Your Guide to Getting a Mortgage as an At-Home Entrepreneur
Guest post
Buying a home is a big step, and it can be even more intimidating when you’re self-employed.
But don’t let the prospect of homebuying dampen your entrepreneurial spirit! There are many paths toward homeownership, even if it involves a bit more effort for those who are self-employed.
Links for May 2021
Holy cow, this is in the running for the best macroeconomic analysis I've ever seen! https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/
An engineering argument for Universal Basic Income: https://www.scottsantens.com/engineering-argument-for-unconditional-universal-basic-income-ubi-fault-tolerance-graceful-failure-redundancy
A tragic personal story to illustrate the three sides of risk: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-three-sides-of-risk/
The Battle of the Bubbles, from the always-on-point Ben Carlson. Whoo, some of the speculation mentioned herein puts recent bubbles to shame! https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/07/the-battle-of-the-bubbles/
A thought-provoking piece about education: https://americancompass.org/the-commons/our-educational-colonialism/
A timeless point about humility and success. Since the original post gives me a "404 not found" error message, here's a version from the Web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20200109002010/https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/getting-rich-vs-staying-rich/
History isn't exact, as any decent historian would tell you: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/07/why-history-get-stuff-wrong-all-the-time/
This great piece draws attention to how Wall Street's incentives fail investors: https://netinterest.substack.com/p/zuckermans-curse-and-the-economics
Similar in nature, and similarly insightful: https://netinterest.substack.com/p/financing-the-american-home
Here's why you don't need alpha (that is, outperformance compared to the market) unless you're a professional money manager who's responsible for billions of dollars: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/you-dont-need-alpha/
Ben Carlson is always observant and always insightful: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/08/what-happened-to-the-middle-class/
*However, I'd argue with Stephen Rose's income-based classification of rich/poor/middle-class, as described in the footnote. As noted in the bestseller The Millionaire Next Door, there are plenty of wealthy people who have a moderate income, because they're frugal and they wisely invest the money they save.
But that's the way Americans tend to look at wealth, including the IRS: you're rich (or not) based on your income, rather than on your net worth.
Now this is interesting! Meet the man who twice tried to sell the Eiffel Tower: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/01/the-man-who-tried-to-sell-the-eiffel-tower-twice/
Great lessons about personal finance: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/PF/
An interesting insider's look at the ultra-wealthy, basically the top 1% of the top 1%: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/investment_manager.html
Could you live without money? This fascinating fellow did just that, for about 15 years: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/the-man-who-quit-money-an-interview-with-daniel-suelo/
Hat-tip to Of Dollars and Data for pointing me to some of this top-notch work: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/my-favorite-investment-writing-of-2020/
Can I retire on $2 million?
Is it possible to retire on $2 million?
In short: yes. But, of course, it depends on you.
I can show you how to turn 10 grand into a private-jet-level fortune!
The only problem? It takes 92 years. So your fortunate grandchildren are the ones who will actually end up with nine-digit wealth.
But you can harness the same incredible power to work for you, within your lifetime! No B.S., no tricks.
Stick with me, and I’ll show you how it’s done.
Supercharged, Again: Briefly Talking Millions With Paul Merriman
If
you like this and want more detail,
be sure to read the full
interview here!
Today, we have a special treat: an interview with Paul A. Merriman, founder of the Merriman Financial Education Foundation and also a wealth management firm that still bears his name!
In November of 2020, he and his co-author Richard Buck released their latest book, We’re Talking Millions! 12 Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement.
Supercharged! Talking Millions with Paul Merriman
Today, we have a special treat: an interview with Paul A. Merriman, founder of Merriman Wealth Management and the Merriman Financial Education Foundation! In November of 2020, he and his co-author, Richard Buck, released their latest book, We’re Talking Millions: 12 Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement.
Boy, I've been pretty feisty recently! First picking a fight with Vanguard, then tackling the sticky healthcare debate, and now picking a fight with Jim Collins, the personal finance world's favorite uncle!
The reason for the fight with Vanguard—and now for the fight with jlcollinsnh—is that I've been spending quite a bit of time recently on asset allocation, and I'm starting to wonder whether the simplest approach truly is the best.
