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The New Frugality

Does frugality still work? If so has it changed?

I learned a lot from my grandmothers. One ran a business with my grandfather and the other invested in dividend stocks. They were both ahead of their time in the 60s and 70s. I remember my grandmother showing me her stock certificates and explaining how dividends worked. She explained how she used dividends to support herself after my grandfather Tom passed away at the age of 58. I remember the railroad and utility stock certificates with their elaborate etchings and visiting her stockbroker to execute a trade well before computers arrived.

I didn’t get to really meet either of my grandfathers since they both died young. I did spend quite a bit of time with both grandmothers, either staying overnight or while visiting cousins nearby. By the time I was a young man, they both had lived through two world wars, the depression, Vietnam, the Womens and Civil Rights movements, the Kennedy assassination, 1973 and 1974 energy crisis, inflation, cold wars, and multiple recessions. As savers and investors they had seen some setbacks.

The Old Frugality

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Why you should stop checking your stocks every day.

11/18 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

I purchased my first mutual fund about 6 months before Black Monday in 1987. We didn’t have the internet or online investing. Not even email! That was so sweet. Imagine going through your workday largely uninterrupted. When I was a field employee in my first real job, pretty much everything came through the US mail. Our 401(k) statements came quarterly. Savings Bonds were in a drawer, and mutual fund statements came monthly, but only after I had consolidated a few of them into a brokerage account.

Then everything changed.

First came 24/7 cable news with tickers, then in the 90s things really took off with the introduction of websites like Yahoo Finance. In the late 90s everyone was talking about or buying some sort of tech stock. Then they would watch the stocks along with their company stocks or mutual funds in online portfolio trackers. Most didn’t actually link to your investment account yet, but you could manually enter your shares and ticker symbols. [Read more…] about Why you should stop checking your stocks every day.

It’s An Emergency.

07/18 by The Frug Leave a Comment

For investors, the time is now to put together an emergency fund that’s more than just cash.

Preppers be Prepping

Just before I left the country with the family on vacation I reflected on how fortunate we’ve been, saving and investing during a bull market. Index funds including; S&P 500, International, emerging markets, real estate investment trusts, and bond indexes; have all grown during the second longest bull market in history. 2009-2018

This growth over the past 9 years can make investors complacent. 401K millionaires feel like geniuses, what they’re really experiencing is the power of compound interest during a sustained period of growth. I also realize the market could enter bear territory at any time (a correction of 20% or more), which many believe it’s overdue for. The fact is, no one can predict when these market downturns occur. This always seems to be the case. Past summer holidays have included front row seats for Brexit and the EU debt crisis. It turns out these were both distant, false alarms and the bull just kept on running.

The sky was not falling. Would I be ready if it did?

Through all this I stayed heavily invested in low fee total stock market index funds, letting it ride, reinvesting dividends. Even though I’m financially independent and working less than full-time, I hold only about 20% of my total investment portfolio in bonds and cash. Which is considered aggressive by many common allocation models. I keep a 30% allocation in low fee bond index funds, in my retirement accounts where dividends can be reinvested and compound tax free.

It seems odd that I’d take an aggressive stance at my age (56!) especially since I I’ve lived through several large market declines and recessions including 2001 and 2008. During those periods I stayed fully invested in the market as well, and have benefited. This includes the period some called “the lost decade” in investing 2000 through 2009 when the S&P 500 recorded its worst ever 10 year performance. However, that poor performance only hurt you if you were pulling money out of the market during that period.

For those that stayed fully invested and purchased stocks and bond funds in the market during these years, they’ve done well, but could say they have some battle scars. [Read more…] about It’s An Emergency.

All the stuff we didn’t buy.

04/18 by The Frug 2 Comments

How to save a ton on Amazon without falling into the online consumption spiral.

By Brad Beckstrom

Is Amazon getting too good? We’ve been happy with Amazon Prime, especially the perks of membership like two day delivery, unlimited movies and music, even unlimited photo storage. If you’re going to pay for Amazon Prime membership, make sure you take advantage of all the included services.

Unfortunately, over time we’ve started to see Amazon creep up as a higher percentage of our spending, showing up more frequently on our credit card bills. Usually just as a single line without much information about what we purchased or which Amazon service we purchased it from.

