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  Swayback #1 December 26th, 2013 marked the 10-year anniversary of a very special relationship.  The old girl in question has been so good to me and my family.  She's reliable, hard-working, and still a little pretty in spite of her advanced age.  Sure, she often has a "rode-hard-and-put-up-wet" look to her, but I don't mind.  Even though at times she feels unsteady and rickety, she still delivers one heck of a ride.  While I don't really "love" this aging wench, she does have a special place in my heart. Yeah, my 2002 Mitsubishi Galant has been very good to me!  Ten years ago we paid $10,500 for this "sweet" ride.  Since then, I have replaced the tires thrice, the timing belt twice, and the air condition once.  (I might have changed the tires four times, but I wanted to use the word "thrice.")  When I bought her, she had 46,000 miles on her; today she has over 257,000 miles!  Here she is:           The Chick Magnet Earlier this year...

Coming to a Tent Near You In mid-October we attended our niece's wedding in Tifton, Georgia.   We all enjoyed ourselves at the wedding, and since we're not working these days, we decided to spend a few days catching up with friends and relatives.  My wife and I really enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to hurry home to plan for a busy school week.  Instead, we were able to have some fun on our own schedule.  To build on that fun we decided to go for a camping trip to Jekyll Island, Georgia.  Not working* sure has its advantages!   Our Home for 4 Days   Now, I won't lie...I don't know much about camping, so I wasn't sure how the trip would go.  My wife has more camping experience than me, so I followed her lead as we set up camp.  All in all, there was nothing to it:  the tent went up in five minutes and the chairs were unfolded in five seconds.  We then graced our tent's entrance with a car floor mat and boom...home sweet home!   All throughout the night w...

It's almost 2014, so it's time to start planning for next year's taxes.  There are a few tax changes for 2014 that will affect our " free money ."  Here they are:   The  Standard Deduction  (married filing jointly)  will rise from $12,200 to  $12,400   The  Personal Exemption  will increase from $3,900 to  $3,950   The  10% Tax Bracket   will increase from $17,850 to  $18,150      The  Health Savings Account  maximum for a family will increase from $6,450 to  $6,550     *Use this   source  to create  YOUR  tax plan.   Here is our 2014 tax plan.  As you can see, the first $34,250 of income should be tax-free thanks to our standard deduction, 3 personal exemptions and 1 child tax credit.  We then add in the remaining 10% tax bracket ($18,150 - $10,000 = $8,150) since our goal is to limit our taxable income to the 10% bracket.   Ideally, our AGI for 2014 will be $42,400 since it will result in a federal income tax of $815 ($8,150 * 10%).  Finally, we ...

Melanie writes:     "Hi! I discovered your blog thru a comment you left on another blog. I have been crunching numbers and reading for the past day. I love your concept of never exceeding the 10% tax bracket! I had never heard of that. I do have a question though. I know you have been at this for years. But if I am not at a point where I would want to withdraw from my IRA/tax-deferred savings, would you still suggest doing it the way you have outlined here? I notice you said that your family didn't start the 72(t) withdrawals until this year. I wanted to know what your strategy was up to this point to maximize savings and minimize taxes. My thought was to contribute enough so that my income doesn't exceed the $52k  $42K* . (I use that number because my family structure is like yours, married filing jointly + 1 child.) Any input would be appreciated. I am in awe! "        My response:       Thanks for the questions and the kind words.  I have to agree with you in that ...

Alright, questions from readers!  The first set of questions come from Laura: 1.)  How in the world do you live on $1,500 a month? (I thought I read that you pulled $18k from your $457.) At this point, we don't live on $1,500 a month ($18,000 a year).  Our goal this year is to live on  $51,750...I'll explain that figure later in my answer to question #4.  The $18,000 figure (actually $18,375) is the amount that we are pulling from our IRA accounts using the substantially equal periodic payments ( 72T ) provision of the tax code.  We started doing this in January of 2013 and we will continue taking these withdrawals until we turn 59.5.   Let's look at the numbers:  $51,750 - $18,375 = $33,375.  To get to our $51,750 figure we withdraw $33,375 from our 457 accounts.  For income, we withdraw from  our 457 accounts as needed; however, we will make sure that we will not surpass $52,000.  When you pull from a 457 account, be aware that there is a 20%  withholding required by la...

View Larger Map Happy Summer Greetings  to my billions of Millionaire Educator readers out there!  Most of you are unaware that in mid-January of this year, I took a job teaching Spanish at a high school in a neighboring county.  Naturally, I had to weigh the pros and cons of the opportunity before I could commit 4.5 months of my life to the job.   The job had some deal-breaking aspects:  the school was a "bad" school located 55 minutes / 48 miles from my house, and to make matters worse the school day began at 7:15 for teachers.  In order to cut down on my commuting, I talked to my brother-in-law about crashing at his house once or twice a week, and he said "Sure."   While having a place to stay would greatly reduce my commuting time, it also meant that some nights I would not be home with my beautiful wife and awesome son.  Nevertheless, I bit the bullet and took the job knowing that I could make it worthwhile.      All the cons aside, the teaching assignment had...

  Before we accepted fabulous teaching jobs in Echols County , Georgia, we worked and lived in LaGrange, Georgia for seven years.  Like most people we blindly subscribed to cable television and internet from our local provider, Charter Communications.  Over the years we started feeling a general dissatisfaction with the service; there were frequent internet outages, increasing fees, endless TV commercials, and terrible customer service.  In 2009, our monthly cable and internet bill was $130 a month.  Sometime around 2005 we started using Vonage for our house phone for the seemingly low rate of $33 a month for unlimited U.S calling.  While we were satisfied with Vonage’s service, it further added to our bloated monthly expenses.  Here is a breakdown of what we used to pay:   Old Services Month Year Cable & Internet $130 $1,560 Vonage Phone $33 $396 Total $163 $1,956 For nearly two grand a year we expected to get a lot more satisfaction from our phone, cable and internet services...