The Froogal Stoodent Takes On Healthcare
Is Medicare for all the best answer to healthcare in the United States? Believe it or not, that might actually be a more efficient approach, in terms of minimizing administrative costs! https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/upshot/is-medicare-for-all-the-answer-to-sky-high-administrative-costs.html
But administrative costs aren't the only concern, of course.
Maybe this is a part of the reason why healthcare is so inefficient: https://www.axios.com/health-care-ceo-pay-compensation-stock-2018-0ed2a8aa-250e-48f1-a47a-849b8ca83e24.html
Mr. Money Mustache uses an alternative to the traditional medical model. Very interesting! But does it make sense for the rest of us? It's worth remembering that he's wealthy. I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm not (yet): https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/11/09/direct-primary-care/
Added 12/11/2020: Recently saw this horror story and thought it was highly relevant: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/12/medicare-blues.html
***
It seems to me that there are a lot of insurance companies that would suffer greatly if we moved to a "Medicare for all" model.
It's tempting to say, "Yeah! Screw the big insurance companies! They just take all our money and make life miserable for doctors and hospitals!"
But that's partly because I don't work in the healthcare industry.
Imagine if we just snapped our fingers and did away with private health insurance companies like the various companies that comprise the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. As of 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor counts 2.8 million people employed in the healthcare industry.
An untold number of additional people could be cut by hospitals and doctor's offices, because the billing would be streamlined from multiple different insurers to one (Medicare).
How would the economy absorb roughly 3 million suddenly-unemployed people? What kind of short-term waves would that create throughout the economy?
And what kind of impact would that have on the portfolios of people who are near retirement? Or are currently retired?
In the long run, over maybe 5-10 years, the situation would sort itself out. And, at least for younger folks such as myself, the efficiency gains over the long term may make it worth some short-term pain.
But tell that to the 3 million people who could lose their jobs.
Either way, there will be pain. There will be pain if we don't do anything, and there will be pain if we do overhaul the entire system.
Essentially, the cost-benefit analysis is far from clear, at least to me.
But what I do think is that our current situation is a lousy hybrid that marries some of the worst aspects of a free market with some of the worst aspects of government-run healthcare. In our current situation, nobody wins.
Except maybe the CEOs of healthcare companies.
The Froogal Stoodent Takes On Vanguard
In my constant search for better, easier, more profitable ways to invest, I've run into a fact that disturbs me more and more as I continue to think about it: most total stock market indices, such as Vanguard's VTSAX, are market-cap weighted.
What does that even mean?
Well, it means that a greater proportion of every investment dollar goes to the largest companies in the market.
At first glance, you'd think, "More of my money is going to the Apples and Googles and Microsofts of the investment world. Isn't that a good thing?"
Maybe.
But maybe not.
Living AFI is a blog that's been inactive since 2016, but it snarkily--and truthfully--touches on a lot of issues related to work and early retirement. This article deals with how to handle the topic of financial independence among your friends: https://livingafi.com/2014/09/20/friends-and-fi/
Want more from Living AFI? He's not posting, but A Purple Life is, and she's also great: https://apurplelife.com/why-im-comfortable-retiring-with-500000/
It's probably best to invest now, even if the price of stocks seems high. Here's why: https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/08/25/should-you-invest-in-the-sp-500-and-apple-at-all-t/
Are index funds really the best choice for investing? Fit DIY Dad posts a thought-provoking analysis: http://fitdiydad.com/index-funds-devils-advocate/
Active or passive investing? What's the difference, anyway? https://www.investopedia.com/news/active-vs-passive-investing/
Can a sovereign currency issuer (such as the United States) actually default on its debt? https://www.pragcap.com/can-a-sovereign-currency-issuer-default/
A good analysis on the topic of 'Modern Monetary Theory' described in the previous link: https://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/2020/06/29/the-theory-of-mmt-falls-flat-when-faced-with-reality-part-i
And who suffers when the worst happens to the American economy? Everybody:
https://thefederalist.com/2018/10/25/u-s-goes-bankrupt-heres-gets-least-pain/
A great list of quotes! My favorite is "No one agrees with other people's opinions; they merely agree with their own opinion expressed by somebody else."
https://jlcollinsnh.com/2012/06/12/i-could-not-have-said-it-better-myself/
