I had three main aspects of my New York life that I let eat away at my hard earned cash:
1. NYC Rent (already addressed with our move)
2. Fancy Foreign Beaches
3. Eating and Drinking Out
Today I’ll tackle #3: Enjoying food and drink outside of my home. Unfortunately I’ve never been someone who enjoys cooking. I’ve been told that for others cooking helps them relax. Others claim that cooking and baking is fun in the same way chemistry lab can be fun – mixing different things together to see what you can create. I’ve never felt that way. Cooking to me has always felt like a waste of time simply because of two facts: That I eat really quickly and that I am not a good cook. Seeing all the time I spend cooking what turns out to be a mediocre product that I gobble up in a few minutes is quite unsatisfying. I’m left with a full, but not happy stomach and a kitchen full of dishes.
I had a thought during a rare visit to the gym. The idea was solidified by reading a blog post by my new blog obsession, Brave New Life. It’s the fact that everyone with a job spends most of their days and most of their life with people they did not choose, doing activities they did not choose. Further, when someone introduces themselves at a party and says they’re an insurance claims adjuster I may have a vague idea of what that means, but I have no idea what their day to day life is like. His or her family has no idea. Most of what they experience in a day is shared with strangers who are competing for money. It’s just such a strange thought in my mind.
Now to address another major money draining problem of mine: fancy foreign beaches. I remember almost all of my family vacations. And the overwhelming thing I remember is how unhappy I was compared to my normal life: despite being ‘on break’ from school, work or any other responsibilities. Despite being with various family. I have always been significantly more unhappy with life while vacationing. At first I just thought it was the company: people I avoid on a regular basis so a week in an isolated location (no matter how beautiful) became hell on earth. But now I’ve realized it’s more than that. 
I’ve mentioned that my partner and I have been discussing moving out of New York City for several reasons and contemplating cities on the West Coast. We had our eye on several cities and I visited all of them to help evaluate if they met our criteria, which was the below:
I was recently sent a self help presentation that basically asked that we all learn to separate what they called Means Goals and End Goals. A Means Goal is basically a means to an end and the End Goal is that end result. My Means Goal is to reach financial independence through working and saving while still living life to the fullest. 
I thought it would be good to create an annual State of the Union to remember what I did each year regarding my investments and why. This was a big year – the first year I really dove in and learned how to have my money make money of its own.
Based on my end goal of financial freedom I’ve accumulated information from various books, blogs and traditional retirement calculators to determine how much I need to save to be able to live off of indefinitely. Overall I’m basing my calculations on the updated