Personal Finance

It’s June 2019 and Forging Finance is 6 months old. That may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but for me it is. The only regret I have is not having started it sooner!  I thought I’d share how this all began. I’m sure there are others out there that have gone done a similar if not the same path. How it all started I thought about starting a blog for several … [Read more...] about Forging Finance Mid-Year Reflection 2019

One of the common phrases I use in my posts is: retirement number. I define the retirement number as the number you need to reach to be able to retire. I realize that is pretty braindead simple though. The more interesting part is the construct of the retirement number. When you’re reading my posts, it’s important to put this number in context. The bulk of my money is in … [Read more...] about Benefits of Having a Retirement Number

Leave it up to a bunch of personal finance nerds to start branching out and creating subcategories of a simple concept. Financial Independence/Retire Early (FIRE). When you spell out the acronym it says it all really. Then there are subcategories of FIRE, Fat FIRE and Lean FIRE. The definitions are easily searchable in Reddit here: Fat FIRE and Lean FIRE. I've read … [Read more...] about Why My Focus is on Financial Independence, not Retire Early

I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to revisit the climb to the first million ($1M) since it was such a big milestone for my wife and I. We both dreamt about such a milestone in our 20’s but it was not always easy to visualize. Still stuck with some student loans, living in an apartment, and both on steep learning curves early in our careers, $1M seemed really far … [Read more...] about Path to the First One Million Dollars

As soon as I finished my post on lessons from the 2008 recession, I realized it made sense to revisit a few lessons from an earlier recession, the 2000 dot-com crash. Lasting from around 2000 to 2002, it was proceeded by a huge run up in stocks largely fueled by technology companies.   I was 26 when the 2000 dot-com crash began, and was only two years into my 9 to 5 … [Read more...] about Lessons Learned from the Dot-Com Recession