2018 – Our Year of Transformation
There are many noteworthy events from 2018, some of which occurred in the first half of the year before we fully committed to financial independence. The second half of the year (after our vacation to Maine) was filled with several intentional milestones as we made progress toward building our ideal life. Learn more about what happened in 2018, our year of transformation.
Why I Accepted a Part-Time Job on my Path to FI
I’m excited to share that I have recently quit my job, and I have accepted a part-time (3 days/week) HR role with another non-profit organization whose mission I’m very passionate about. Given that I am also pursuing FI, you may be wondering why I would do this. I’d love to share my process of transformation and discovery that led to this decision.
My Ideal Life: How FI Gives You Options
Reaching financial independence and/or location independence is not going to happen overnight. There are many things that we need to do between now and then to design our ideal life. We need to first reach either financial or location independence and we need to determine what our ideal lifestyle is through trial and error. Here’s our plan for figuring it out.
How to Fast Track Financial Independence
We are just beginning our journey to financial independence, but I can’t help but reflect on the years leading up to us getting serious about financial independence. The small lifestyle decisions that we have made over the past 9-10 years have allowed us to start with a goal that is within reach.
My Motivation for Financial Independence
I learned about FIRE (Financially Independence Retire Early) in the latter part of 2017, but didn’t commit to FI until I learned what would motivate me for a sustained period of time. Motivating yourself on the path of financial independence starts with understanding change management and leveraging both your rational mind and emotions.
How I Increased my Salary by 100% in 4 years
Increasing your savings rate is the most crucial step to help you achieve Financial Independence. If you can negotiate a salary increase, you could dramatically increase your savings rate. In this post, I’ll share with you what I did to increase my salary and 7 tips to help you increase your salary that can be generalized across roles and industries.
FI Means Following your Passions
FI is more than just the mechanics of saving money and retiring early. FI is about discovering your passions and what will bring you meaning, purpose, and happiness in your life, and pursuing those things both after your FI and along the journey. There are many paths for discovering your passions. I chose a path of self-reflection, discovery, exploration, and experimentation.
Travel Hacking: How We Travel for Free
Over the last few years, we’ve been introduced to “travel hacking,” which has dramatically increased our ability to travel the world, because we can travel for free or nearly free. This year Corey and I will be celebrating our 10th anniversary! To celebrate, we’ll be headed to Panama for 8 days. At the end of the post, we’ll show you how we will take this trip for nearly free.
How to Save Money on Food
As part of our journey to Financial Independence (FI), we are looking to find ways to shorten the time to reach FI. To make that happen, we’re focusing on reducing our food expenses. It’s something that we’ve tried to accomplish a few times over the past 10 years, but we’ve never been that serious about it, and haven’t seen the results we wanted until recently.
