Category Archives: Lifestyle

Why Finding a Good Financial Planner Is So Hard

Leave a reply

At a meetup today, several people were sharing how frustrating it has been to find a good financial planner. And I totally get it. Finding good professional help is tough in any industry, but it is especially challenging in personal finance where many people lack confidence, the terminology is intentionally confusing, and the incentives are often stacked against the client. The fundamental dichotomy is this: if you know enough to find the right professional and ask the right questions, you probably don’t need them. After all, for most people, personal finance isn’t actually all that complicated.

How Planners Get Paid

At its core, financial planning is a service business. The planner wants to make money, and the client wants to pay as little as possible. That tension has created a whole menu of compensation models and, sadly, some of them are far better for the planner than for you.

Commission-Based “Advisors.” These are the people who only get paid when they sell you something and, on first glance, they look the cheapest because they don’t charge you anything!  Their incentive is to earn the biggest possible commission, not to grow your wealth. Teachers have been especially vulnerable here, with high-fee annuities shoved into 403(b) plans. Early in my career, I fell for this. A commission-based advisor showed up at school and filled my portfolio with variable annuity products that sounded great but were really designed to pay him. It cost me years of growth and some expensive surrender fees to get out. I learned quickly: if someone is being paid to sell you something, expect them to sell you something, whether you need it or not.

Assets Under Management (AUM). – Another common model that is slightly less problematic is charging a percentage of your portfolio, usually around one percent. That sounds small, but on a $500,000 portfolio it’s $5,000 every year — $100,000 over twenty years, not even counting the lost growth. I ran the math once and realized that one percent shaved off my returns was the equivalent of buying a luxury vacation every year, but for the planner instead of me and my family.

Subscription Services. – A newer option is paying a flat monthly or annual subscription for access and advice. This makes costs predictable and avoids the commission/AUM conflict. The downside is inconsistency.  Not all services are equally strong, and if you don’t use them often, you end up paying for more than you need. Still, for busy seasons of life, it can be a good fit.

Fee-Only, Project-Based. – My favorite option is hiring planners for specific projects. I’ve done this myself (once for retirement withdrawal strategies, another time to check my work on tax optimization strategies). It felt good to pay for exactly what I needed, get an expert’s input, and move on without strings attached. An added bonus is the “checks and balances” inherent in having different professionals review my situation rather than relying on, and trusting, a single generalist.

One important detail: always ask if the planner is a fiduciary. Fiduciaries are legally required to put your interests first. Advisors working under the weaker “suitability” standard can recommend products that are “good enough” for you but excellent for their paycheck.

My Takeaway

I sat down and learned a lot of this stuff on my own before I discovered the financial independence movement, but this is where the FI community has really helped me.  FI encourages people to educate themselves and provides resources and a community to do so.   The more you know, the less you have to rely on expensive intermediaries and the less vulnerable you are to being taken advantage of.  I still DIY most of my finances but occasionally bring in experts for a second opinion. The peace of mind is worth it for me (and even more so for Katie).

I do worry about friends and relatives who aren’t interested in personal finance and don’t take the time to learn. The hard truth is that finding a good planner is difficult, not because ethical professionals don’t exist, but because the ones who profit most can afford to have the biggest marketing budgets, fanciest offices, and show up on the first page of Google searches. If you’re impressed by a sharp suit, a fancy lobby, or free swag, stop and ask yourself how it’s being paid for. Spoiler: it comes from clients.

The more you educate yourself, the easier it is to cut through the noise. A few simple questions can help: How do you get paid? Are you a fiduciary at all times? What services do you provide, and what will they cost in total? If someone can’t answer clearly, don’t just walk away.  Run!  After all, whether you manage things yourself, lean on community resources, or hire fee-only experts for targeted needs, the goal is the same: make sure your money is working for you, not for your planner’s commission check.

Has anyone found a good solution to financial planning?

Winding Down to FIRE

1 Reply

If you spend any time in the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) community, you’ll hear a ton of acronyms and categories: Lean FI, Coast FI, Barista FI, Fat FI, and more. In case you’re not fluent in FI-ese yet:

  • Lean FI – Reaching financial independence with a minimalist lifestyle and relatively low expenses.
  • Coast FI – Saving enough early on so that, without adding more to investments, compounding alone will carry you to full retirement age. You can “coast” by working only to cover current expenses.
  • Barista FI – Hitting a point where you can cover most expenses from investments but still choose to work part-time (often in lower-stress or more enjoyable jobs) for extra income and benefits.
  • Fat FI – Achieving financial independence with plenty of cushion—enough to maintain (or even upgrade) your lifestyle without worrying about expenses.

