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?
Some of you who stumbled upon this blog and may not be as familiar with the personal finance space may be wondering what the heck DINKs means, and why I would ever make it part of my blog name. Well, DINKs stands for “double income, no kids”, and back when this blog was only a dream that I never thought would actually come true because _____ (fill in the blank with some lame excuse here), this is the name that, when it came to my mind, I knew was it. My husband and I love talking about money – we have had very open communication surrounding the topic since our early days of dating, which I am a huge advocate of – and we don’t currently intend to have children, both of which have been huge players in our money and life goals. One of our major life goals is to find and purchase a school bus that we (and when I say we, I mean my husband) will build out so that we can live on it part time and travel around our beautiful country. Hence, where “on a bus” comes from. No, we haven’t purchased our bus yet, but what better name for the blog than our one, huge, life-long dream? I’m all about manifesting!
For the personal finance folks out there who are curious, I have always lived a frugal lifestyle, before I even knew what frugality was and when I had so much shame around being thought of as “cheap”. Mrs. Frugalwoods is my founding mother when it comes to the personal finance space, and once I started reading her blog, I never looked back. For the first time in my life, I felt understood about the choices I had made in my life surrounding money.
I don’t intend to talk nitty-gritty numbers on the blog, only because I really don’t love numbers and spreadsheets *gasp, I know, someone in the personal finance community who doesn’t love spreadsheets?! How can it be??* But that’s just me, and I am who I am! However, I’ve also talked about them heavily, just in a difference space – on a podcast! If you’re familiar with the Martinis and Your Money podcast, I have done a financially naked session (getting down to the nitty gritty with your financial numbers) that you can listen to here, and I also did a follow-up session that you can listen to here. With all that said, I consider myself an open book, so if you ever have questions or want to hear more about a certain area of my journey, please do reach out and let me know, either in the comments or through the contact page.
In terms of my money strategy, if you read the book The Simple Path to Wealth, that’s all you really need to know (but of course, I’m happy to share more, and I very likely will as the blog goes on). You can also find this and other useful links in one convenient spot on this page.
For those of you who may not be as familiar with the personal finance space, some of my other personal heroes whose content I consume on the regular currently include Brene Brown (for being a scientist AND a vulnerability warrior), Glennon Doyle (for her sharing of hard things – any other cheetahs out there?), Adam McKay (for directing all the amazing things), Mary Oliver (for never ceasing to inspire me with her poetry), Elizabeth Gilbert (more for her book Big Magic than Eat, Pray, Love) and, of course, Oprah (for, well, just being Oprah, but also for her Super Soul Conversations, which have been a safe haven for me during the pandemic).
Interested in hearing more from me? There will be new content posted soon! You can also subscribe to my email list so you’ll be the first to know when a new post drops.
You can also catch me on Instagram where you’ll find some Vermont nature photos from my wanderings, as well as additional musings.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me!