About a year ago we flew from Asia to Europe to begin a 4 month tour. We spent a month each in Spain, Italy, and UK/Ireland, and a handful of weeks in Portugal, Czech, Germany, Denmark, and Iceland. This was a big chunk of Jr’s 16 countries visited in his first 16 months.
Notably absent from this list of countries is France. And it has been an awfully long time since I’ve had a good croissant.
To rectify this terrible situation, in a few weeks we are flying to Paris. We’ll be there at least 2 weeks, after which we will eventually make it to the other slighted countries.
I was pretty excited about how we saved $10k+ on our previous trip. But this time… we did even better.
Over the first few years of early retirement I noticed a disturbing trend… dividends were increasing at a much too rapid pace!
Between 2012 and 2017, the dividend payout of VTI / VTXAX grew at an annual rate of more than 9%! The growth rate on our portfolio was even higher (14%+) which brought annual dividends from $28,139 in 2013 to $36,760 in 2015. Annual inflation over the same period was only about 1.5%.
While dividend growth investors were most certainly overjoyed, I was busy reducing our dividend income.
Please, corporations of the world… stop paying so many dividends.
What is the ROI of incremental Self-Employment taxes?
By taking GCC truly global and incorporating overseas, we can completely eliminate Self Employment taxes.
Although this is only one of many factors to consider, these pesky payroll taxes take 15.3% of every dollar of profit we make on this little blog. All else being equal, I would rather pay $0 than $5,000+.
But of course, all else is not equal. Fewer dollars paid in Self Employment taxes will result in smaller Social Security checks down the road. (Checks? I’m definitely dating myself.)
2016 was our 4th full year of living large. And this year we have the receipts to go with it.
We traveled a bit, spending time in 16 countries. This includes a month in Thailand, a month in Malaysia, a few days in Singapore, 4 months in Western Europe, 2 months in the US, and a few months in Taiwan. Jr has been to 17 countries now.
