I recently asked my 6-year old daughter “what do you want to be when you grow up?” She answered back that said she wants to buy duplexes. That’s my girl! Now, before you start chastising me for trying to force my daughter to be something she doesn’t want to when she grows up, let me explain. When I grow up… When I was young, I had my sights set on being an artist for Disney. I had a pretty good knack for drawing and that just […]
As some of you know, I’ve been a little bummed lately with my countdown to financial independence (FI) and early retirement being a ways out. Although I have a plan to retire before my 50th birthday, I just feel like this is too far out. Every day that I spend at work is one less day that I get to spend with my daughter. Granted, this is the summer when she’s not in school, but it’s tough regardless (which I’m sure it
Most days while I’m at work, I try to make it a point to get outside for about 10-15 minutes and go for a short walk. This doesn’t always happen – maybe it’s too busy in the office and, of course, most of the winter is ruled out because I hate the cold. But in the summer, it’s been a great escape. I just put everything on hold for that very short time and just walk… maybe that’s how smokers feel during a
Escaping the Hustle-Bustle of the Rat Race with a Walk Read More »
If you live in an area where you don’t get to enjoy mowing your lawn, you don’t know what you’re missing out on… sweltering heat and sweat, 90 decibels of mundane loud noise, and an hour or more of your day wasted every week. Mmm, mm, mmm – doesn’t that sound exciting?! It’s not. I hate mowing. I decided this past weekend to mow the lawn early in the morning before it got too hot out. Didn’t matter. It was a hot and muggy
I recently noticed that I love talking about money or investments… much more than I have in the past. When a conversation turns to money, I realized I perk up and get excited about the conversation. I get animated with a passion in my voice. Whether it’s with friends, co-workers, or family, this subject seems to bring out a different person in me. Money, money, money. It’s not that I’m some Scrooge McDuck and all I want is money. It’s actually
Yup, this week marks the one-year anniversary of my first post being published on this site. Looking back over the year, I’m happy with how this has been going and I’m excited about the coming years. I had a couple basic reasons for starting this site last year: To give myself a place to share my path with anyone interested. To build a following and potentially make a little bit of side income. Looking back on these initial goals, I have to say that things have
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a tendency to make a quick judgement on people when I first see or meet them. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that either. As I’ve grown more in the past handful of years though, I’ve made a real effort to give people the benefit of the doubt because maybe there’s a story going on that I’m not aware of… Maybe that $%^&* driver is not just some reckless, haphazard driver, but
Last week I was listening to a BiggerPockets podcast and their guest was Clayton Morris from Fox & Friends Weekend. I’ve never seen the show and didn’t know who Clayton Morris was, but it was actually a very good podcast. Clayton’s one of those guys you can tell just by listening to that he’s extremely intelligent and the show was very entertaining as well. After I was done listening, I found his blog online and that led me to an interesting article he
Should I Use a HELOC to Pay off My Rental House? Read More »
I recently realized that I have a number of loose ends out there from previous posts that my regular readers might be wondering about. So I thought I would take an opportunity to put out a post following up to hopefully tie up those loose ends a bit… Switching to an Accountant This was the first year I decided not to use TurboTax and go to an accountant. If you remember, I had three goals with this: Check over my work Get
We’re coming up on a year of my site’s first post in a couple of months and with that, I’ve been able to really get to know you guys as well as some of the other financial independence sites out there. As I’ve been investing a lot more of my time reading the other blogs, I’ve noticed that it really makes for an interesting read to see where people are at on their journey. One of the dilemmas that I’m facing
