Category: Uncategorized

What We Spent On Our First Real Vacation

Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Dink and I have definitely taken “vacations” together. But this was the first one we did JUST for us. With no obligations to anyone else. A vacation where we made all the decisions ourselves about where to stay, what to eat, what to do, etc. As we’ve been together for almost 8 years, this felt like a big deal and a long time coming!

Read on to hear more about what we did, where we went, what this vacation meant to us, and how we handled our finances from the start of planning to when we arrived home.

Continue reading “What We Spent On Our First Real Vacation”

What If We All Tried To Rest More In 2024?

Hello, friends! Happy New Year! I know, I know, we’re in February now, but I had to say it since I haven’t said it to you yet 🙂

I apologize for being away from the blog for so long. I did not intend for it to be this long of a break, but I’m back from what I’m calling my holiday hibernation. I had the week off between Christmas and New Years for the first time since 2020, and I was really psyched about it. I had planned to be so super productive. To get way ahead on the blog.

But, would you guess what happened instead? My body told me it needed to rest, and I listened. I let go of the guilt of not being productive and not posting new content, and it was freeing and wonderful. It was just what I needed. And that vibe definitely spilled well into 2024…

Continue reading “What If We All Tried To Rest More In 2024?”

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”

Experiment Success Alert! Airbnb Edition

I’m back with another installment of my Experiment Stories series on the blog, where I chronicle my “experiences with experiments” (say that 5 times fast) on my slow FI journey! There will be success stories, and there will be not-so-successful stories. I’m refusing to call them failures, because I believe that there is no such thing as failure when it comes to experimentation: we try things, we learn things, there you have it!

Continue reading “Experiment Success Alert! Airbnb Edition”

How Do We Know What’s Important?

I hope all my U.S. readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, no matter where you were, who you were with, or what you ate 🙂 I had planned to publish this post the day after Thanksgiving, on my usual Friday posting day, but instead I decided not to rush it or to worry about it on my holiday time off. It’s funny to think that I chose what was important to me at the time over publishing a post on the very same topic!

Even amidst all that is happening in our country and around the world these days, I’m finding myself ever more grateful for my life, my family, my friends, and my community as the years churn on. Having my connection with myself and my community provides a light in the darkness. In that spirit, I bring you some musings on the theme of importance.

Continue reading “How Do We Know What’s Important?”

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?”

Bus Update: We’re Still In No Rush

It’s been awhile since we’ve updated you readers on what’s going on with the bus. It’s the namesake of our blog after all, and in case anyone is curious about where we are in this department, we thought it was about time to share some of our current thoughts.

Continue reading “Bus Update: We’re Still In No Rush”

Lean Into Your Creative Side

How are you designing your life on your way to financial independence (FI)? As many of you know, one of the main themes of this blog is living our best lives now, starting to take action now to make our lives more joyful, instead of waiting until some day in the distant future, when we hit our FI number (roughly 25x our yearly expenses).

Today on the blog, I’m honing in on one way we can help with the lifestyle design process now, one way we can increase our chances of living our best lives now. By getting creative! We can use creativity to figure out how we can start designing our lives, and living our best lives, NOW.

Continue reading “Lean Into Your Creative Side”

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)”