Tag Archives: tracking money

The Death Binder!

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I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. — Winston Churchill

Death Binder

Death and Binders

I did something different this week for work. I deployed to a foreign country for a military exercise. I’m writing this post from that country as a matter of fact. It’s the first time since my Afghanistan tour in 2013 that I’ve deployed abroad with all my gear. It’s also the first time since my financial awakening that I’ve deployed. Granted, I traveled multiple times on official orders since Afghanistan and was also stationed overseas for multiple years. However, except for our Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move from Europe to Hawaii, I consider my travel comparable to business trips. There’s something different about packing up all your combat gear that sharpens the mind. As a result, while not a tour to a combat zone, I used this military exercise as an excuse to build my “Death Binder”.

Just for the record, Mrs. Grumpus hates the term, Death Binder. In fact, she won’t let me call it the Death Binder in the house. Instead, we call it the “Financial Binder” or “Financial Folder”. However, I call it the Death Binder when she’s not around. I do that partly because of my love of heavy metal. There’s something about the term Death Binder that makes me want to throw the devil sign up in the air and bang my head while shouting “DEATH BINDER” in my loudest metal voice.

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Four Golden Albatross Financial Lessons

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A Message to Future You

financial lessons

Four Golden Albatrosses take flight

If you’re reading my articles in chronological order, either in real time or at some undetermined time in the future, you’ll know that my two preceding articles were counter-points to other people’s financial ideas. As much fun as I had writing articles that used macroeconomics to argue against other people’s theories; doing so courts a certain amount of negativity. Granted, the counter-points needed to be made, and I believe I kept the articles congenial, lighthearted, and fact-based. However, at the end of the day, I still argued against someone’s work as opposed to building my own. As a result, I hit the pause button on the Risk Series this week, in order to focus on a more positive message.

Ironically, despite my online negativity I’ve actually been doing some positive stuff in the real world — which just might be the understatement of a lifetime in regards to the internet. Over the past three weeks, I counseled three different military members and/or their spouses on financial issues. Two of those counseling sessions took place face-to-face; while the third took place via email. All of them proved a great experience … for me at least. I learn a lot about myself and other people every time I counsel someone. Whereas I felt like a reluctant financial voyeur during my first counseling session; I actually enjoy them now. Continue reading →

The Golden Albatross Financial Philosophy

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The Request

Golden Albatross

Professor X enjoying his lunch break.

A few months ago a military member from a mid-career service school approached me through my blog with a request. He’s an instructor, so let’s call him Professor X. One of Professor X’s topics is personal finance as it relates to effective management of one’s career. He’d read my blog and believed several of my articles were appropriate material for his students. As a result, he asked me to speak via video to his class. After we exchanged a few emails on proposed topics, legal conflicts of interest, and technical hurdles; I agreed to appear in uniform as a military member, smart in the ways of finance, but without mention of my blog.

With this scheduled event now only a few days away, I thought it prudent to script my remarks. I also thought it would be worth turning those remarks into a blog post. Since Professor X’s request forced me to distill numerous blog posts into one coherent speech about my financial philosophy, I figured some of my readers might find it useful. As a result, this post doesn’t cover any new territory. It simply synthesizes a lot of what I’ve written previously in one place. Who knows? If I ever write a book, this article might form a good basis for the first chapter.

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The Pension Series (Part 5): Survivorship (Updated)

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Substantive Correction

This is an updated version to my article originally posted 04 October 2017. This version includes a substantive correction. The previous version of the article failed to accurately describe all the calculations required when comparing a pension with an inflation-linked Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to life insurance. I noticed my omission today and reworked the affected paragraphs. I also took the opportunity to clean up some grammar. You will see substantive changes noted in red text. I believe the changes make the comparisons between life insurance and survivorship more competitive.

The incomplete calculations I described in the previous version of my article appeared weighted towards survivorship. That was not my intent. Since the intent of the article changed, and I believe in full disclosure with my readers; I felt this mistake warranted a revision with new publish date.