A lot of FI talk focuses on hitting a specific number and then leaving work entirely. But there’s a catch: studies show a high failure rate for people who go from full-time careers to nothing overnight. It’s like slamming on the brakes at highway speed—it’s jarring, and it doesn’t always end well.  High powered, type A personalities can only sit on the beach or play golf for so long.

Personally, I think the ideal career trajectory looks more like a bell curve: ramping up in intensity to a peak, then gradually declining as you learn how to relax and explore what retirement can be.  So, even though I left my last W2 job at 50, for me, the RE stands for “recreational employment” rather than “retire early.”

My career path ended up looking pretty close to that:

  • I spent years working multiple jobs, including high-stress school administration roles where 80-hour weeks weren’t uncommon.  During a lot of this time I was working other jobs on the side to sock away more money in investment accounts or going to school to give me more career options.
  • Eventually, I moved back into the classroom, but at the University level instead of in K-12.  Thai was still busy, but far less stressful (Committee work was tedious, but not difficult).  A lot more flexibility in my schedule offered me the chance to explore additional side hustles and types of travel.
  • Next I left the University and shifted to full-time consulting.  I was traveling almost weekly to visit schools and work with teachers and administrators around the country.  Lots of fun, plenty of opportunities for travel (and travel rewards), but time consuming and tough on the family.
  • Over the last few years, as I’ve approached FI, I’ve tried to scale back my consulting work—aiming for just two weeks a month and combining it with more fun travel that Katie and/or the boys can join in on.

I’ll admit I’m still vulnerable to “one more year syndrome” or the lure of an interesting contract in a fun location. But looking ahead, I want to shrink my workload even more—maybe one consulting gig a month, and eventually none at all, so I can focus on overseas exploration and our slow travel.

The lesson? Financial Independence, and retirement in general, shouldn’t be a cliff you jump off. It should be a slope you walk down—at whatever pace feels right to you.

How Much Did the First 24 Hours in Omaha Cost?

Leave a reply

We’re one full day into our first “slomad” journey and are settling into our new home in Omaha, Nebraska. I get a lot of questions about costs, and, even though we’re renting furnished places, I’ve also been curious about what unexpected expenses might pop up during these moves. So here’s a breakdown of everything we spent in our first 24 hours in Omaha:

Lodging

We pulled into town around noon and moved into our place. It’s a fully furnished, utilities-included two-bedroom apartment right on the edge of the Old Market neighborhood in downtown Omaha. At $1,500 a month, that comes out to about $50 per day of lodging.

Exercise

A couple of blocks away, we checked out the neighborhood YMCA. Our building has a decent workout room, but Katie and I swim a lot and we wanted access to a pool, plus classes and the chance to be social. I bargained away the joining fee by agreeing to pay the first month up front. For both of us, with full access to every YMCA in the region, it’s $75/month—or $2.50 for the first day.

Library

On the way back, we ducked into Omaha’s downtown public library. It was spacious, modern, and definitely a place we’ll return to when we want a work spot outside the apartment. We signed up for cards for $0 and now have access to meeting rooms, printers, copiers, and, of course, endless digital and physical media.

Household Goods & Groceries

Our next trip was to grab some household essentials and groceries. Honestly, I was worried we’d need a lot, but the apartment was remarkably well equipped.  They even gave us starter sets of consumables like paper towels, soap, and laundry detergent. That said, we still picked up a Brita filter, a laundry basket, a drying rack, and a few other upgrades, most of which will stay behind when we move out.

  • Groceries: $52
  • Household odds and ends: $121 → amortized over our stay: $1.15 for day one

Dinner Out

By the time we finished shopping (and skipped lunch), we were starving. Friends had suggested Pizza Ranch, a buffet I was skeptical of until we tried it. Yes, it’s family-friendly, but the food was solid: salad bar, pizza, fried chicken, dessert, the works. Maybe more than we should have eaten, but worth it 🙂  $37 for the two of us.

Free Fun

The next morning, I used the new gym membership, then Katie and I took a long walk around downtown, hung out at a park, and even tried out the public hammocks. Cost? $0

Day One Total: $152.15

So, what did we learn?

