If you spend some time in the various personal finance spaces around the great Internet, you’ll eventually stumble upon statements like this: Debt is bad! You should avoid debt by any means necessary! While I don’t dispute the fact that living debt free might “feel good”, in terms of economical advantages, living without leverage is…
Debt vs. leverage – what’s the difference?
What makes a good (retail) property investment?
Mr. MoneyMow recently reached out to me, and several other FIRE bloggers, to get our take on how the pandemic has affected our investment strategy (if at all). In short; my strategy hasn’t been affected by the arrival of a pandemic. Looking back though, I originally outlined my plan in one of my first posts…
How your personality dictates your return
Being that I’m a person who is very interested in the “personal finance sphere”, I often find myself in discussions with people about just that; personal finances. It occurred to me the other day that there always seem to be a pattern, in how people approach this; Some refuse to discuss it at all, as…
History in the making
As if we didn’t have enough troubles already, today added another nail to the coffin of the bleeding stock market. OPEC and Russia couldn’t agree to cut down on the oil production (to keep the oil price steady), and as a result of the decreased demand (hello, Corona virus), the oil price plummeted. And the…
Make a plan and stick to it! (Or change it?!)
In my Goals for 2020 I outlined my plan to boost my Total Balance in 2020, by diverting funds from my mortgage payments towards my Total Balance (investment account) instead. Unfortunately, “The Universe” had another plan. Sometimes it’s simply easier to “take the path of least resistance” (go with the flow?), than to “fight the…
If it sounds too good to be true
It probably is (too good to be true)… In case you missed the latest development in the Baltic crowdlending industry, let me give you a quick recap; Two of my (previously) best performing platforms have turned out to be fraudulent (nothing is proven yet, but I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear)….
Lessons from the past (analyzing my returns from 2007-2019)
As is the norm when we enter a new year, I like to look back at the returns of my (Pension) portfolio from the previous year(s). Is it time to change my AA (again)? I was quite conservative with my AA last year when I opted to move a great portion of my portfolio OUT…
The goals for 2020
A year has gone by in what seems almost as a blink of an eye. As per usual (I love saying that – this is only my 2nd goals-post ever), it’s thus time to look ahead into the coming year(s), and see what might be in store for the Total Balance household. Last year I…
Boy, was I wrong!
2019 is drawing to a close, and as is the norm on the Total Balance blog (easy now hot shot, this is only the first full year of blogging!) it’s thus time to take a gander back at this years major events – good or bad! My wife asked me yesterday, if I had a…
Crunching the numbers of Year One
Since I’ve now been on the path to FI for more than a year (and recently wrote a somewhat philosophical rant about my first year on FIRE) I thought I’d spend some more words, looking into how the numbers have progressed during that first year. I (somehow) managed to grow my Total Balance by more…