In response to my Autopilot post I’ve tried to keep busy by helping others. In the past few weeks I’ve: Continue reading “Resetting Autopilot”
Year: 2017
How I Learned About the Used Economy
I’m going to tell you a story that my Mom doesn’t remember and denies it to this day. I remember vividly and wrote it down because it’s so ridiculous. This is how I learned about the used economy. I love reading. I’ve mentioned that before. Before the age of easily accessible internet the other outlet I had for this was books – from bookstores (because my mom and grama think library books are “dirty”, but we’ll talk about that and my love of libraries as an adult at another time). Continue reading “How I Learned About the Used Economy”
More Reasons I Want To Retire
One of my favorite bloggers at ThinkSaveRetire.com retired in December. His wife just retired and they’re setting ‘sail’ in their Airstream to tour the country full time. He tweeted that he’s already starting to hate weekends because there are all these people at their campground when it was lovely and empty throughout the week. That got me thinking: that’s a whole other reason to retire. I’ve only ever gone places when everyone else is there. Spring break, Christmas break, Weekends. What would it be like to be able to live my entire life off-peak? To hike famous mountains with no one around on a Monday morning? That sounds absolutely amazing to me. Continue reading “More Reasons I Want To Retire”
Jury Duty and Simple Pleasures
In December I received a little postcard in the mail. Most of what we get in the mail is junk that I immediately throw in the recycle bag, but I’m glad I hesitated this time. The postcard was so small I almost missed it. I had been called for jury duty. In Seattle. How did they find me?! They wanted me to come in over the Christmas holidays while I was in Atlanta so I went to their website and postponed…as long as I could. April – that seems far away! Well as you know it’s April. That was fast. The day before I had to go I checked out their website because I had lost that tiny postcard (Paper! Am I right??) and didn’t know where to go. It told me to go to a high rise downtown and actually had pictures of the jury room (a first!) and shockingly it looked WONDERFUL! It was on the 12th floor overlooking the sound and mountains with floor to ceiling windows – a far cry from the windowless room I was confined to in Massachusetts the one other time I was asked to perform jury duty while I was in college.Bonuses and Making Things Real
I got my paycheck last night. It included a bonus. A bigger bonus than I anticipated. All of my concern that I didn’t feel excitement when I heard people get their bonuses unless they’re on an improvement plan completely faded away because I am PUMPED! I know lots of job search disappointments and life disappointments have conditioned me to not believe something until I see it, until it’s in my hand. And I think that’s what happened here. I didn’t believe I would get a bonus. I didn’t necessarily believe that new HR person knew what she was talking about. I didn’t necessarily believe that bonus was a part of my compensation package. But it is. And updating my spreadsheets last night was glorious. Continue reading “Bonuses and Making Things Real”
Diet Update: LCHF Success
Not that this is what this blog is about 🙂 , but since my goal is to catalog my life and in it my journey to financial independence for myself I’m going to talk about it anyway. Diets. What we eat. Like a lot of women I’ve always had an issue with my weight: no matter if I was 150 or 180 pounds (shaking my fist at you society!). I’ve tried to lose weight almost consistently for about 13 years (and I’m 27 🙂 ). They have never worked. I’ve starved myself down to 125 – seriously, I ate 100 calories a day for three months, which is about the number of calories in 1 egg. Dumb, but it worked. I just didn’t realize that my body was mostly eating my own muscle so even though the scale was dropping I still looked plump because I had mostly lost muscle. Disappointing. That was the most ‘successful’ diet I’d ever been on to that point. Prior to that I would try to count my calories, be hungry, have headaches, not be able to concentrate and eventually give up and gain any weight I had lost back – and then some. Continue reading “Diet Update: LCHF Success”
Q1 Budget Check-In 2017
Oooh maybe I should get another ledger like this.. And yes I’m that girl that always gets an itemized receipt 🙂
It’s 3 months into 2017 and we’re already 1/4 done with the year. Woah…that was fast. I wanted to check in on my goal to decrease my spending from $22,491.86 last year by $4,491.86 to $18,000 this year. Let’s see how it’s going:
Shocker: I Don’t Love Going Out Anymore
I used to eat out several times a week. If someone suggested it I was always down (unless it was near the end of the month and I’d run out of budget…). In January I did the Frugalwoods Uber Frugal Challenge where I severely cut down on eating out. I ended up only eating outside food twice for a total of $12.34: A friend lunch date at Chipotle (my suggestion 🙂 ) and a take out burger on 1/2 priced Wednesdays. Luckily this was the same month I started eating low-carb and as a result discovered that butter and cheese make anything delicious 🙂 . Continue reading “Shocker: I Don’t Love Going Out Anymore”