It is that time of year again that is feared most by cats and dogs: New Year’s Eve (or “Oudejaarsdag” in Dutch). The time of year when the Netherlands goes crazy and vaporizes about 118 Million Euros in the name of fun and tradition. It is by far the best way to see your money go up in smoke! How to vaporize money, a crash course. As a frugal family, we should obviously not spend any money on this non-sense. Don’t get me wrong, I (Mr. CF) still have a soft spot for fireworks (something to do with childhood memories). And […]
FIRE Meetup February 2025
After the previous post of “how to organize a FIRE meetup“, and after the previous FIRE meetup in October in Leiderdorp, I have now teamed up with Ms. Hoefnix. And we have news for you! We have now planned FIRE meetup February 2025. See below for the details! Update 17-11-2024 – 21:30: We sold out Saturday in less than 4 hours, so we added a Sunday meetup too. Which we also sold out in a few hours. What the actual F… I’m so sorry for all those that were interested, but didn’t register yet. You can still find a place […]
October 2024 Fire Meetup
Life has been fun (new post “How to un-fire yourself: France Road Trip” is pending) and entertaining lately, hence planning a meetup got put on the backburner. But I’ve been getting multiple emails to do one again. So, here are the details for the upcoming October 2024 Fire Meetup! Where? I’ve been scouting La Place locations for a while now. Finding one that is reachable by both public transport and car, has long opening hours, has enough space to facilitate 20-25 people sitting together and is not too far a drive for us (yes, I’m lazy), is surprisingly difficult! Hence, […]
Adult Life Bingo
A spoke with a colleague the other day about his new house. At some point he mentioned that his wife had completed the adult life bingo (“Grote mensen bingo”) this year. They had gotten their first kid, moved to a new house together and she landed a dream job. Their life was good and he was visibly happy. How do you win adult life bingo? His comment made me chuckle, but also triggered some thoughts about adult life bingo. What is on this bingo card? Or what should be on this bingo card? My guess is that the bingo card […]
Becoming a Public Servant
Life is never boring in the Cheesy household. After a somewhat unexpected loss of income at the beginning of the year, I have an update! I’ve got a new job, and one as a public servant! I bet you did not see that one coming. Me neither! Why on earth am I becoming a Public Servant? Let’s review, shall we? How a FIREd Brain works… Having a nice stack of cash (and investments) makes you review your career a bit differently, In my humble opinion. Whereas in the beginning of our careers we would focus more on money and career […]
2023 Dividend Totals
Before diving into the 2023 Dividend Totals, I’d like to thank all the 25-ish people that showed up during the last FIRE meetup in Leiderdorp! I had a blast, I hope you did too. We even got to the point that the last 6 of us pretty much got kicked out of the La Place as it was about 30min past closing :-). Plan is do do it again, likely around April. Location and date are to be confirmed. Keep you posted! Anyhow, what did our dividend growth share do in 2023? Here is a quick overview. Dividend Income Due […]
And… back to Koos Werkeloos
Welcome to 2024 (better late then never)! First post of the year and it’s one with a bang. I lost my job… And… back to Koos Werkeloos! Job loss The story is as follows, last year we cleaned out our cash reserves in an attempt to upgrade our money pit into a home. Albeit not finished with said money pit, I did start to look for income to infuse our cash position last yeat. I was fortunate to find a decent job, on rotation basis and abroad, on an interesting project. Fast forward to 2024 and due to tightening of […]
Not dead yet!
Nope, we are not dead yet! Albeit we are now over halfway our lives (statistically speaking), we are not planning to call it quits just yet. Life has been good but busy. Financially we are making steps forward once again too. Working really does miracles! Only major downside is that you have a lot less time to do fun stuff. Me no likey. Life update Quick summary, we bought a house that was too big, too expensive and needed a shitload of work. We call that a money pit. Said money pit is slowly improving, albeit not completely finished yet. […]