Finance Clever

The last three months of 2017 were quite busy for us. We visited my sister in law who lives in Mexico. We started our trip in Mexico City and headed north through Queretaro, San Miguel de Allende, and Guanajuato. Throughout our journey, we stayed on some really cool Airbnb houses in Mexico (see picture below for the view from one of the back yards). If you are new to Airbnb, you can get $40 off from your first trip when you sign up through this link. Back in the U.S. we took a road trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains, … Read more…

The U.S. tax system is quite complex. From thousands of rules and regulations to nuanced and obscure provisions, our tax system can make even the sharpest tax professionals feel overwhelmed at times. Luckily for you, the amount of tax knowledge you need to have to achieve financial independence (FI) is very manageable. I have seen people of all professions, not just accountants, acquire and apply tax knowledge to successfully increase their wealth and their freedom. Before we dive in, note that we will be covering the U.S. federal income tax system for individuals. The state you live in will have … Read more…

If you track your expenses, you probably already know that cars are pretty expensive things to own. After you account for depreciation, gas, maintenance and repairs, property taxes, and everything else, you can easily be spending between $2,000 to $15,000 per year. I think we have done a decent job at optimizing our vehicle choices and even then each of our vehicles cost more than $2,000 per year. Use the links below if you want to see the breakdown of those costs for our own cars: Elisa’s car ($2,150 per year) Juan’s previous car ($2,216 per year) Back in September … Read more…

The second quarter of 2017 flew by as the days got warmer and longer. I must say, spring is one of my favorite times of the year as I’m not a big fan of cold and short days (see Q1 expenses here). It was generally a quiet quarter though we had family visiting us in April, and we traveled to Colombia late in June. Let’s dive right into our expenses for the second quarter of the year. The table above summarizes our expenses for the first three month of the year from highest to lowest. Let’s explore the bigger and … Read more…

You get it, financial independence that is. You can’t wait to start building some serious wealth to buy your freedom. You understand that being financially independent will allow you to spend ALL of your time, not just weekends and holidays, doing whatever YOU choose. You are pumped and eager to start working on making your dream a reality. There is just one problem… your partner is not board. I will use the term partner here to refer to a spouse, fiancé, fiancée, or any serious significant other in your life. I’m lucky, my wife was on board with financial independence … Read more…

2016 was a really exiting year for us! We kicked off the year by traveling back to the U.S. after our wedding. A few months later I finished grad school, and attended Camp Mustache to kick off the summer. My dad came to visit us towards the end of the summer and we took him to the U.S. Open. As the fall season kicked in I started my new job, we bought a house, and we welcomed our beautiful baby daughter into the family! Definitely the highlight of the year 🙂 One would think a year like this would cost a fortune, and it certainly could … Read more…

A number of questions have come up from the post I wrote a few weeks ago about buying our new home. One of the most frequent ones goes something like this: “Great job outlining the costs of homeownership, but what about the benefits? I get a tax deduction for the interest and property taxes I pay on my home!” Today, we put the above statement to the test. Are potential tax deductions actually valuable for home owners? Of course we cannot do this without a basic understanding of the U.S. tax system. So here is a quick high level crash course*. Let’s start with the basic income tax formula: As you can see we … Read more…