This is the Grumpus Maximus Article Index. The index lists all Grumpus Maximus Golden Albatross articles below, sectioned by their category and listed in the published order.

About Me

• Grumpus Maximus vs. The Golden Albatross — My story so far.

Golden Albatross

• What Is a Golden Albatross? — The story of the Golden Albatross.

Life and Money (A Catch-All Section)

• An Unintentional Meander Up Grumpy Avenue (Part 1) — Lessons learned from my worst money mistake.
• An Unintentional Meander Up Grumpy Avenue (Part 2) — Lessons learned from using a money manager.
• You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks — Lessons learned from early marriage budgeting efforts.
• The Reluctant Financial Voyeur — Lessons learned from helping a co-worker with money struggles.
• An Unintentional Meander Up Grumpy Avenue (Part 3) — More lessons learned from more money mistakes.
• Service, Thanks, and Remuneration — Grumpus’s thoughts from Veteran’s Day 2017 about service life, remuneration, and the issue of “thanks”.
• Thankfulness and Bounty — Grumpus’s thoughts from Thanksgiving 2017 and his call to action.
• Sunk Costs: The Charlie Brown E-Bike Blues — A lesson on sunk costs and e-bike ownership.
• The Golden Albatross vs. The Insurance Industry (Part 1): Fees — Grumpus helps an enlisted service member analyze the Indexed Universal Life Insurance policy.
• The Golden Albatross vs. The Insurance Industry (Part 2): Annuity Valuation Case Study — Grumpus analyzes an annuity a reader purchased in 2010 using his Pension valuation tools.
• Gutting It Out: What’s Worked For Me… So Far — Grumpus shares some techniques to gut out a job that you no longer like.
• The Opposite of Gutting It Out — Grumpus Maximus provides 5 reasons why leaving a pensionable career (prior to retirement) might be a good idea.
• Work, Mental Health, Disability, and Retirement Planning – GM explains the how the intersection of the four topics have affected his thinking about retirement.
• Choices and Thankfulness — GM explains how he’s thankful for the choices that his decision to retire has unlocked.
• Paradigm Shifts — GM discusses the power of breaking paradigms and how to set financial goals.
• Golden Albatrosses Killed Your Golden Goose — Guest blogger Chris Pascale reviews some of the bigger money lessons he’s learned in life.
• Cut the Cord, Drop the Albatross — Guest blogger Chris Pascale explains how he and his wife teach their kids lessons about money and life.
• Guest Post: Worth vs. “Worth It” Meets Value Purchasing — Guest blogger Chris Pascale explains value purchasing.
• Thankful For My Bronze Medal — Annual Thanksgiving article about the career and life lesson GM learned while preparing and delivering his retirement speech.
• Making Bold Adjustments — A Chris Pascale guest post in which he shares a problem solving method he learned in the Marines and has applied to his finances.
• A Guest “Worth vs. Worth It” Post: Is It Worth Your Life? — Another post by Chris, this time a blistering yet humorous post on modern materialism.
• Worth vs. Worth It: Homeownership — Regular guest-poster, Chris Pascale, examines the most efficient use of your money between renting and buying when paying for housing.
• The Pension Couch: Pension Buyback or Freedom Buyback? — GM assists a reader in determining whether or not buying back years in his wife’s pension is worth it.
• The Pension Couch: Pension Roll-Over Questions — GM helps a reader analyze the option of rolling over a pension from a previous employer.

Mental Health

• Work and Mental Health: Slaying the Dragon — Grumpus’s thoughts on his struggles with work and its impact on his mental health issues.
• Mental Health: Sad Work and Stuff — Grumpus’s thoughts on a career decision that affected his mental for the worse.
• Pre-Retirement and Mental Health — GM marks mental health awareness month by reviewing veteran mental statistics and his actions to prepare for retirement.
• The Pension Couch: 8 More Years— GM responds to a reader’s question about gutting it out 8 more years at a pensionable job that’s caused mental health issues.

