Discovering FIRE and learning to question everything — even things I didn’t even know to question — has allowed us to live better lives by making changes we otherwise would not have known about. Not for nothing, it’s also allowed us to save money, increase our net worth, and lessen our carbon footprint. It’s been…
Red Bull May Give Me Wings, But Learning About FIRE Didn’t Hurt
My discovery of FIRE has led to our realizing savings, and an accumulation, of money. But for me, it’s the unquantifiable changes that have been the most valuable. Here’s a story (Story time! Whee!) illustrating what I mean. I was extremely fortunate in that my parents paid for my undergrad education. Granted, I went to…
Thanks for Not Hiring Me
When I moved from the Midwest to the Mountain West I had a work gig lined up: a contractor arrangement with the employer I was leaving because of the move. But soon after the move, and before the new arrangement was to begin, I got news that the gig went sideways. Uh oh? In the…
I Lost $750, and I’m Sort of Happy About It
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…
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…
