In a conversation with a friend recently, they made a comment something to the effect of not understanding my lack of motivation to have fun. That really struck me, and is a question I really want to delve into at some point. "Why do I have a lack of motivation to have fun?"... It's going to be a lot to "unpack", as they put it, but it will be good to examine it.
That, however, is not what I'm going to write about today, as I don't have the mental energy for such a deep-dive. What I will write about today is financial in nature, so feel free to skip it if you want. You won't be missing anything...
So, I took a big step today and opened a brokerage account with E-tr4de. I linked my savings account & scheduled a deposit, but now have to wait 2-3 days for them to make a couple small verification deposits to ensure it's linked properly.I've been researching some ETFs for a month or two now, but many of them are ones that WJC is already invested in, which is helpful because he does pretty thorough research before he gets into anything & we've been discussing them. Five of them are managed index funds, two are dividend-paying energy companies, and one is an electric vehicle supplier, which is the only one that's really speculative.
I'm going to start slowly by only putting a few hundred into each, but then each time I get paid, I'll move my (previously designated) biweekly emergency fund deposit into my brokerage account, then buy more shares, essentially "dollar-cost-averaging" my way into it. WJC is doing buy & sell trades weekly (sometimes almost daily), and is actually making really good money. His 401k and brokerage balances started out equal, but his gains on his actively-traded account are now 3 times higher than in his 401k. I, on the other hand, will be sticking with the "buy & hold", long-term investing strategy that I've used so successfully in my 401k account. I won't need to cash in any of these investments for at least 4-5 years, which will benefit me when tax time comes.
... I just did some research and it turns out there is no age restriction for how early one can choose to initiate an SEPP (72t) withdrawl plan from a qualified retirement account, so I should be able to combine the SEPP RMD method from my 401k, and fill out the balance of my annual expenses from this brokerage account (if it grows as predicted). This will minimize the draw-down of each of these accounts until I'm able to readjust the 401k withdraw rate when I turn 59.5.
Anyway, my original formulaic calculations had me hitting my FI number in approximately 7 years, but I found a quick/easy new way to project exponential growth based on past values, and when I ran that calculation, I was really surprised to see that it came out to only 4 yrs & 3 months until I hit my number (so long as the markets don't do anything crazy)! This is why getting this brokerage account going has been so important right now, and why I'm relieved to at least have it set up.
5:46 p.m. - 2020-10-12
Recent entries:
Busy work - 2020-11-28
Money well spent. - 2020-11-27
Unusually pleasant holiday - 2020-11-26
Physical isolation - 2020-11-25
Update to last entry. - 2020-11-23
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