Blog

The Bulletproof Strategy to Develop a Morning Ritual

Written by Adam on October 8, 2018. Updated January 8, 2023.
10 min read. Blog, Personal, Mindfulness, Goals, Minafi, Canonical. 2 Comments

Are you a morning person? Chances are you’re not. Some reports say roughly 20% of people consider themselves “morning people” or “night people” – with the remaining 80% being somewhere in the middle. Even those that do have a morning ritual don’t typically do it by choice. Most do so for external purposes and only a small few prefer to wake up that early. People that do rise early have been shown to be happier, live longer and accomplish more. This got me (a self-proclaimed night owl) wondering – can I choose to be a morning person?

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My FinCon 2018: Friends, Inspiration and Motivation

Written by Adam on October 1, 2018. Updated January 8, 2023.
19 min read. Personal, Blog, Minafi, Canonical. 28 Comments

It’s 1 PM Sunday and I just got back to Salt Lake City after 4 days at FinCon 2018 in Orlando, Florida. Like last year, it was a whirlwind of meeting people I’ve only talked to online, reconnecting with friends, and running into new (awesome) people. All while trying to soak it all in and learning new ways to improve Minafi and help more people learn to invest.

FinCon itself is a financial media conference. If you were as confused as I was when you hear that, here’s my description of it:

FinCon is a place for people who create, teach, inform, inspire, help or share their own stories about money.

While most of the people I talked to were bloggers and podcasters, there are also blog readers and those hoping to start their own site.

Fincon welcome party — Flamingos would play a very large role in this FinCon.

One thing that stands out to me about FinCon is that most of the people are paying their own way. That makes for a completely different atmosphere than most of the developer or professional conferences I’ve attended where an employer pays for a group of employees to go. Instead, there is a much greater focus on community and learning from each other as opposed to learning from the speakers (that’s part of it too for sure though).

In this post I’m going to break down a few things:

Why you should go to FinCon
Why shouldn’t you go to FinCon
A day-by-day rundown of my FinCon 2018
My personal takeaways from this year

Note: This is a little long. It’s also missing the usual degree of edits I do on a post because, well, it’s long and I wanted to publish it this week rather than next.

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How Are Bonuses Taxed? (with Bonus Calculator)

Written by Adam on September 24, 2018. Updated January 8, 2023.
9 min read. Taxes, Blog, Minafi, Canonical, Interactive. 4 Comments

I care a lot about lowering my taxes, so when I started receiving bonuses from work I was a little confused as to how they were taxed. It didn’t seem to match up with what I expected. This led me down a bit of a research rabbit hole to find out why! What I learned was bonuses are taxed at a standard 25% federal rate, with other taxes added on as well. This led me into a bit of digging – can I reduce these taxes in some way?

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Our New $6,000 Car

Written by Adam on September 17, 2018. Updated January 8, 2023.
6 min read. Personal, Blog, Minafi, Canonical. 10 Comments

Since moving to Utah we’ve been trying to figure out what to do about this whole car thing. When we got to town, we had two cars: a 2012 Mazda 6 S and a 2013 Scion TC. Our past lives in Orlando required two vehicles to stay sane and cut down commutes in opposite directions. Since moving to Salt Lake City, we’ve had to rethink what we need from our transportation.

The easy reliance on public transportation to make it to work led me to drop my car back in May. That decision was easy since we rarely used both cars at once. We still absolutely needed one if we want to make it up to the mountains or go anywhere out west (things are seriously far apart).

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My 52 Beliefs

Written by Adam on September 10, 2018. Updated January 8, 2023.
5 min read. Blog, Personal, adamfortuna. 17 Comments

I read a bunch of blogs. Ever since the days of LiveJournal and Google Reader I’ve loved reading others growth stories, technical takeaways and seeing what knowledge people care to share.

It usually takes a while for me to read enough by someone to feel a deep connection with them and develop an understanding of who they are. Some writers do this far better than others – generally ones who are amazing and tying in their own stories with what they write about (Tanja from Our Next Life comes to mind).

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How We Plan to Spend $80,000 a Year & Pay Nearly $0 Taxes

Written by Adam on September 3, 2018. Updated January 8, 2023.
9 min read. Investing, Taxes, Blog, Minafi, Canonical, Personal. 24 Comments

In my Q3 Income Report, I mentioned one strategy of ours that I want to expand on: paying next to no taxes in retirement. There are a bunch of strategies for reducing taxes – Backdoor Roth IRA conversions, Roth IRA Ladders, tax gain/loss harvesting – just to name a few.

The more I read about different strategies for reducing taxes when withdrawing funds the more I realize there are soooo many ways to do it. What strategy you choose will rely mostly on two key facts:

Which accounts you’re using (401k, Roth IRA, Brokerage)
How much you’re withdrawing each year.

I’m going to go through these two questions for my own accounts and show just how we plan to be able to spend $80,000 a year and pay absolutely taxes. Not “low taxes” but $0 a year in federal tax.

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