Pensions

• The Pension Series (Part 1): Pension Safety — GM teaches you how to research and determine your pension’s safety.
• The Pension Series (Part 2): Worth vs. Worth It — Thoughts on determining whether or not sticking around for a pension is “worth it”.
• The Pension Series (Part 3): What is Your Pension Worth? — Preliminary thoughts on how to calculate your pension’s worth or value.
• The Pension Series (Part 4): Total Dollar Value (TDV) of Your Pension (Updated) — A technical breakdown of how to calculate the dollar value of a pension.
• The Pension Series (Part 5): Survivorship — A technical breakdown on how to decide if electing survivorship for a pension is the right call.
• The Pension Series (Part 6): Valuing Pension Subsidized Healthcare — Help with the hard task of determining the value of pension subsidized healthcare.
• The Pension Series (Part 7): How to Create Your Own COLA — A step by step guide on how to create your own COLA with help from ERN McCracken.
• The Pension Series (Part 8): Deciding to Take a Pension Lump Sum — A linked article to my guest post at CanIRetireYet.com on pension lump sum.
• The Pension Series (Part 9): Pensions and U.S. Federal Taxes — An article based on a reader’s question about how his pension would interact with U.S. Federal taxes.
• The Pension Series (Part 10): Geoarbitrage and Pensions — An article focused on the opportunities Geoarbitrage offers pensioners.
• The Pension Series (Part 11): Pension Lump Sum Case Study — A case study of a ChooseFI listener’s pension lump sum offer.
• The Pension Series (Part 12): More Pension Lump Sum Analysis — Analysis of a ChooseFI listener’s options for investing a lump sum.
• The Pension Series (Part 13): The Master Pension Value Calculator (updated) — GM analyzes a reader’s pension options using a pension value calculator built for him.
• The Pension Series (Part 14): Pension Risk Transfer — Who wins and loses when a pension fund transfers its obligations to an insurance company?
• The Pension Series (Part 15): The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) — What is the PBGC? What happens when it intervenes in a pension fund?
• The Pension Series (Part 16): VA Disability — Friend of Grumpus (FOGM) writes about the tax benefits of VA disability in conjunction with a military pension.
• The Pension Series (Part 17): Buying Years – A Case Study — Grumpus analyzes the pros and cons of a reader’s choice to buy back years into their pension fund.
• The Pension Series (Part 18): Social Security – The People’s Pension — Grumpus discusses whether future pensioners should plan for Social Security.
• The Pension Series (Part 19): Pension Annuity vs. Lump Sum Analysis (Again) — Updated —  GM analyzes a reader’s pension lump sum using his master value calculator.
• The Pension Series (Part 20): Pensions, Volatility, and Risk — GM examines the impact of market volatility and risk on a pension fund’s bottom line.
• The Pension Series (Part 21): Lump-Sum Buyout Offers — GM analyzes the data on lump-sum buyout offers from an academic perspective.
• The Pension Series (Part 22): Analyzing Public Pension Plan Safety — GM analyzes how Public Pension Plans report their fiscal health.
• The Pension Series (Part 23): Organizational Culture and Pension Signals — GM explains how organizations and companies signal the importance they place on pensions.
• The Pension Series (Part 24): The Golden Albatross vs. Black Pensions — Based on academic research, GM modifies the Golden Albatross framework for pensionable Black workers.
• The Pension Series (Part 25): Pension Design — GM explains how different pension design elements impact pension plan generosity through incentives and penalties.
• The Pension Series (Part 26): Continuance Commitment — GM explains what continuance commitment is and what it means for a Golden Albatross decision.
• The Pension Series (Part 27): The Golden Albatross Pension Survey — GM discusses his pension survey’s results that measured the impact of pension design on turnover decisions.
• The Pension Series (Part 28): The Golden Albatross vs. Age, Tenure, and Gender — GM examines the impact of age, tenure, & gender on the outcome of Golden Albatross pension decisions.
• The Pension Series (Part 29): The Golden Albatross vs. Women’s Pensions: GM examines how pensions impact women’s retirement and Golden Albatross decisions.
• The Pension Series (Part 30): Pension Maximization: GM explains the first two steps in his framework to maximize the positive effect of a pension in retirement.
• The Pension Series (Part 31):  Grumpus Maximization: GM explains the final three steps in his pension maximization framework.

Pension Analysis Services

• Why I’m Offering Paid Pension Analysis Services — GM explains why he came to the conclusion that charging people to answer their pension questions was fair.

