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”
Category: Musings
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.Continue reading “Jury Duty and Simple Pleasures”
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”
Autopilot
WARNING: Prepare yourself for a seriously “first world problem” piece of whininess.
I’m bored 🙂 . The key to long term investing success is to set it and forget it: put your money in the market and let it ride. Since we are entering a new year I still had things to optimize: how much should I try to spend so I can save the maximum amount with my new salary? Would I get my bonus? If so, how would that increase my savings rate? How much of my budget should I allocate to vacations? Should I travel hack more of my flights? Sadly all of that has come to an end. I’ve solved them all and booked all my flights until March 2018. Now I seem to just be waiting for the end of each month so I can budget my money, move it into my investments and update my spreadsheets. This process sadly only takes a few minutes. Then I’m back to waiting. Continue reading “Autopilot”
Unraveling The Knot
The knot that has been in my chest nonstop since I started working is surprisingly gone. Since moving to Seattle and away from the pressure and stress of NYC, for the first time it is well and truly gone. I think the reason is a combination of things. At Company #5 that involved: Continue reading “Unraveling The Knot”
Lessons Learned from My Mom
When I look around I can tell that I’m different from other people. Some have even told me so. I’m not sure if they meant it as an insult, but I didn’t take it that way. When I look around even a less consumer city (compared to NYC) like Seattle I see people in name brand coats with name brand bags wearing the same name brand boots. They like to talk about the other name brand things they are planning to buy while decked out daily in jewelry and make up. Continue reading “Lessons Learned from My Mom”