Early Retirement Extreme

Financial independence, frugality, self-sufficiency, ecology, capitalism, and voluntary simplicity

Accident by construction - why technology and regulations increase risk

Published in May 28th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in culture, education, insurance, sub-prime

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!In retrospect it is amazing how subprime loans could go so wrong? Who in their right mind could believe that real estate always goes up? For that matter, what about the dot.com craze and the new era? What makes [...]

Saturday Roundup - A safety moment (with taxes)!

Published in March 22nd, 2008

Posted by Jacob in announcements, carnival, economy, sub-prime, taxes

1 Comment

Today we’re going to one of the tax companies to get our state taxes done. Hopefully they will give us a discount since I already did the federal return myself. In 2007 we were apart time resident of two states. The tax consequences of that can be described in one word: PAIN! Mostly the problem [...]

Now you can have a 7 year car loan. Outrageous!!

Published in February 16th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in budgeting, consumerism, debt, economy, sub-prime

4 Comments

In an effort to sell cars to debt laden consumers Toyota is now offering 84 month car loans(*). The immediate effect is to lower the monthly payments. In the long run this could have two effects.
The first long term effect is an increase in the price of new cars (relative to inventory) just like lower [...]

Precision, accuracy and the importance of using the right model

Published in February 13th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in culture, economy, insurance, sub-prime

No Comments

One of the things I think about a lot is the difference between precision and accuracy or from a modeling perspective the difference between verification and validation. The difference between precision and accuracy can be understood in terms of measuring tools such as a clock. A precise clock measures time very consistently. For instance, if [...]

Are you prepared for stagflation?

Published in February 4th, 2008

Posted by Jacob in economy, inflation, investments, sub-prime

3 Comments

A few days ago I heard the recession word used for the first time as in “we are now in a recession”. The real question is whether this is going to be a short one (like they usually are) or whether the double whammy of an inflated stockmarket followed by an inflated housing market followed [...]

The problem with the economic stimulus package and what to do about it

Published in February 2nd, 2008

Posted by Jacob in economy, investments, money, sub-prime

10 Comments

Economically speaking, the government is a zero-sum game that takes money from one group and distributes it to another group with the intention to somehow improve the world. For instance, when the government engages in war, it gets money from taxpayers (through the IRS) and savers (by issuing and selling bonds) and gives it to [...]

My money lending experiences on Prosper

Published in December 24th, 2007

Posted by Jacob in investments, peer-to-peer lending, sub-prime

13 Comments

Disclaimer: I have been a prosper lender since July 2006. I have had close to $10000 invested in prosper and at one point I was in the top 1000 lenders in terms of portfolio sizes. However, I have stopped lending money on prosper. If there was a way to sell loans, I would do so [...]

Subprime bailout

Published in December 8th, 2007

Posted by Jacob in sub-prime

No Comments

Think back a few years.
Were you one one those people who lived within their means, bought and lived in a house you could afford on your income, and took out a conservative fixed rate mortgage and steadily paid it down.
Or were you one of those people who bought a bigger house than you could afford [...]