Finding joy on the journey to financial independence
For the past few weeks on the blog, I’ve been writing a lot about goals. First, I shared my yearly goal-setting process. Last week, I wrote about how goal setting helps me make decisions.
This week, I want to tell you a little tale about how, when I recently decided to clean out and organize my email, I unknowingly aligned my inbox with my values and goals.
Continue reading “The Magic Of An Organized Email Inbox”Last week, I wrote about my process of setting my yearly goals. In that post, I mentioned how setting goals has helped tremendously with my decision-making process. This week, I want to dive deeper into this topic.
I recently heard a story about a friend of a friend. I was told that this person uses her values to make all her decisions. When a decision is put in front of her, she advocates that it is easy for her to say yes or no because all she has to do is ask herself if what she is being asked to do aligns with her values.
I admired this strategy, but I immediately knew I wasn’t there yet. My first, gut reaction was that’s great and all, but does she feel any guilt about her decisions? Apparently the answer is no, but the guilt that comes with decision making is where I struggle most.
Continue reading “How Goal Setting Helps Me Make Decisions”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”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”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”“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?
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”If you’ve been reading the blog so far, you know that when I first discovered the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement around 7 years ago, the whole “retire early” part didn’t really resonate with me. At the time, I was just starting a postdoctoral fellowship and had dreams of being a big-time professor. I was still on the hamster wheel, and I had no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
Continue reading “My Current Financial Independence Goal”One day several years ago, during pre-pandemic normalcy, I walked in the house from being out and about somewhere (remember when that used to happen on the regular?!), and Mr. Dink told me he had a crazy idea.
Continue reading “Ok, So What’s The Deal With The Bus?”If you read my first post, you know that one of my intentions with this blog is to tell my story, and that I’m a big fan of Brene Brown. Well, Brene always starts her podcast Unlocking Us with the same question of the person she is interviewing: tell me your story. Today, I want to tell you my story. But let’s start with the basics.
Continue reading “My Story: The Basics”
