What is early retirement really like? In this episode, Eric checks in with Jason two and a half years after he left his career behind. They discuss his recent financial moves, the impact of inflation, how Jason spends his time, and what’s truly important to him.
Show notes may be found below the video
Show Notes
Essential Background:
Do you have a copy of our free Rebalancing Calculator? This simple tool can help you make your own decisions about buying and selling in order to rebalance your portfolio. This is the calculator that Jason referenced in today’s episode.
- How has Jason’s post-RE experience changed over time? For that, you won’t want to miss our two prior milestone episodes. The first is “What I Learned in My First Year of “Early Retirement” (our most popular episode to date), and the second is “My New Life: Two Years After Early Retirement”.
- Jason’s investment policy statement (IPS) defines his cash holding + generating practices. For more discussion on the topic of holding cash, you’ll want to check out this earlier episode on the topic.
- In late 2021, Jason left the services of his financial advisors. This was an important step on his post-RE financial journey, and the linked episode covers a lot of ground on the value he found and how that changed. For the conclusion of that story, you’ll want to see this short video that followed.
Buying Treasury Bills and Notes at your brokerage is one of the financial moves we discussed in this video. This article by Harry Sit (“The Finance Buff”) is a really great summary of how you can do that yourself. The well-written post goes through all the details and includes walkthroughs of the process at each of the major brokerages.
Tax Loss Harvesting is a concept we’ve discussed on the show before. This Investopedia article is a good summary of the topic. In brief, TLH is an approach by which investors can sell an asset at a loss, reducing the total amount of capital gains taxes due from the sale of profitable investments. You can then use the sale proceeds to purchase a similar asset or security, maintaining your asset allocation.
CAPE-Adjusted Safe Withdrawal Rate – We talked about this idea in the episode without much explanation. As background, we interviewed Karsten “Big ERN” Jeske previously about safe withdrawal rates (SWR) – this is definitely content you will want to check out if you haven’t before! Subsequent to that conversation, Karsten wrote several blog posts concerning a new “better” CAPE ratio. This first article introduces the concept, while the next: “The 4% Rule Works Again! An Update on Dynamic Withdrawal Rates based on the Shiller CAPE – SWR Series Part 54” dives into details on how his Safe Withdrawal Rate calculator now can use this factor to model withdrawal rate in retirement.
The Series 65 Exam is “designed to qualify candidates as investment adviser representatives. The exam covers topics that have been determined to be necessary to understand in order to provide investment advice to clients.” If you’re interested in more information on this test and the curriculum it covers, you’ll want to check out this link. Here’s the Kaplan exam prep course that Jason has been taking.
You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.
- Jason’s FI Blog
- Eric’s business: 30X40 Design Workshop
- Eric’s YouTube Channel
- Our podcast