  • Furnished rentals can save big money. Filling a place from scratch adds up fast; Furnished Finder has already proven cheaper and easier.
  • Hidden costs still pop up. Even with a well-stocked apartment, there are always “little” things you want—like a water filter or a laundry basket—that need to be budgeted for.
  • Entertainment doesn’t have to cost much. Libraries, parks, and neighborhood walks are free, and they’re going to be a bigger part of our lifestyle as we check out different locations.
  • Life has a baseline cost. A chunk of this spending—food, exercise, even some household items—would have happened whether we were home or traveling.  Too often we look at all travel expenses as additional money out of pocket, but if I am buying groceries here, I am not buying them in Texas.  Even the monthly YMCA expense just replaces a gym membership that we cancelled last week.

When you look at it that way, traveling isn’t necessarily more expensive than staying put. In fact, with the right planning, it can be cheaper and a lot more fun.

Of course this was just day one in Omaha. We’re curious to see how the averages shake out as the days and weeks go on, but so far, the experiment looks promising 🙂

Stuff: The Other Four-Letter Word

Leave a reply

We’ve lived in our current home for twenty years. That’s two decades of books, birthday gifts, holidays, hobbies that didn’t stick, and random purchases that “might” come in handy… someday. Katie insists that compared to many of our friends, we’re practically minimalists—either because I’m too cheap to buy things in the first place or because I lack any sense of style when it comes to decorating.  If you know me, you know it’s probably both 🙂 

Still, two decades in one place adds up for anyone. And when you have a house, you have room to let things pile up. As George Carlin famously said, “A house is just a place to keep your stuff.” He had other words for stuff, but you get the idea. Now that we’re planning a life without a permanent house, we’ve had to confront a scary truth: something has to be done with all this “stuff.”

There are a lot of popular theories on the best way to downsize:

  • The Marie Kondo method: Does it bring you joy? (Spoiler: most of my stuff just brings me confusion.  What if I go back to a job I last held 15 years ago?  I might really want that…)
  • The one-year rule: If you haven’t used or worn it in the past year, it’s out.
  • The Storage Bin Challenge (my personal, unpopular idea): Everyone gets one big bin to keep items they value.  No-questions-asked. Then we swap rooms and decide what’s valuable in each other’s piles and throw EVERYTHING else away. This, I argue, removes the emotional attachment and speeds up the process. The family disagrees. Strongly.
  • The fire test: If the house burned down, would I pay to replace this?
  • If you didn’t think the fire test was dark enough: If I passed away, would the person cleaning out my house find any value in this?

For now, we don’t have to actually decide on everything. We’re keeping the house for our first year of nomadic travel, partly as a home base and partly as a very expensive storage unit. But just prepping for our older son to rent it this year has forced some tough decisions and a lot of trips to Half Price Books and the donation center.

So, what works for you? If you’ve downsized, what’s your secret weapon for letting go of stuff? Because one thing’s for sure—if this slow-travel adventure works out, we’ll need to learn the art of living with less.

Why Omaha? Did You Lose a Bet?

Leave a reply

When we told friends and family that our first “test drive” city for our slow-travel experiment was Omaha, Nebraska, we got a lot of raised eyebrows. Some people laughed. One person even asked me if we had lost a bet.  But the truth is, there are a lot of reasons to like Nebraska, and Omaha in particular.

First, although Katie has some family here and I have worked in the area off and on over the past couple of years, this corner of the country is still fairly new territory for us.  We’ve been to all 50 states on short trips, but we’ve never really dug into this part of the Midwest. That makes Omaha a perfect launchpad for road trips to underexplored places like Kansas City (hello, BBQ), the quirky roadside attractions of Iowa, and even the wide-open spaces of western Nebraska and South Dakota.

Second, the cost of living here is refreshingly low compared to what we’re used to in the Dallas area. For less than the monthly cost of our paid off suburban home, we can rent a two-story, furnished apartment in the heart of Omaha’s Old Market district—utilities included. This historic neighborhood is a mix of brick streets, art galleries, and local restaurants.  For our Texas friends, the best comparison I can think of is the Stockyards area in Fort Worth.   Plus it’s walkable to parks, shops, and even riverfront trails. That walkability matters, especially since we’re going to be sharing one car during our stay.

Third, Omaha has some surprises up its sleeve. There’s a thriving restaurant scene, one of the top-ranked zoos in the country, and because it is the largest city in hundreds of miles in any direction, a pretty  impressive live music and theater lineup.  Add in friendly Midwestern hospitality, and you’ve got a place that we think will be easy to settle into, even for just the fall semester.

Of course, the real reason we’re here is that this is just stop number one in our search for a “forever home.” We don’t know yet if Omaha will be the winner, but that’s the fun of slow travel.  We get to try on different lifestyles and locations for size. For now, we’re keeping an open mind and enjoying the adventure.