The Slow Road to FI

“I know where I’m going.  Where I’ve always been going.  Home.  The long way around.”*

If you pay attention to the FIRE** blogging community for more than, oh, I don’t know, ten seconds, you know that there are a whole lot of people who are bent on retiring well before standard retirement age.  Many of them want to retire before 40.  Some are even aiming for before age 30.

But is that the best way for everyone?  Do I need to make that my highest priority, giving up everything else to get there as quickly as I can?

Of course I don’t.

And so, apparently, I’ve become part of the Slow FI movement, if that’s a thing.

Or have I?

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Postmates Doesn’t Deliver Happiness

In the past couple of years, I have tried several different types of side hustles.  I have had a fair amount of success with some, while others have not gone nearly as well.  Falling squarely into the latter category, sad to say, is Postmates.   My recent experience with them has pretty much cemented my opinion of it.

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Donating Plasma…for fun and profit???

As our cashflow continues to take a turn for the worse,* I have been looking to several side hustles in an attempt to try to even things out.  Sure, there are the usual ones (some of which I will write about later, almost certainly), but I have also looked into one I heard about for decades but never got around to trying until now:  donating plasma.

Donating plasma???

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Financial Advice from Woman’s Day Magazine…from 1971!

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.

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On Not Being Jealous of Other Bloggers

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.

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Can you chase FIRE with medical bills?

Like so many of my fellow financial bloggers, I am hoping to reach FIRE sooner rather than later.  To that end, we have cut expenses, increased our income where we could, and set goals.  But sometimes…life happens.  What does one do when that’s not enough?  What does one do when one is faced with constant medical bills?

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I Can’t Do It All

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.

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How I Made $39,000 on Wheel of Fortune

Yes, I write now about ways to work toward FIRE, or how to make extra money (at present, I’m not doing so great on either front).  But one way I have found to make extra money is one of those pie-in-the-sky ideas that people likely write off without a moment’s consideration.  Yes, I am one of those lucky few who have won some extra spending money on a game show.  In my case, that show was Wheel of Fortune.

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Hey, Jealousy!

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.

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How I Earned Over $4500 With Side Hustles Last Year

2018 was a pretty good year for my side hustles.  Actually, it was more than that – it was my best year for side hustles.  But while I’ve been pursuing these for many years, this was probably only the second year in which I have been doing so terribly seriously.

So…let’s talk about what I did, and how my results differ from those of others.

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