Over the last 7 years, the sheer number of personal finance blogs that have appeared (including this one) is creating a ‘FIRE movement’ online. Many cubicle workers are getting inspired to join this journey. Soon enough, paid work will get re-defined to such a level that the sea of cubicles may become extinct. Anticipating the waning […]
You may have read several studies that successful long term investing requires the ability to invest efficiently, have enormous patience and faith in the markets to eventually deliver the goodies for your retirement. We also saw in an earlier article, that patience, especially to survive the dog years of investing, is a key requirement. How […]
The journey of life is long, complicated and is never a straight path. Same applies to our financial journey as well, as finances mirror our lifestyle and choices. So, we must stay humble and kind. The elegance of steadily compounding financial returns are merely that…just elegant. It’s funny we model financial portfolio growth using […]
Loss aversion defines much of human behavior. We are so worried about the prospect of loss, that many studies show that finding $100 doesn’t give the same joy to offset the pain of losing $100. Some say, it takes as much as gaining $200 to offset the loss of $100. In other words, a loss feels twice as painful than a gain […]
How mainstream finance sees you
The problem with traditional retirement planning and even personal finance oriented websites (including this one) is that they all focus a lot on the number, that is, our retirement stash that we aspire to get to. For those having a set target, this laser-like focus on ‘hitting’ that number can turn into an obsession. For those with say, a $1 million target, reaching a precise figure of say, $933,240, may still feel like they fell short. That is far from the truth. The number doesn’t define who you are or isn’t even a gauge of what you have accomplished in life.
Raman Venkatesh is the founder of Ten Factorial Rocks. Raman is a ‘Gen X’ corporate executive in his mid 40’s. In addition to having a Ph.D. in engineering, he has worked in almost all continents of the world. Ten Factorial Rocks (TFR) was created to chronicle his journey towards retirement while sharing his views on the absurdities and pitfalls along the way. The name was taken from the mathematical function 10! (ten factorial) which is equal to 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 3,628,800.
The huge financial services industry and the much smaller community of Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) bloggers differ on many fronts. Yet, we all agree on one principle – sustainable withdrawal and retirement success through simulation models. Of course, we all need to know our sustainable spending rate. But, as we saw earlier, focusing solely on the simulated probability of financial success only increases the relative probability of a non-financial event wrecking our plans. Today, we seek a new angle to one such non-financial risk factor that impacts your financial future.
Raman Venkatesh is the founder of Ten Factorial Rocks. Raman is a ‘Gen X’ corporate executive in his mid 40’s. In addition to having a Ph.D. in engineering, he has worked in almost all continents of the world. Ten Factorial Rocks (TFR) was created to chronicle his journey towards retirement while sharing his views on the absurdities and pitfalls along the way. The name was taken from the mathematical function 10! (ten factorial) which is equal to 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 3,628,800.