Comments on: Money goals and score keeping

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:58:22 +0000

Is it something to do with this?
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/986960

This link seems like a very ‘Jacoby’ document, but i’m not quite willing to bet money on it:)

By: jacqjolie

jacqjolie — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:32:34 +0000

I track money (spending and making) by # of months off it buys me or costs me at the spending rate that I’m expecting to have without a mortgage. Easy peasy. And strangely motivating.

By: Strick

Strick — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:00:09 +0000

I listed my average monthly expenses from most critical to least, then to future wants. My financial goals are (assuming a withdraw rate, I use 4%) the amounts of savings it would require to fund that next need/want. Numbers don’t mean much to me, but knowing I can cover food, electric and health insurance, but I’m not yet to clothing and entertainment. THis gives me a meaningful yardstick and makes it very clear how much work/money it takes to cover each expense, at which point I really can make a educated decision over whether its worth it.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:07:05 +0000

I’m with you on the dork front. I was much more interested when my car’s odometer turned 299,792.5km than when it turned 300,000.

By: woollyllama

woollyllama — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:44:00 +0000

Seriously, I can’t figure out the 969799 amount!

By: MyFinancialObjectives

MyFinancialObjectives — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:44:23 +0000

Thanks for the mention!!

Those are some ambitious goals, similar to ones I have!

Good names.. hmmm..how about…..Man I don’t know!!

By: Money Reasons

Money Reasons — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:48:30 +0000

I like working with numbers too! I call my goals milestones.

Like George above, I’m going to use yearly dividends payouts measured against the poverty levels in the U.S. as my milestone markers.

If your interested, I blogged about it, see
my alternative milestones!

By: deegee

deegee — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:40:22 +0000

Philip Brewer, I was actually doing that (living on a “subsistence” salary) for 17 months back in 2007-2008. I had purposely reduced my weekly hours from 20 to 12 because I could not stand the commute to my old office. I went from 3 days of about 6.5-7 hours to 2 days of 6 hours, getting me home a little sooner and ditching one day altogether.

My pay was enough to cover my bills with very little to spare but I also had considerable investment income along with my 401(k) and company stock intact (and growing).

I thought this arrangement would last me for a while but I grew tired of the commute even two days a week so I cashed out the company stock and retired in late 2008 at age 45. I now live off the additional investment income from the company stock’s proceeds I took while retaining the 401(k) rolled into an IRA.

By: Concojones

Concojones — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:22:36 +0000

Quote Jacob: “I wrote another post (but forgot the title) about replacing specific expenses like insurance, food, … with capital income one at a time.”
That’s also how I look at it. But I admit that numbers, although meaningless, have their charm too.

By: dougster77

dougster77 — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:17:48 +0000

Jacob,
They do have accounts with interest in gold. I have had an account at e-gold.com for a few years. The value of your account fluctuates with the daily value of spot gold.

By: Debbie M

Debbie M — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:16:51 +0000

Dang, I am not that creative.

I think I started with a percentage, working my way up to 10% of my income going toward charitable causes.

Then when the Roth IRA was invented, I starting working on keeping up with the new maximums so I could stay maxed out.

Then I picked a number that was the amount of savings I need to be financially independent if my pension goes bad. This number is still high and depressing! I love how a friend of mine recalculates how well he could live on his current savings. Last I heard, he was still working his way up through third-world countries.

Oh, another one is watching the day of my last mortgage payment move back in time as I add extra payments.

I guess I like watching my net worth cross 100K barriers, but it feels more like “watching” than working toward a goal because I have very little control over the markets (stocks, real estate valuations).

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:39:44 +0000

@Jan – Tracking it in gold would be depressing. On another note, it would be nice to have a bank account or bonds denominated in gold and paying interest in gold.

By: Jan

Jan — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:36:01 +0000

@AJ “Jacob, what or who would you leave your money to if you left an estate (other than your wife)?”

An ultra low withdrawal rate has other advantages: it further reduces your need to take risk, you can sacrifice return in order to hedge against catastrophes that are unlikely but not impossible, you won’t run out of funds in case spectacular life extension becomes possible in our lifetime, you have a growing stash of money that you can dip into if one day you want something really expensive (moon base, death ray, robot army, etc.)

I track my net portfolio in EUR, USD, GBP and gold. Sometimes it’s good for morale, sometimes not.

By: George Carlson

George Carlson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:16:25 +0000

Oh, and not only is the first one pi*10^5 truncated. It is also a prime number that is also a twin prime number.

By: George Carlson

George Carlson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:10:34 +0000

@Kevin M.
Obviously it is a “Flawless 18th C. Chinese Export Teapot.” =P

http://www.trocadero.com/stores/EastWest/items/969799/item969799.html

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:36:37 +0000

@Kevin M – Sorry, super dorks only

By: Kevin M

Kevin M — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:28:36 +0000

I’m too lazy to Google today, what is the “$969799 (super dork alert!)” figure?

I assume the plain old dork alert figure is Pi?

I like F/U money, or an F/U Fund.

We hit a pretty significant net worth goal last year, which was exciting for us since it happened faster than we thought it would – especially factoring in the market crash. I guess our next big goal is to pay off our last debt – the mortgage. But that will be awhile, so I’m setting interim goals that will gauge our progress.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:15:45 +0000

@AJ – Likely something that would protect the remaining parts of nature from human encroachment.

By: AJ

AJ — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:05:45 +0000

Jacob, what or who would you leave your money to if you left an estate (other than your wife)?

By: George

George — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:55:40 +0000

Rather than a net worth score, I’ve gone for an income score as a % of poverty level. At poverty level, we know it’s possible to sustain ourselves. Generally speaking, at 2x poverty level, one is “comfortable”, though not rich.

There are two problems I’ve encountered. First is that official US poverty levels are published late in the following year, so the data is a bit stale. And the second is that one may want to use a regional poverty level rather than the national. (Jacob blows his regional poverty level out of the water!)

However, one could also use an income-based measure with % of minimum wage.