This is a first for me in the blogging sphere, although in the military we routinely  strive for this level of transparency when an official report, memorandum, or instruction contains a major mistake. The primary purpose for issuing a correction is to prevent anyone from acting on erroneous information. It’s also important that the historical record reflect accurate information. I’ve decided to hold myself to the same standard on this blog.

As a result, I advise anyone who read and used the methods described in the previous version of this article to read this update and adjust your calculations accordingly. While I apologize for the inconvenience, and always strive for 100% accuracy in my articles; I would remind everyone I’m not a professional. Nor am I considering your case specifically. No matter how comfortable you are with your retirement numbers and plan; it’s always best to run your them by a professional like a fee-only Certified Financial Planner who adheres to the fiduciary standard.  Again my apologies.

Survivorship

KJH, we honor the fallen in the Grumpus Maximus family.

Death Sucks

In late Summer 2003, a member of my unit and one of its seasoned mentors was killed in the early days of the Insurgency in Iraq. We were both part of a tight-knit group of young officers that worked and played hard. While I would not have called him a close friend, many in our group did, and I often sought advice and guidance from him. His death was a blow to everyone in our group and the unit as a whole. Nothing was the same after it. Most of us were not prepared mentally and we all took it personally. Each of us dealt with his death in our own way, and I am sad to say it splintered the group in ways I never could’ve foreseen. Continue reading →

Track Your Money (Part 4): Mint (All) Breakdown

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A Word From the Editor in 2025

Hi folks! Grumpus Maximus here, your friendly author, editor and publisher of the Golden Albatross Blog. The below article compares Mint.com to Quicken in some key areas as money tracking and reporting programs. However, Mint.com is no longer operational because Intuit (the parent company) shut it down in March 2024. This news did not surprise me given the numbers of issues I identified with the program when I originally published Track Your Money parts 3 and 4 in 2017 and 2018, respectively. That said, I’m keeping this article up on my website as a historical archive since I also make some good points about Quicken’s comprehensive reports ability — despite loathing the program itself. My reasoning? Quicken is still an operational program and company, reader’s may yet find my insights valuable. In any case, if you’re reading this as of 2025 or later, then just keep Mint.com’s demise in mind. It’s hard for money tracking programs to stand the test of time.

Hidy Ho (Math) Campers!

As a result of the problems identified in my previous article with Mint.com’s annual “Net Savings Over Time” report, I decided to nerd out on money tracking again. Apologies to those of you who don’t enjoy these articles as much as some of my others. However, much like Darrow Kirkpatrick did with retirement calculators, I believe it’s important to understand the pluses and minuses associated with popular money tracking software. This is especially crucial considering the importance I place on tracking money, to begin with.

I spent several days prior to writing this article improving the fidelity of my data in my Mint.com account. I also rebuilt my entire 2017 financial year in Quicken. Doing so allowed me to total my net savings for the year in Quicken and verify if I made any mistakes with my Mint calculations.

Mint

The now infamous Net Income Over Time report display

To refresh everyone’s memory, when I initially ran Grumpus Familias’s net savings for 2017 through Mint as part of my annual end of year fiscal review, it reported we saved $70.5K. However, I didn’t trust that number due to my inability to verify whether or not Mint accounted for our annual Roth IRA transfer. The program, as far I could tell, didn’t allow for that determination. After spending a few days double checking entries, modifying several transaction labels, and re-displaying reports; Mint now shows an annual net savings of $69.5K. Obviously, I had approximately $1K of transactions mislabeled in my previous report. However, I still cannot verify exactly how Mint determines expenses and income for this report. As a result, I don’t trust this number any more than the previous one. Continue reading →

Track Your Money (Part 3): Passive Tracking

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A Passive Tracking Experiment

Passive Tracking

I’m ready to blow up this lab whenever you are!

In case you can’t tell from my title, this article is a follow-on to my previous two “Tracking Your Money” posts. In the first article, I reviewed my historical use of various software applications to track my money over the past 20 years or so. In the second, my brother (Grumpus Brotherus the Younger) reviewed the software application called You Need A Budget (YNAB).