Example
3/20 Amazon.com AMZN.COM/BILL WA 44.27

We use Amazon to price check most purchases, especially any household staples that we have dropped off at our doorstep using Amazon Prime. I usually compare against Costco prices I’ve saved in Evernote or on Google Shopper so we’re not only getting better price on many items, I get to stay out of stores that give me hives. Staying out of stores is a good way to avoid impulse purchases. This was always a problem for my wife at Target, or myself at the hardware store. We’ve dialed back on impulse purchases over the years.

The issue now with Amazon is that they’re making things too easy. They just started offering same-day delivery in our area on many items. They’ve gotten good at making recommendations based on our purchase history. I find myself jumping on the site to do a quick price check, or reordering a case of paper towels etc., and seeing something I remembered we could use.

Stop

There are a lot of these lately. At first Amazon was great, we could quickly reorder household items and simultaneously check the price, online. Amazon would also save all of our purchases so we could go back and remember what kind of furnace filters we used. For example, furnace filters should be replaced every three months. Years ago I remember actually running to the Home Depot and buying three overpriced furnace filters whenever I needed to. By doing some research and ordering a case of these filters on Amazon, I save about 30 to 40% and can switch brands depending on what’s the best deal. I also saved myself a trip to Home Depot. How much is an hour of time worth? Think about that on your way to and from a store for a single item, make sure you include, time to park, gas wasted, time searching for the item, and standing in line to purchase it.

It’s better on Amazon or is it? [Read more…] about All the stuff we didn’t buy.

Welcome to My Demise.

04/18 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Some simple steps you can take to put your affairs in order, well before they need to be.

By Brad Beckstrom

It’s An Emergency.

Sounds like the title of every email I get asking for political contributions. No donations requested here. I’m talking about a real emergency, you just kicked the bucket, vanished in the Amazon, or no longer have a solid grasp on your first name.

Welcome to my eventual demise.

Don’t feel bad, it’s something that none of us get to avoid. We all know someone that left us too soon or someone still going strong in their 90s. We don’t get to choose. If you’re old enough maybe you’ve had to deal with the estate of a relative or family member in a nursing home.

However, something has changed. When my mom passed, most of her financial information could fit in a single file folder. Things have gotten a bit more complicated thanks to the cloud, online banking, investing, social media, smartphones.

“ Where did Brad stash those bitcoins? They must be around here somewhere.”

I can imagine just dealing with passwords for all these accounts, devices, would be a bit of a nightmare for anyone. I’ve been using a program called 1Password for about five years. There are about 1000 passwords and secure notes in the app. And where do I keep the password to the password manager? Well, I finally got around to setting up a family trust and organizing all this stuff.

Nobody enjoys writing about their own demise. Once I started working through it, I realized this was a pretty efficient way to organize your finances, imagining someone else having to figure it all out. What could I do to make this easier for them? I decided this would be a positive thing and started drafting a welcome letter, well, a “welcome to my demise” letter.

It’s not just those final moments of your life you need to think about. Many of us are living longer but those last several years can be pretty rough. You need to think about what would happen if your communication or your memory became very limited. I did this a bit backwards. About a year ago, we put together a revocable trust and will and now I’m just getting around to a welcome letter, that includes all the important details that may not be included, including where to find a copy. [Read more…] about Welcome to My Demise.

The Last Safe Investment

11/17 by The Frug 2 Comments

By Brad Beckstrom

There’s this constant buzz, the stock market is overvalued, a major crash is coming, interest rates are going up, homes are overvalued. If you read all of these headlines, you get the feeling there are no “truly safe” investments. If you’re striving for financial independence, these types of alerts and headlines can really get to you. They used to really bother me.

Over the past few years I’ve been steadily working on what I call the high quality, low information diet. The 2016 election set me back a bit, but I’m on the road to recovery. The news notifications are off, emails are being rounded up and unsubscribed, I’m getting higher quality news and information on my own terms.

Traditional Investing

If we can free up time, by removing distractions, then we can invest it elsewhere. Let’s start with traditional investing. I used to subscribe to multiple investing e-mail newsletters. I think I even paid for a few of them! I’ve unsubscribed manually, and using a tool called unroll me. Once in awhile they still find me and I marvel at all of the investing advice out there. Everything from, microcap stocks, crypto currencies, precious metals, the list goes on. What I take away from this deluge of information now, is to go in the opposite direction. Instead of expanding into new areas of investing I’ve chosen to vastly simplify my investing strategy, 4 low fee index funds, freeing up even more time for safer investments.

The Safest Investment
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