Taking Early Retirement

I Retired Early | You Can Too!

November 9, 2010
by Jeremiah
0 comments

French Early Retirement – Why Are They Pissed?

You have to laugh at what happened last month in France. Riots everywhere. The entire country was shut down. No garbage pickups, no oil tank ships could dock and pump fuel, no busses, airline porters were all gone, airline travellers were schlepping their own bags to the airport, the whole country was shut down.

Why?

They, the French politicians, wanted to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. Oh – Boo Hoo! Please let me get a hankie! I need to dry my tears.

This was not so much about raising the retirement age as it was a union busting measure. The unions control France, and a lot of European countries. You couldn’t get anything done in France in October because all the union organizers were protesting about the retirement age being increased from 60 to 62 and the union folks were upset that the government was trying to break the union stranglehold on the country.

It almost worked. But the proposal passed by a narrow margin and the new retirement age is 62. The French get full retirement at 62 and I have to wait until I am 66.

Unless John Boehner has his way and does away with Social Security all together. Of course that might be the day that the folks from the National Rifle Association (NRA) get out their guns and do away with John. That would really be a riot.

Can you see why I am so upset?

===============================================

For Taking Early Retirement (TER), I hope you are enjoying a great retirement or are close to that day!

Jeremiah John

You can follow me on Twitter, by clicking here.

Would you do me a favor? Take this poll.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.

If you need more information on RSS feeds, see my article at: my RSS feed.

November 8, 2010
by Jeremiah
0 comments

Where to Invest or Not – Heard of John Pugsley?

If I were to describe my approach to retirement investing in one word, it would be unconventional. I march to the beat of a different drummer. Some would say that there is no drummer. I’m just marching. 🙂

In the fall of 2008, I found this web page: The Sovereign Society . It was eye opening to say the least. The web page talked about something I had never heard about and I was interested. Very interested.

The web page discusses derivatives.

I had received The Sovereign Society newsletter pitch letters about derivatives, going back to late 2006. This was way before derivatives became a household word – way before.

Now to be perfectly honest, I had heard of John Pugsley. And back in the early eighties, I had subscribed to a newsletter that John wrote. It was a little too “different” for me and I did not renew. But as newsletters will do, they kept me on their list and sent me info from time to time.

Something caught my eye in one of the newsletter pitch letters in the early nineties and I subscribed again. The price was much the same as it is now – $49. It was ten years later, but the story was much the same. I tracked the investments but I was busy raising a family and other things got in the way and I let me subscription lapse.

Fast forward to 2008. I saw this web page and it clicked. I don’t know if it is because I am in my fifties or what, but the writing was on the wall and John and his staff started making a lot more sense. Continue Reading →

October 22, 2010
by Jeremiah
0 comments

Early Retirement – Where Is The Stock Market Heading?

First, you already know where the market is going if you read my last article. It’s going sideways. But I want to show you why. Take a look at this graph. It’s called a FRED graph, which stands for Fereral Reserve Economic Data.

5 Year FRED

So what are we looking at? This graph shows what banks are doing with their money. If the graph is over 1.0, then banks are taking deposits and lending the money. In other words, money is flowing in the economy. It is what the President of the United States has been trying to do for over a year. If the graph is under 1.0, like it is now, it means that the money is not circulating. Or in other words, the money is sitting at the bank waiting . . .

So why do I mention this chart and what does it have to do with you? This chart shows you that if banks are not lending money and money is not in circulation, the markets are going to continue doing what they have been doing. Going up, going down, going up, going down. It’s hard to make money for retirement when the market does what it has been doing lately.

So how do you know when to get back into the market? Wait for the graph to show movement on the upside. Watch for a break out to the 1.0 level and you’ll know that banks are lending and money is going into investments and markets.

Naturally you can Google M1 Money Multiplier and go to the St Louis Fed for this chart. You can also change the time line on the chart so you can see the activity for the past 10 years or only the last year. Here is the chart for the past year.
1 Year FRED

The one year chart will allow you to see the direction of the market so you don’t get go through any whip saw by investing too soon. And it will also be a good indicator of when the market might go south.

This is the sort of info you need at your hands when investing for the long term in this or any market.
===============================================

For Taking Early Retirement (TER), I hope you are enjoying a great retirement or are close to that day!

Jeremiah John

You can follow me on Twitter, by clicking here.

Would you do me a favor? Take this poll.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.

If you need more information on RSS feeds, see my article at: my RSS feed.

October 20, 2010
by Jeremiah
0 comments

Retire Early – Is Inflation A Problem Right Now?

I want to show you a video that I wish I had done, but didn’t. It is a video of Frank Byrd CFA of Fielder Research & Management. He shows past history going back to the 70s and has a correlation to what is going on in our markets today.

Frank Byrd talks Inflation: Past, Present and Possible Future from Frank Byrd on Vimeo.

The video is only 30 minutes long, but it is worth watching until the end. At the end of the video Frank mentions shortages. You will recall a recent post I made titled Got Enough Bread?

He says that we will most likely have shortages in energy and agriculture. Does he have other predictions? Well let’s see . . . “Definitely don’t buy bonds.” And Byrd argues stocks are generally a losing proposition. Stocks dropped 40% between 1973 and 1974. The time to buy stocks was in 1975 after inflation expectations have changed. Byrd loves gold. If that sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote about the gold ETF in my last article, How Can I Make Money in the Market?. Talking about gold, he said, “If you’re bearish in gold, you’re bullish on fiat currencies. I don’t know anyone in his right mind who would take that trade.”

I liked the video because it backs up what I have been saying lately and it has a lot of graphs to show you what you need to be watching in today’s financial world.

===============================================

For Taking Early Retirement (TER), I hope you are enjoying a great retirement or are close to that day!

Jeremiah John

You can follow me on Twitter, by clicking here.

Would you do me a favor? Take this poll.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.

If you need more information on RSS feeds, see my article at: my RSS feed.