I know, I know. This is “supposed” to be a personal finance blog. But hear me out! I know there are TONS of thoughts out there about meditation. I don’t think I’ve ever met two people who feel the same way about meditation. Even I, as a neuroscientist who has read the research on meditation’s beneficial effects on the brain, was skeptical for the longest time. But after giving it a try in 2015 when I had nothing else to lose, I can honestly say it has done wonders of good in my life. If you’ve never given meditation a try (or you’ve only given it a little bit of a try and sworn it off), this post is for you.
Continue reading “Have You Ever Tried Meditating?”Category: Background Material
How I Set My Goals
It’s June! Things are getting warmer and greener here in Vermont. In addition to a changing season, it’s also about the time I like to do my mid-year goal review with myself. Because I’m doing my own goal check-in, I thought what better time than now to share with my readers how I actually set my yearly goals?
Continue reading “How I Set My Goals”My First Money Memory
It seems that any personal finance blog these days isn’t complete without the telling of the first money memory. Well, I’m here today to tell you mine!
There’s a widely held belief that your first and earliest money memories tell you a lot about how you are with money now. I listened to a podcast recently that talked about how freeing it can be to reflect on your first money memory.
If you Google first money memory, you may come across dramatic headlines like “Your First Money Memories May Dictate Your Entire Financial Future” or “How Your Childhood Money Memories Could Be Helping – Or Hurting”. While I don’t think it needs to be that dramatic, I am a big proponent of curiosity and awareness when it comes to your own personal (or financial, professional, etc.) life. Have you ever taken the time to think about your relationship with money from a young age, and how that may have affected how you view and feel about money now? You may be surprised by what you discover!
Continue reading “My First Money Memory”Intentional Spending – What It Means To Me
I read a great post recently on intentional spending on The Fioneers blog (if you haven’t already, check them out, they are fabulous). In the post, Jess described intentional spending as making intentional decisions to spend money on things they value. In 2021, they spent more than double what they spent in 2020, and they were 100% happy about it because it was 100% intentional.
I think what I love most about intentional spending is that, by nature, it is a very personal thing. Intentional spending is tied directly to a person’s or a family’s values, and values are inherently personal.
Continue reading “Intentional Spending – What It Means To Me”How I Found My Accountability Partner
It was June 2018. I had just started a new job, in a brand new career, after my world had turned upside down. After the job that I had thought would be my dream job, that I had been on the hamster wheel working toward my whole life, turned out not to be the dream job.
Continue reading “How I Found My Accountability Partner”What I Would Do If I Wasn’t Working Full Time
“But, what in the world would you do if you didn’t work?!”
If you’re on a journey to financial independence, and plan to retire earlier than the traditional 60-65 work-til-you-drop age range, do you ever hear this response when you share your plans with others?
How Part-Time Work Became My Goal
I may be on a journey to financial independence, but for the longest time, when I was still on the hamster wheel, it was just a feeling of “I’ll get there when I get there”. I liked working, and I didn’t have any plans to stop. How the times have changed!
Continue reading “How Part-Time Work Became My Goal”DINKs: Double Income, No Kids
At the first company I worked for after I left academia, the one where I took the hefty pay cut, we had biweekly team meetings. These meetings always started with an icebreaker as a way to get to know each other and increase team morale.
Continue reading “DINKs: Double Income, No Kids”Welcome to DINKS on a Bus!
Hey there! Thanks for stopping by the blog for my first post. This is the place where I intend to chronicle my slow FI (financial independence) journey and our dream of building out a school bus so that we can travel the country part time. But my hope is that this blog will be so much more than that! I have a lot going on in this brain of mine, and a lot of things I want to share with the world. Disclaimer: I plan to sometimes get vulnerable and talk about hard things. I strongly believe that if we could all just get more comfortable with being vulnerable, the world would be a lot better of a place. Thus, I’m not really sure if I perfectly fit into the personal finance blogging space, but I’m also not sure that it matters. I believe that telling our own unique stories and putting them out there in the world will help there to be more open hearts and less hatred, so that’s what I intend to do. Who’s coming along?
Continue reading “Welcome to DINKS on a Bus!”