
Today on the FI Garage The Economist and The Accountant have a beer and get to speak with Bob Lai, who writes at Tawcan.com.
Introduction [0:40]
- Financial Epiphany (1:07)
- A family full of early retirees (1:40)
- Blog topics (2:50)
Questions for Bob
- Bob had 3 weddings that inspired 2 cookbooks (3:35)
- Why cookbooks? (5:08)
- Bob’s first blog was a recipe blog: Three More Bites (5:30)
- Was money openly discussed in your family? (6:10)
- Did your family provide you with information about the net worth numbers needed for financial independence (7:15)
- Focusing on Dividend income and not drawing down portfolio
- Are you focusing on dividend investing as a hedge against sequence of return risk? (8:35)
- Riding out the financial crisis
- Passing down dividend portfolio to kids – building a legacy
- Using logic to avoid a panic sale (11:40)
- Father provided financial guidance during the economic downturn
- You said didn’t have an allowance growing up, are you going to give your kids an allowance? (12:53)
- In Bob’s Financial Freedom interview he talked about separating the “RE” from FIRE. Do people focus too much on the early retirement aspect of FIRE? (14:35)
- Quitting your 9-5 to do something you enjoy
- Retirement is not going to make you happy
- FI is not a finish line
- Bob’s struggle with mental health (19:03)
- Bob talks about consistently improving yourself and building relationships (20:40)
- Have you always pursued self-improvement or did FIRE push you towards self-improvement? (21:45)
- Moving away from personal finance books towards other books. Here is Bob’s Q2 booklist including Educated: A Memoir
- The personal finance community is very supportive (24:45)
- FinCon (26:10)
- Do you think people in the FIRE community are too conservative in quitting a job they don’t like (27:35)
- Different terms to replace Financial Independence / Retire Early
- Tanya Hester’s Work Optional
- Bob’s Retirement Optional
- The Accountant’s Financial Independence / Refocus Energy
- Slowly Sipping Coffee’s Fully-Funded Lifestyle Chang
- Different terms to replace Financial Independence / Retire Early
- Most recent Dividend update
- Garden pictures (30:25)
- Including dividend history in your updates (32:25)
- Bob’s final thoughts (33:55)
- Thoughts on writing a blog
- Bob was featured on MoneySence magazine
- The banks are not helping anyone on the path to FIRE
How to Contact Bob
- tawcan.com
- @Tawcan on twitter