Wandering Money Pig - A journey of early retirement and FIRE (financial independence retire early)

  Let power of compounding do the heavy lifting! Warren Buffett , the Oracle of Omaha, once said that in order to get rich like him, then one must start investing right away.  He elaborated that if he was coming out of college and had $10,000 to invest, he would use the compounding effects of this money to let money earn more money. This, in essence, is the most important part of investing the right way:  Letting compounding interest to do most of the heavy lifting for you.   If done the right way, that is to buy/hold and investing for the long haul (on top of compounding interest), then anyone can retire early and be financially independent. In this post, I’d like to share my thoughts on starting investing as early as possible, to achieve FIRE (financial independence retire early). During my own FIRE journey, I always wished I had started earlier than my late thirties, to really ramp up my retirement savings.  Had I understood the importance of compounding inte...

  Beautiful morning at Huntington Beach State Park, SC One of the biggest pleasant surprises of our AirBnB condo rental, where we stayed from December 2021 until February 2022, was the South Carolina All Park Pass .  This pass allows free entrance to all the state parks in South Carolina. Prior to our visit to Murrells Inlet, which is a village about 8 miles south of Myrtle Beach, I had seriously considered purchasing the same pass.  I was glad I didn’t, as the rental provided the pass free of charge! Thanks to this pass, we ended up visiting and revisiting both the Huntington Beach State Park and Myrtle Beach State Park multiple times.  We guessed the pass ended up saving us at least $200 on entrance fees during our 3 months stay.   Note :  entrance fee is $8 per person to either of these state parks. Huntington Beach State Park is located in the fishing village of Murrells Inlet.  Murrells Inlet, known as the “Seafood Capital of South Carolina”, wa...

  Stock market will fluctuate.  Keep invested at all times. Warren Buffett:  “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes.” Recently I was reading a finance article that reported how more than 60% of people who sold stocks during the pandemic market crash of 2020, regretted their decision.  Many of the people who regretted their decision were the ones who got out of the stock market but never went back in, as the market rebounded. For many of these people, sitting on the sidelines with cash, turned out to be a bad decision.  If they had stayed the course, the market would’ve recovered all its losses in about 4 months.  Instead, many lost money when they sold when stock prices were lower during market sell offs in February/March.  They then lost more money when the stock market rebounded by July, but they were not invested to realize those gains… In this post, I’d like to discuss why it’s importan...

  Murrells Inlet Marshwalk, SC Our pack (my wife, myself and our Pomeranian Toby) was very fortunate to spend 3 months in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina from December 2021 until February 2022.  When we were researching for a place to stay via AirBnB or Vrbo, we couldn’t believe our luck at finding something that was near Myrtle Beach, that also allows dogs. The last time we visited Myrtle Beach was in November of 2003.  We had sold our condo in New York City, and was getting ready to leave for Hawaii.  Before leaving for Hawaii, we wanted to visit popular East Coast destinations like Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head Island, Orlando, Miami, Key Largo, and Key West. We had made a quick stopover on our way down to Orlando (and on our way up to New York) that November.  We rented a one bedroom condo high rise and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay overlooking the majestic ocean laid out in front of us. We always had fond memories of Myrtle Beach area as we ate some delicious J...