If you did not read the first post in this series, you probably should. I don’t just say that because my brother’s post sucked (it did), and I think mine is much better (it was), or I want the extra site traffic (I do). No, I say that because I actually made a few worthwhile points in the post … if I do say so myself. However, if you’re unwilling or unable to go to the post, let me provide you a re-cap. Continue reading →

Golden Albatross Pension and FI Decision Trees (1st Draft)

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“Exactly What Do You Think Is Happening Here Captain?”

“Fists in the air in the land of hypocrisy.”

Raise your hands if it’s hard to determine where I come down on some of the issues I address in this blog.  You’re not alone.  I do it on purpose.  The way I see it, for some topics, all I can do is describe the problem and provide some options to solve it. The choice is yours as to how to use the information I provide. I was reminded of that this past week as I interacted with several of my Golden Albatross Facebook group members about topics I should include in a money manifesto if I chose to write one for the blog. Continue reading →

An Unintentional Meander Up Grumpy Avenue (Part 3)

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It’s OK to Fail

Americans abhor failure, or so we’ve been led to believe. I joined the U.S. military in the late 1990s and can remember the Zero-Defect Mentality the post-Cold War peace dividend bred into our military leaders. While I would like to think the longest-running armed conflict in U.S. history (Afghanistan), and the most controversial since Viet Nam (Iraq), bled our military leadership dry of the Zero-Defect Mentality, I’ve watched it slowly creep back into prominence since 2010.

My current Commanding Officer (CO) is an exception to that trend. He uses a term to describe his willingness to accept failure: Recoverable Training Failure. It essentially means he allows people to learn from their mistakes, as long as those failures are recoverable (i.e., no one died or was seriously injured). He’d rather people fail in a training environment, take the hard lessons learned, apply them, and succeed operationally when it matters most.  It’s a combat veteran’s mentality and is a good leadership philosophy in my opinion.

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The Reluctant Financial Voyeur

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Foreclosure From The Great Recession

Over the past two work weeks, I helped financially counsel a fellow officer whose residual financial issues from the Great Recession stood to impact his career.  There we were, almost 10 years from the start of the downturn, looking at foreclosure documents starting in 2009.  He’d only settled the foreclosure within the last year, and the DoD wanted answers.  In some ways, I could hardly believe it.  In other ways, it was a sobering reminder about the lasting impact that event will have on American society for years, possibly generations, to come.

It also proved an interesting glimpse into another financial way a life.  I found a life almost alien to mine because decades ago my fellow officer chose to build wealth through rental properties.  Despite my personal negative history with a 2004 property purchase (as related previously on this blog), I hold no ill will for those who choose property investment as a method for building wealth.  If it works for them, that’s great.  However, my comrade-in-arms had specifically chosen a highly leveraged method for acquiring rental properties.  As I questioned him on the simple details that he should’ve known from using this strategy, I quickly realized he lacked the acumen for it.

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Test Your Retirement Plan: FI Numbers Don’t Lie, But … (Part 2)

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Test your retirement plan

Sister, I killed Colonel Grumpus in the Drawing Room with a lead pipe.

Grumpus The Confessor

I have a confession to make.  I put off writing this post for a while.  When I first started my blog, I had always intended to demonstrate how to test your retirement plan.  I wanted to do this by using a high powered retirement calculator.  Doing so would complement what I consider the biggest strength of my website: the series of practical “How To” retirement plan articles in the Planning section.  However, I needed to tackle some other topics first.  I wanted to walk financially novice readers up to a point where they could understand the subject matter of this article.  Yet, I essentially hit that point weeks ago, and still, I delayed.

Part of that delay was due to the complexity of what I intended to describe.  It’s hard to write effectively about the steps needed to test your retirement plan.  A technically savvy blogger would simply post a video of how to do this, but that is beyond my capability at the moment.  As a point of reference, I was happy enough when I figured out how to embed a spreadsheet into this post.  Maybe someday I will circle back and create a video once I obtain the skills, and find the time. Continue reading →