While doing a bit of recent PF blog reading, I came across a statement on GetRichSlick that made me realize I had forgotten to mention one important aspect, given the current economic climate, about a recent decision my wife and I had come to regarding paying off our auto loan early. I’m talking about the idea that “the debt will simply inflate itself away”.

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Michael Lewis, the author of ‘Liar’s Poker’, has written an anecdotal analysis of the mortgage meltdown that both shocks and scares me. The picture he paints leaves me seriously wondering what Wall Street will look like when the current market turmoil resolves. It has also inspired some significant internal debate in me regarding what we should be doing to best position ourselves to reach our goal of geographic independence.

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In a previous post, I mentioned how we had recently received a relatively large, lump sum, cash amount from a life insurance payout and how this caused “analysis paralysis” as we debated what to do with the money to maximize how it worked for us. In the end, we realized there were two time periods we had to deal with. In this post, I’ll talk more about the decisions we made for the second of those periods, the long term plan.

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In my last post, I mentioned how we had recently received a relatively large, lump sum, cash amount from a life insurance payout and how this caused “analysis paralysis” as we debated what to do with the money to maximize how it worked for us. In the end, we realized there were two time periods we had to deal with. In this post, I’ll talk about the first decision we made for the second of those periods, the “long term” plan.

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We recently received a relatively large, lump sum, cash amount from a life insurance payout. This gave us the the “opportunity” to argue about what to do with it, plus the “fun” of struggling our way through some different priorities. Should we pay off the second mortgage? What about that auto loan? How much, if any, should we invest and should it be via a lump sum or dollar cost averaging? Should we look into angel investing or even buying a business? Is it just us or is talking about money matters always difficult?

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