Clipping Chains Podcast

We’re back to the digital mailbag to answer your questions!

For this week:

• How has my lifestyle evolved since achieving financial independence and how do I spend my time?
• Updated thoughts on money and markets
• Are we putting too much faith in institutions like Vanguard?
• Can and should life insurance policies be used for retirement savings?
• Tax avoidance versus accepting higher tax rates
• What is a Simple IRA and how does it differ from a 401(k)? Can I still do Roth conversions?
• Savings rates are great! Should I pay less on my loans to maximize my savings?
• Big picture: Where do I start on getting my financial life together?
• Outreach and presentations
• So much more!

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Dave Rosen is a climber and ophthalmologist in his final year of residency. And Dave grew up like so many of us: broadly exposed to the importance of money and taught a thing or two about saving, but investing was a foreign concept and his lack of knowledge was a source of shame.

While Dave skimmed over it, he’s no slouch as a climber. He has bagged a pile of double-digit boulder problems up to V12, sent 5.13c, and developed numerous boulder problems, particularly in the South Mountain area near Phoenix where he and his wife lived for medical school for four years. He is hard-working, analytical, and pragmatic in his career and life approach. 

In this conversation, we discuss how Dave found climbing from the world of canyoneering, his early exposure to money and how that has markedly changed in recent years, the constant pull of greener grass, working backward from an ideal lifestyle, and the ethical and moral dilemmas of early retirement.

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Frugality is an endearing element of saving money and living the good life. But interestingly, the recent discourse in personal finance circles has seemingly shifted to embrace spending over saving. What is going on, how did this happen, and why should we care?

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In the summer of 2020, we sold our home in Denver, Colorado. Once all the costs were tallied, we were shocked to see the return on our home ownership investment. Should we have rented instead? Today we revisit this post in light of our recent move.

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Mike Piper is a CPA and the creator of the Oblivious Investor blog, where he teaches a philosophy of simple and low-maintenance investing.

Mike’s simple philosophy distills down to three primary principles:

1. Diversify your portfolio
2. Minimize costs (commissions, fees, mutual fund expenses, taxes)
3. Ignore the noise.

Mike began his career as a CPA before realizing he could support himself by writing books. Surprisingly, he left his secure job during the 2008 financial crisis. He has gone on to publish seventeen books and is widely considered an expert in social security, tax, and a number of other personal finance topics. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Morningstar, to name a few.

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I’m revisiting a post published almost exactly two years ago. At the time of writing, I’d been away from my corporate job for eighteen months. I spent six months of that time living in a tiny A-frame camper with my wife and dog before resettling in the St. George, Utah area.

I was climbing a lot and working on this website, but I can now comfortably admit that I was in a bit of a low spot in terms of overall life satisfaction. The issue was one of expectations. In other words, I expected too much about a life without my career and I took for granted elements of my work life that enhanced life satisfaction. I was feeling stale with this project—I wouldn’t start the podcast until late summer—and despite having all the time in the world to dedicate to the craft of climbing, I was slowly coming to the realization that I’d used climbing as an attempt to fill a void that was not yet clearly defined or outlined.

Two years later, I’ve spent considerable time addressing each of the areas discussed in this post, to varying degrees of success. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for other changes still ongoing.

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Today on episode 64 I’m excited to welcome Priti and Jeff Wright, two accomplished young professional alpinists from Seattle, WA. In 2020, Priti, a software developer, and Jeff, a mechanical engineer at Boeing, embarked on a year-long sabbatical to travel across the globe and climb alpine objectives in Patagonia, France, and Pakistan, finishing by the beach in Hawaii.

The trip was wildly successful, even amid the raging pandemic, including ascents of the Cerro Torre, the six classic North Faces of the Alps in a single season (including the Eiger North Face in winter), culminating in the first ascent of K6 Central and the third ascent of K6 West—both 7000+-meter peaks—in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan.

In contrast to early retirement, Priti and Jeff make the compelling case for a traditional career peppered with sabbaticals. This episode is filled with lifestyle and career philosophy, planning concepts, detailed financial considerations, and just a damn good time. And they are even planning their next sabbatical in 2024, which will look drastically different than their trip in 2020. You won’t want to miss this one.

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Financial independence won’t solve life’s problems. We will never “arrive.” We will never achieve perfection. An impactful 2018 study, nicknamed the Blue Dot Effect, helps us to understand the mind’s tendency toward finding problems, even where none exist. The results have broad implications for individuals and members of a progressing society.

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Since the financial crisis of 2008, two dominant views on stock market investing have emerged:

1. Stock market investing is volatile and risky, akin to gambling.
2. Stock market investing is reliable and free money.

The Great Recession produced a decline in overall equity values in the range of 50%+ from 2007 to early 2009. The event created a lasting and widespread change in mindsets around personal finance, even what it means to be securely middle class. However, for those that stayed the course, the subsequent Great Bull Market produced exorbitant wealth for almost anyone investing in almost anything.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that market growth and declines are cyclical. These cycles are influenced by a complex blend of fiscal policy, business practices, and perhaps most important of all—animal spirits: human behavior and emotion. To balance risk and reward, one should invest broadly in the market as a whole and increase the investing timeline. The latter in particular is easier said than done. In this post today, we quantify the power of longevity in the market. We have reason to rejoice, so long as we can hang on!

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Today on episode 61 I’m pleased to welcome Heather Larsen, pro slackliner and climber and lover of southern Utah’s desert heat. What is probably less known about Heather is that, following humble beginnings, she graduated at the height of the Great Recession with a double major in finance and economics.

In the intervening years, she struggled greatly to find work in her field, even competing for bank teller jobs with 20-year finance veterans. Out west she found work in seasonal park service positions, growing more and more fond of the outdoors, eventually discovering climbing and slacklining.

Heather could have easily fallen into a mindset of defeat. But with persistence, she was eventually able to secure a career in financial reporting, enabling her preferred lifestyle balance of elite outdoor adventure and self-made financial security.

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Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com