I can’t believe it, but it’s happened! My biggest financial independence (FI) goal since starting this blog, Flamingo FI (in other words, half of the traditional FI number, or one-half of 25x yearly expenses), has been achieved! Read on to hear more about what this means to me and what I’m planning to do now that I’ve unlocked this milestone.
Continue reading “I’ve Reached Flamingo FI! Now What?”Category: Financial Journey
The Best (Financial) Decisions I’ve Ever Made
As the end of another year draws near, I find myself doing what I always do around this time: reflecting. Reflecting on all that I’ve learned this year. Reflecting on the goals I’ve achieved, the places I’ve fallen short, all the activities I did or didn’t do.
In this spirit of reflection, I’ve been thinking about how grateful I am for where I find myself right now, happily living a slow FI lifestyle, and all the financial decisions I’ve made that have led me to this very place. So today, I’m here to share some of those decisions I’m most proud of and hopefully inspire you to reflect on some of the best financial decisions you’ve made on your path.
Continue reading “The Best (Financial) Decisions I’ve Ever Made”Why I Changed My Money Check-In Strategy
Here we are, already half-way through November. We are getting close to the end of 2023, my friends! Pretty soon, it will be time to do some year-end reflection and goal-setting for 2024.
Before that though, we still have to close out 2023.
At the beginning of this year, I decided to switch up the way I do my money check-ins with myself. Throughout 2023, I’ve experimented with going from checking in on my money and my financial independence (FI) numbers on a monthly basis to a quarterly one. Today on the blog, I’m sharing why I made the change, how it’s been going this year, and what I want to do differently next year. Hopefully it will inspire you to start thinking about your own money check-in process and see if there’s anything you want to switch up in 2024!
Continue reading “Why I Changed My Money Check-In Strategy”How Comfortable Are You With Change?
For the longest time, change scared the crap out of me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a work in progress. I still have to actively talk myself down sometimes from freaking out when change is looming or imminent. But over time, I’ve gotten better at accepting change. In fact, I’ve even found embracing change to be quite life altering. Today on the blog, I’m diving into why I believe we could all benefit from getting more comfortable with change.
Continue reading “How Comfortable Are You With Change?”Why I Still Struggle With Choosing Me (And What We Spent To Attend A Recent Wedding)
Hello, friends! Happy Friday! Mr. Dink and I are just getting back from attending the wedding of 2 of our very close friends. We had an absolutely fantastic time!
As we were getting ready for this wedding, and as I prepared to keep track of all my expenses so I could, of course, let my wonderful readers know all the juicy details of what we spent (this is a personal finance blog at its core, after all), I realized that I had never actually had to fly to a wedding on my own dime, as an adult. I’d always been able to drive. Or, if I flew, it was to attend a family member’s wedding and as such, the costs were much lower (ability to stay with friends and family, for example).
I promise I will get into all the nitty gritty of what we spent to attend this wedding in the second half of the post (you can skip ahead if you’d like). But first, I want to write a few quick words on how leading up to this wedding made me realize why I still struggle with choosing me.
Continue reading “Why I Still Struggle With Choosing Me (And What We Spent To Attend A Recent Wedding)”Can Meditating Make You A Better Investor?
For those of us on the path to FI, or financial independence, and especially for those of us who have pretty much automated all our savings, we are tasked with the tough to-do item of just sitting and waiting for compounding to do its thing. Perhaps patiently, or perhaps not so patiently.
We should be focusing on living our lives, living our best lives now, and letting our investments grow in the background. But as we all know, it can sometimes be difficult to watch our money go up and down on the roller coaster ride of the stock market.
Continue reading “Can Meditating Make You A Better Investor?”How Much Money Will Make You Happy?
As many of you know, I recently got a new job. And with this new job came a salary bump! A salary bump that feels like a particular milestone (at least for me): I surpassed the $100K annual salary mark for the first time in my life, the day after I turned 36 years old.
With this change, I’ve been thinking a lot about the all-too-familiar infamous saying “money can’t buy happiness”. Today on the blog, I’m sharing some thoughts on this highly debated topic.
Continue reading “How Much Money Will Make You Happy?”Why I Took Another Full-Time Job When Part-Time Work Is My Goal
I live in Vermont, and one of the state’s famous sayings is “if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes.” What this saying has at its core is that things change. Things change ALL. THE. TIME. The sooner we can wrap our heads around that, the sooner we can accept it and move on. Things always change, and so we must adapt.
Continue reading “Why I Took Another Full-Time Job When Part-Time Work Is My Goal”We Are Not Our Worst (Financial) Mistakes
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on Instagram lately with personal finance content creators listing their top money mistakes. They range from the more simple, like buying an expensive piece of clothing they never wore or not investing sooner, to more substantial like buying individual stocks they wish they hadn’t, panic selling their shares, or taking on a loan to start a business or side hustle that didn’t work out. All these different posts/examples/graphics have got me thinking about the words we choose to use in these situations, particularly the words mistake and regret. How we use them, what they mean to us, and how they serve us in the world.
Continue reading “We Are Not Our Worst (Financial) Mistakes”That’s Not A Professor’s Car!
That is literally what someone, actually the husband of a good friend, said to me one day when I showed up to their house after getting my first big-time, adult Professor job. It was 2015. I had just gotten out of my 2002 Toyota Camry, which was given to me by my dad when I graduated from college in 2009, when I was greeted with this exclamation. “That’s not a professor’s car!” I was completely caught off guard by it. I had no idea how to respond, but I’m sure I just shrugged it off with something like “oh, I’m sure I’ll get a new car soon”. This experience, my friends, is a huge part of what’s wrong with our society!
Continue reading “That’s Not A Professor’s Car!”