In 2001, I was in the middle of my get-out-of-crippling-student-debt phase. Dear Reader, you may be surprised to learn that that time in my life wasn’t as fun as my spend-all-my-money-on-video-games-and-candy phase. But it’s true. Although I didn’t have much money, I managed to establish a very small emergency fund. But aside from knowing that…
Month: December 2019
Party Down
In a prior post, I did what about a million other bloggers have done better than me and discussed travel hacking and some of the ways it’s saved us. I also briefly mentioned a story about how we took a mostly subsidized trip instead of throwing a big shindig. Having threatened promised to give more…
Hack a World Away
We love traveling and exploring new places. But we’re smart enough to know that given our finances, big trips needed to be somewhat limited. So, each year, we’ve typically taken one big family trip — for which I’d done a pretty good job of keeping costs down — and another trip to my in-laws’ place…
PaRents
I grew up in circles wholly comprising people who thought buying a home was always smarter than renting. No one even questioned the choice. It was probably one of the Ten Commandments written in stone, if not wholly self-evident. I joined these ranks, also never thinking to run the numbers. I mean, it’s only hundreds…
Higher Learning
We used to fund our kids’ 529 accounts. We have ceased doing so.
30 – 15 = -110,000
The Missus and I bought a condo in 2009. After putting 20% down, we secured a $300,000 30-year fixed rate mortgage at a pretty good interest rate. Our monthly payments were significantly higher than those for the smaller, cheaper place we’d moved from. But they were manageable and within our budget (even if, knowing what…
Law School Broke Me
A lot of FIRE bloggers grew up poor in families with at best limited means and so needed to pay for college (if they went at all) themselves. Others grew up loaded in families with greater means, but the parents made their kid(s) pay for part or all of college. I mostly grew up way…
FIRE Cracked Open My Skull
As a general rule, I’m staggeringly a little block-headed. But there are some small fissures in my skull. Who knew that literal and figurative banging of one’s head against a wall had real benefits? So, something occasionally gets in (even if the chasms allow more things escape). Tho I have almost always been tolerant of…
Thank Youse
In my last post, I mentioned that this blog was, to put it charitably, a long time in the brain making. One reason for that — in addition to my own failings — is that there are already so many great content producers covering FIRE, personal finance, travel hacking and other related subjects. Frankly, I…
Let There Be Light
Dear Reader, you may not know it, but this blog has existed for quite some time. Years in fact. But you’d never have discovered it no matter how hard you looked. Why? Because it existed only in my flea-addled brain. And notwithstanding the many, many . . . many failings of that small vessel, one…