Planning

• Financial Planning (Part 1): Time and Planning — Initial thoughts on how to conduct financial planning.
• Financial Planning (Part 2): The GRO2W Plan — Step-by-step financial planning using the GRO2W method.
• University of the Golden Albatross: Roth Options Vs. Traditional Retirement Accounts — A defense of Roth retirement accounts vs. traditional tax-deferred accounts for future pensioners.
• Retirement Planning: How to Calculate Your “Gap Number” — A step-by-step guide on how to calculate the amount of savings a future pensioner would need to meet Financial Independence (FI).
• Golden Albatross vs. The Visual Learner — A graphic aide to help visual learners with financial planning.
• FI Numbers Don’t Lie, But They May Mislead (Part 1) — Initial thoughts on how to test your retirement plan.
• Test Your Retirement Plan: FI Numbers Don’t Lie, But … (Part 2) — Step-by-step guidance on how to test your retirement plan using a high-powered retirement calculator.
• Golden Albatross Pension and FI Decision Trees (1st Draft) — More help for visual learners using flowcharts and decisions trees.
• Post-Retirement Planning (Part 1): Teamwork — Musings on the need for both teamwork and planning to make post-retirement a success.
• The Gap Number Method in … ACTION! (Part 1) — A follow-up article on the Gap Number Method after Grumpus’s ChooseFI interview.
• Why I Trust My Plan … For Now — Grumpus writes about the results of re-testing his retirement plan after reading a blogging friend’s article on home ownership.
• The Golden Albatross Financial Philosophy — Grumpus’s holistic financial philosophy written as a speech to a mid-career officer’s course.
• The Golden Albatross vs. Risk (Part 1) — GM pushes back on the idea of investing your emergency fund by examining risk.
• The Golden Albatross Vs. Risk (Part 2): Emergency Fund Debate Club, Round 1 — GM debates the merits of investing your EF in equities one round at a time.
• Four Golden Albatross Financial Lessons — GM explains four financial he learned while counseling other military members about money.
• The Death Binder — GM discusses the lessons he learned from his first attempt to build a Death Binder for Mrs. Grumpus.
• The Trade War Will Not Be Televised … Wonkish article from Grumpus on why the Trump Trade War matters to your bottom line.
• Trade War Part Deux: Risk Mitigation — Grumpus explains potential options to mitigate risk during the Trump Trade War.
• Trade War Part Trois: 2 and 10-Year Investment Mitigation Strategies — Grumpus explains what he’d do for 10-year and 2-year investments during the trade war.
• Trade War Part Quatre: 3 to 9-Year Investment Mitigation Strategies — Grumpus completes the Trade War series with investment strategies from 3 to 9 years.
• Retirement Anxiety: How I Retired Mine — Grumpus explains how he worked through some recent retirement anxiety with research, planning, and testing.
• GI(bill)arbitrage — Grumpus explains how to use the GI Bill overseas for geoarbitrage purposes.
• The Military Retirement Process: Lessons Learned (Part 1) — GM provides 5  retirement lessons he’s learned for FI and FIRE seeking service members.
• The Golden Albatross vs. Kiwi Arbitrage — GM lays out why he and his family are moving to New Zealand and how they figured out it was affordable.
• How To Optimally Ruin All Your Plans — Friend of the blog, Chris Pascale, discusses the need to remain flexible when circumstances dictate a change in plans.
• 6 Lessons From 18 Months as a Pensioner — GM regales readers with 6 insights from his first 18 months as a pensioner, including lessons for military and non-military pensioners alike.
• 18 Months of Kiwiarbitrage — GM explains some of the financial lessons he’s learned from 18 months of early retirement in New Zealand.
• The Pension Couch: Early Retirement Penalties — GM answers a reader’s question about early retirement penalties built into a pension plan.
• The Pension Couch: A Lump-Sum Offer Mystery — GM helps a reader analyze her lump-sum offer from a church pension plan.
• Death Binder 2.0: The Pensioner’s Edition — GM updates his original death binder to meet his unique needs as a pensioner.
• The Pension Couch: Replacing Pension Income — GM determines if a reader can feasibly replace lost pension income with savings and investments from a higher-paying non-pensionable job.
• This Is Your Pension on Inflation — Grumpus helps reader Don figure out the impacts of inflation on his pension.
• FIRE in New Zealand: One Thing a Pension Can’t Buy — Grumpus details his return-to-work decision over the need for a residence visa in New Zealand.
• Put Your (Pension) Money Where Your (House) Mouth Is — GM describes three concepts that helped him confidently rely on his pension to purchase a house.
• Life Strikes Back: BrewDog’s Lump Sum Update — GM passes on three pension-based retirement planning lessons gleaned from reconnecting with BrewDog.
• Pensionable Careers: Fed vs. Military Benefits (Part 1) — Guest author Chris Pascale discusses the pros and cons of fed vs. military retirement benefits.
• The Complicated Financial Life of a US to NZ Expat — GM chronicles 6 more financial lessons he’s learned since retiring abroad.

Resources

• 5 + 1 Financial Independence Blogsites (Besides Mine) You Should Check Out — A review of six blog sites I’ve used heavily on my journey to FI.
• Track Your Money (Part 1) — A review of all the different money tracking software and programs I’ve used over the past 18 years.
• Track Your Money (Part 2): YNAB — A guest post from Grumpus Brotherus the Youngerus on his family’s use of You Need A Budget (YNAB).
• 3 Books + 2 Booklets + 1 Chapter = Financial Independence (FI) — A review of six books, or parts thereof, that will help you meet FI.
• Multi-Task Your Way to Financial Independence (FI) — A review of my six most favorite personal finance podcasts.
• The Grumpus Book Review: Is This The Perfect Golden Albatross Book? — A book review of Messages From Your Future: The Seven Rules for Financial, Personal and Professional Success by Larry Faulkner. (**Grumpus Maximus is an Amazon affiliate. See Disclosures for more details.**)
• How I Save Thousands Of Dollars and Get Professional Money Advice — A review of radio shows and podcasts that offer personal financial advice.
• Track Your Money (Part 3): Passive Tracking — The results of Grumpus Maximus’s year long experiment in passively tracking his family’s money.
• Track Your Money (Part 4): Mint All Breakdown — Grumpus Maximus examines the problems with Mint.com identified in Track Your Money Part 3.