• Portfolio Allocation

    Portfolio Allocation

    For those interested in some of the details of my portfolio allocation, here we go… None of the charts or details that follow involve illiquid assets, such as private stock or real estate. The majority of my investments are in Brazilian assets. Because I spend money in Brazil, I want to avoid the risk of…

  • Retirement Calculator Update!

    Retirement Calculator Update!

    Hello friends, The Portfolio Withdrawal Calculator, for Brazil has been updated with a new feature and some fixes. Special thanks to “Investidor Moderado” who posted a comment earlier here which inspired the new feature. While implementing the suggestion, I found some bugs and fixed those too. I also added some notes on the page to…

  • Don’t take FIRE rules for granted, especially if you’re not in the US.

    Don’t take FIRE rules for granted, especially if you’re not in the US.

    So there I was… listening to an episode of a popular FIRE podcast yesterday and the topic of the Rule of 72 came up, and I had a thought.. The Rule of 72, if you’re not familiar, is the idea that you can calculate the number of years it will take a fixed amount of…

  • Starting to think in your adopted currency. Geoarbitrage lifestyle inflation.

    Starting to think in your adopted currency. Geoarbitrage lifestyle inflation.

    When you first move to a foreign land, where your relatively strong currency has more purchasing power, you feel rich. I covered this in article on Geoarbitrage. This leads to an interesting condition: Geoarbitrage lifestyle inflation. All of the sudden, instead of having 1,000 USD I have 5,000 BRL, and it feels like soooo much…

  • Dog food is too expensive. Making Homemade Dog Food.

    Dog food is too expensive. Making Homemade Dog Food.

    Would you eat the same food for every meal of every day? What if it wasn’t even a variety of foods on the same plate.. like rice, beans, salad and meat? What if it was literally the same exact bite, every bite? That’s a summary of your dog’s culinary life. Perhaps you should consider making…

  • I bought BYD stock

    I bought BYD stock

    I take a fair amount of Uber rides. I would say 2 out of the past 5 or 6 Uber rides have been in a mysteriously futuristic electric car, which I found out is called the BYD Dolphin Mini. In both cases, we asked the Uber driver what got him to buy an electric car….

  • 5 star habanero hot sauce recipe

    5 star habanero hot sauce recipe

    Hot and spicy food products and recipes are not all that common in Brazil. I have found that this fact comes as a surprise to many. Anyhow I am a lover of spicy foods, and while hot sauces are available, I decided to go to great lengths to make my own. You’ll note by the…

  • Taxes part 1: Earned income

    Taxes part 1: Earned income

    It’s tax time in both the US and Brazil. so a good point to cover this topic. For US citizens, moving to another country usually results in dramatically more complicated taxes. Why? Well the US is one of only two nations in the world that taxes it’s citizen based on their citizenship, not based on…

  • I sold a condo in Brazil: How’d it do (in percentages)?

    I sold a condo in Brazil: How’d it do (in percentages)?

    That’s right. I had two condos (“apartamentos” in Brazil). One is our primary residence and the other was actually the first property we bought here. Long story short, we didn’t use it much. We have friends in the same area with many properties, so any time we’d go visit the area we just stayed with…

  • New tool! Retirement Calculator for Brazil

    New tool! Retirement Calculator for Brazil

    Check out our new portfolio withdrawal calculator, using Brazilian stock market, bond, and inflation data. Many such retirement withdrawal simulators exist, but they all use US asset and inflation data. If you want to simulate retirement withdrawals from a portfolio consisting on non-US assets, in an economy with not-US inflation, you’ve been out of luck….