July 2016 - Gen Y Finance Guy

Living Below Your Means by Expanding Them

Gen Y Finance Guy July 31, 2016 Financial Freedom 17 Comments

In the early stages of your financial journey it probably makes sense to be expensed focused as you work to build a solid financial foundation. But I caution you to resist the temptation to fall trap to the extreme frugality path to wealth. It works for some people, and that is great, but most of us just are not wired for that kind of optimization. Many of you reading this are not going to find much joy or success trying to cut your expenses to the bone, all in the name of financial freedom. You will never hear me preach about giving up the $4/day latte. Nor will you ever see a post about coupons or how to reuse your …

Monthly Goal Check-in #6 – @ 7/1/2016

Gen Y Finance Guy July 25, 2016 Goal Setting 7 Comments

As I write this monthly goal check-in we are officially 183 days into 2016 (or ~50% complete). Most people started the year off strong with their New Year’s resolutions for 2016. Well, at least the 45% of people who actually set New Year’s resolutions (US based statistics). The low participation rate isn’t even the worst news, of those 45%, 1 in 3 have already given up by the end of January. This means that 70% of Americans have already failed either by default or giving up. I don’t want you or I to be a part of that 70% group. If you’re reading this, then you’re probably still on track and fired up to reach your goals, I know I …

Equity Portfolio Update #3 [+11.7% YTD @ 6-30-16]

Gen Y Finance Guy July 18, 2016 Investing 6 Comments

We have officially closed out half the year, thus the need for another peek into the equity portfolio. As many of you know that have been reading for any length of time, every month I put together a very detailed financial report that details out gross income, expenses, net worth, savings rate, and progress on the 7 year 3 month mortgage pay off goal. Since the report already pushes 3,000 – 4,000 words a month, I thought it would be more appropriate to provide details of the equity portfolio in an entirely separate post. Also, I don’t really see the benefit of updating this on a monthly basis, quarterly should be just fine. One of the guiding tenets of this blog …

June 2016 – Detailed Financial Report #18 – Net Worth $399,946 [+25.9% for 2016 YTD]

Gen Y Finance Guy July 11, 2016 Monthly Financial Reports 18 Comments

GYFG here checking in for the June monthly financial report. If you have been reading these reports for a while you will notice that I introduce each month with the same intro month after month. I do this for two reasons; a) for the newbies to the site (which make up about 50% of the sites traffic); and b) to remind everyone what these reports are all about. By all means if you have read the intro at least once, then please feel free to skip down to the “Summary of June 2016” section where the new content begins (click the orange link to be taken there automatically). For those of you that are new around this corner of the internet, I …

Mutual Funds Are Stealing Your Money

Gen Y Finance Guy July 7, 2016 Investing 15 Comments

The other day I was talking with a friend about saving and investing (my favorite conversation). This friend of mine, Jamie, was trying to wrap her arms around her companies 401K and its investment offerings. Jamie wants to start contributing to her 401K to save for retirement and get the company match, but remembered a conversation she overheard about how I hated mutual funds. She wanted to know specifically why I was not very fond of them. I went on to explain to Jamie that it’s not all mutual funds I despise, just those actively managed ones that are riddled with high fees and under performance. I told her the thing that peeved me most was the fact that the excessive fee they charge is …

Putting the Mortgage to Bed – Year 2 of 7 [UPDATE]

Gen Y Finance Guy July 4, 2016 Mortgage Snowball 21 Comments

It has been 13 months since devising our plan to pay our mortgage off in 7 years or less. I won’t rehash the entire post again, but let me give you a brief synopsis of how and why this goal came to be: We purchased our house for $370K in 2014 with an original loan of $355,000. As you would expect, one day I was doing some intermediate term planning, and in doing so was trying to estimate how much income we would earn over the next 5-7 years. At the time I expected our annual income for 2015 to be around $185,000 based on what I knew at the time. And I assumed that we would be able to increase …