It’s been very quiet on the blogging front because my life has been full for a good while now. My writing has been more personal- more journaling and less typing out blog posts. And there’s been no time for regular blog posts. I was engaged in one of life’s busy seasons- with big changes and new responsibilities. But now I’m back and I can talk about the past many months. The House I wrote several…
Disclaimer: Credit cards are a great tool for maximizing travel. Going into credit card debt to get travel rewards points is not. Only sign up for travel rewards credit cards if you plan to pay it off in full every month. Some links in this post are referrals that will give me some extra travel rewards points. I’m not being paid for people signing up, it’s the basic referral program that the cards offer. If…
You have a great run of a new habit. For several weeks, you’re exercising daily or finally writing that book. The phone habit that swallows so much of your free time is held at bay. Dare you hope that this routine will stick this time. That this time is different, and you’re a changed creation. For a moment, the path to success- to accomplishing some dream- seems possible. But then you hit The Bump. Maybe…
The single most important thing that we did in order to afford a house was to live below our means. Owning a house was always a goal that my wife and I shared. And about a year ago, I realized that we needed to start diligently saving for one. For a while, saving for a house wasn’t the top priority. We put our tax returns in a house fund, but we were primarily focused on…
My dad is good at relaying some of the harder truths of life. He gradually shared these things as we kids were old enough to face them. When I was a junior/senior of high school, he hit me with this one: you can’t have it all. That’s not the message that an idealistic high schooler wants to hear when he’s on the precipice of adult life. I wanted to hear that the world is beckoning…
I tried many different life hacks for decreasing phone use in the past. Deleting social media apps, putting the phone color into black and white, the list goes on. None of it really worked. There was always a work around. Willpower alone wasn’t enough to overcome the social engineering that drives smartphone use. But recently, I have made serious changes to how I use my smartphone. It didn’t take any life hacks. I only had…
I’ve been blogging on this site since August of 2020, not including the few months off I took after the twins were born. But my blogging journey really started sometime in 2018, when I set up a site and started posting. I was in grad school, and most of the posts were focused on college and grad school. Very few people read that blog and I didn’t share it anywhere. I thought my writing was…
There are many ways to not catch striped bass. Some methods are illegal, such as spear fishing. Others lack common sense, such as dressing as a bait fish and attempting to catch them with your bare hands. However, the ones that I’ve been discovering are more nuanced. As a novice striper fisherman who just figured out how to cast properly, my luck has been poor. My fishing experiences this season have forced me to practice…
I love writing about the concept of enough. I have two posts about it if you haven’t had the chance to check them out yet. Enough, balanced with frugality, is how I try to frame my financial pans and my material worldview. For example, right now my 2003 Honda Accord with just about 200,000 miles on it is enough. I didn’t go out and buy a fancy new car when I got my first engineering…
One of the earlier episodes of the Choose FI podcast is titled The Why of FI. In it, the hosts discuss why someone would choose a lifestyle focused on aggressive saving, which seems to some like deprivation. From my time in the FI community, I haven’t seen much deprivation. Instead, I see a group of people pursuing their life goals while the rejecting rampant consumerism that adds to lifestyle inflation. The FI mindset is one focused…