A working dad, starting a long journey to reach FIRE, contentment, or both.
There are lessons to be learned in many different circumstances. I was reminded of an important one last month, but not in a way one might expect. No, I learned (or relearned) a lesson during a fun morning of snow shoveling.
I’m happy to share the lesson with my readers without making them shovel my driveway.
Recently, I read something from someone I follow on Twitter (or X, or whatever we’re calling it this week) that bugged me. This person was, in effect, saying that they could not respect someone who didn’t make a certain thing a priority…which I don’t. In years past, reading this would have bothered me, as, in general, the person who said this was someone whose opinion I value.
This year, things are going to be different.
As I have moved into the personal finance blogging community*, I have seen a lot of people who appear to have followed their passions. Isn’t that what we’re told to do? At the very least, lots of people have escaped the 9-to-5 cube life by pursuing a passion. Aren’t we all aiming for that?
Not necessarily, according to Cal Newport. His book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, argues that following one’s passion is bad advice and can actually make things worse.
When one is in the early stages of pursuing financial independence (FI), the road can seem long and hard, with tremendous sacrifices ahead and a lot of goals to meet. But when one has depression, there are days when anything, any goal perhaps, becomes nearly impossible. So, to that end, I present my story of depression and financial independence.
Continue reading “How Depression Kills Financial Independence”
My wife was recently helping her mother clean out some old boxes in preparation for a move. Among the many useful things she found and saved, she found a Woman’s Day magazine. Apart from wondering why this was kept for 48 years, I found myself slightly intrigued: what interesting historical things might an old magazine hold? So I checked. I didn’t, though, expect to find financial advice from Woman’s Day.
Continue reading “Financial Advice from Woman’s Day Magazine…from 1971!”
In an entry a few months ago, I wrote about how I would like to move from an attitude of jealousy to one of contentment and gratitude. So, half a year later, how am I doing? Not so well, if I am to be perfectly honest. I’m still jealous of other bloggers, or at least the financial ones who were all meeting this past week at FinCon.
But maybe I see a better way of thinking about it now.
Financial experts (and bloggers) always have lots of ideas of things one might do to try to improve their financial situations. There are lists of side hustles. You can take any number of surveys. You could try the latest get-rich-quick scheme. (Okay, maybe those don’t come from real “experts”.) But the fact of the matter is that there is just not enough time in the day to try every idea that comes across your screen…or my time management skills need work. Either way, it’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way: I can’t do it all.
As I have navigated my way through the increasingly crowded field of financial bloggers, I have noticed a disparity in those people I see. Let’s start with the obvious: some of y’all are closer to FIRE* (or have already achieved it) than I am. Also, for me and my particular circumstances, making progress toward FIRE is incredibly difficult. And those two truths lead to an unfortunate third one: it is far, far too easy for me to come down with a serious case of financial jealousy.