Just saw the following comment to my Goals post:

Hi, just reviewing your goals. Curious why you would not count your house equity as part of your savings. If you truly live the dream of cashing out and moving abroad, you can count on that equity to help along the way. I’m same age, similar goals, but have 2 kids so about 12 years from “retirement” as I need to get the kids grown and out of high school. What was your decision to go with ibonds? why not keep in stocks, which return historical rates higher than 6%?

thanks. Joe

Since I’ve been remiss in posting over the last week or so, I thought I’d answer this one at least…

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I’m off to my parents for a few days in New York. I may be able to write from there but no guarantees)

I hope Santa was good to you all!

As I mentioned earlier, we bought a 2004 F150 to replace our 2005 coming off-lease. Ended up going through a private seller, was around $1,500 cheaper than similar vehicles at a dealer. It has 19k miles so there is still factory warranty, it’s very clean and hasn’t been abused.

We decided to take the 1.99% credit card financing route. Had to deposit the check in our checking account so we could get a certified check. Going to be next Friday before the funds clear. (I love banks…) We’ll be able to pay off about 1/2 of it without totally wiping out our savings. The rest will come out of cash flow over the next couple of months.

As I’ve mentioned before my wife’s job is not stable. She works for one of the Big-3 and is looking at an 8 or so % cut in staff in her dept. One of the perks of her working there is we get (or used to…) some good deals on lease vehicles. Typically the leases are based on employee price, occassionally with some additional discount. They are one year, unlimited mileage leases and include insurance and maintenance in the price. The payments are deducted from her paycheck. We can normally get one vehicle per year but for the last two have been enjoying two because of a great deal they offered on a supplemental lease. We also keep a 1990 Honda in reserve just in case (although it is currently in need of some work and I don’t really consider it reliable enough for a daily driver).

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Went to check my HSBC balance today and noticed they’ve bumped their interest rate to 4.25%. That’s the best I’ve seen anywhere and certainly kicks the crap out of Virtualbanks 3.55% rate. I imagine some of the other banks will follow suit shortly but so far I’ve been very happy with HSBC and plan to keep using them as my primary bank. I may even just close my Virtualbank account, especially now that I’ve linked my TreasuryDirect account to HSBC and Netbank.

Kind of a pity that my current 0% balance is coming due and we haven’t gotten any new offers. The best I’ve seen recently is 1.99% for the life of the balance which isn’t bad but is not enough of a return after tax to make it worth my while.

For those of you who don’t have an account already there is a $25 account opening bonus available. Details (courtesy of FatWallet):

http://hsbcdirect.com/1/start.htm
Promo Code: start

The Consumer Price Index fell big in November (.6 %, the fastest rate in 56 years). This is mainly due to gas prices falling. I don’t expect the trend to last though since I’ve noticed gas prices are up by 10-15 cents a gallon in the last couple of weeks and natural gas is through the roof with the cold snap we’ve been having in the Midwest and East. Overall it’s not surprising given the 1.2% increase in Sept (due to energy prices mainly).

Will be interesting to see how the trend pans out since the new rate for IBonds in April will be set based on the annualized difference between October and March’s CPI-U numbers. If the CPI stays relatively flat then we won’t see the tasty rate we got in November.

For now I plan to stay the course and continue to make monthly purchases until at least April. If the new rates aren’t attractive then I’ll find another long-term vehicle to invest our early retirement funds in. (perhaps muni’s)

is up @ WealthJunkie

I hadn’t heard of this site before, going to have to check it out…

When my wife’s doctor botched her surgery back in August he felt guilty… So when she went in for a follow up visit he told her not to pay his bill (nearly $400), he also gave her a gift certificate ($100) to a spa next door to his office. He didn’t have to do this (mistakes happen and no, we’re not interested in suing him, she’s made a full recovery) but it was a nice gesture.

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I’ve decided to take the plunge and attempt a transition to polyphasic sleeping.

I’ve started a new blog at my-extra-life.com to chronicle my results. Wish me luck! I’ll be posting there multiple times daily as I attempt to make the transition.

Fell asleep early tonight and woke up around 11. Since I had some quiet time to myself I did some surfing. I came across Steve Pavlina’s blog today. Interesting stuff. He takes a very holistic approach towards, well everything…

Reading his blog was inspiring to me. While I am not a very spiritual person or a deep thinker, there are a couple of things I think I might like to try:

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