Below is a guest post from Archana Singh, a finance blogger from the Mystic Land of India. Archana works for one of the leading insurance and web aggregator in the country. Even if you don’t live there, you’ll quickly learn that retirement challenges are fundamentally the same; circumstances could devour …

One of my favorite movies of all-time is American Beauty. The 1999 award-winning film stars Kevin Spacey who played Lester Burnham, a 40-something guy who hated his job and was on the brink of a mid-life crisis. The inflection point was when he saw his daughter’s gorgeous 16-year-old cheerleader friend, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), perform during a half-time dance routine at a high school basketball game.
Lester becomes so infatuated with Angela that he began having sexual fantasies with her. He becomes obsessed with youth that he started to live his life like he just graduated from high school. And when he was told that he was about to get laid off, he instead blackmailed his boss for $60,000. He then quits work anyway choosing to work as a crew in a fast-food chain instead– the position with, in his own words, the least amount of responsibility.
But what really caught my attention is the scene where Lester Burnham wonders in his cubicle while seeing a reflection of his image on the monitor, which resembles a guy trapped in a jail cell. With the numbers on the spreadsheet forming the jail bars in his mind, it’s pretty obvious that he felt imprisoned by his job and wanted an escape. A feeling that many people can sympathize.

It’s a fact, people in developed countries are living longer. For instance, life expectancy for women is predicted to surpass 90 years in South Korea by 2030, according to the study published in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and most respected medical journals. Of course, the study assumes …

When it comes to your finances, there are two extremes to model yourself on, FIRE or FART (acronyms below) — that is if you want to be an extremist. The third option is neither, and that’s completely fine. The choice to quit the rat race at either 35 or 95 is completely your own …

Yesterday, I was playfully googling my name may be out of vanity and boredom. In doing so, I happened to bump into an old comment I wrote in 2010 about not being the “richest man in the cemetery.” The post reminded me of three things: My household net worth in April 2010 was $330,000 …

Coming up with a successful pre-retirement strategy involves detailed planning. For starters, you need to list down some goals. For us, the ultimate financial goal is to retire comfortably by age 60, which is 800 freaking weeks from now! This obviously is NOT a FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire in your …