ranger jobs in the national parks. If you can get hired on as a "permanent" seasonal you even get to collect unemployment during the 6 months you're off work. Also lots of seasonal jobs in the hospitality industy (hotels, restaurants, etc). Man...

Spending more time camping and backpacking (aka trekking aka tramping in NZ) can cut down signigicantly on your expenses. When I was in NZ hitchhiking was a viable way to get to/from the trailheads.

I've been FI/ERE for eleven years now. I guess I'm different than most on here in that I never obsessed over money: my desires were always less than my income, and I simply saved the difference until one day I realized that I didn't need to work any more. Now that I'm retired I do pretty much the sa...

Yet another option:

Instead of putting $200K down on a $600K house put the $200K down on an $800K duplex and let the rental income from the other unit subsidize your mortgage payment.

You can't buy investment property with 10% down like that, they require 25% down and have hefty fees. Have you ever bought real estate investment property?? At best you'd buy 3 houses after 25% down and the fees. That is worth 728K, less than half what they same amount of money would have been inve...

1)By comparing the returns of real estate to the stock market you're comparing 2 asset classes with widely differing risk profiles. Housing prices don't (historically) have nearly the same volatility as the stock market. 2)As someone else said here, you're also focusing only on the final market valu...

@Jenny: As a professional gambler I believe you'd have to pay SS taxes on your winnings which makes the scheme less profitable. Another option I've thought of (and that has the advantage of no requiring phantom income) would be to set up a separate management company to manage my real estate investm...

Does anyone know if gambling winnings count as earned income for the purpose of contributing the winnings to a deductible IRA? The primary reason I'm asking is the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit mentioned by the original poster. A single filer that earns $17,750 or less and contributes at l...

Inside the frame wouldn't work on a metal frame bike. Also have to figure out a power supply that would last a couple of days between recharges, and be accessible to remove easily to recharge. Any hiding place would become known to prospective thieves pretty quickly and negate the effectiveness.

I'm a 92% bernie.

134.

I question how accurate it is, since that's 10-15 pts less than I've gotten on more comprehensive tests.

I think taking the 220K total and inferring a 17K/year average is totally misleading. Even if you believe the 220K number, most of that is going to be incurred in the last year of life, not averaged over a lifetime, so if you're living off a 4% SWR you're not going to be on the hook for anything clo...

Anyone here invest in closed end funds? It's an area of investing that I'm not familiar with, but I've been reading up on it a bit and it seems like there are opportunities in the CEF space for higher dividends and/or less risk. The value investor in me is particularly enamored by the fact that many...

The big sails you see in the america's cup races are called spinnakers and are only used when sailinh downwind (with the wind behind you). On all other points of sail the sails act more like an airplanes wings and don't billow out. As far as learning to sail, I'd recommend taking a short class (2 da...

Let me know when you come through salt lake. I can offer a place to crash.

Jacob,

If you still have the fishing lures mentioed in the original post I'd be interested in any spinners (mepps) or rapala type lures.

Steve

you should also take a look at sportsmobile.