On Not Buying Things, Even When they are Free

I don't think I'm alone here in being someone who likes free stuff, and I'm surprisingly good at finding it. I'll walk a few blocks out of my way for a buy one get one free drink special, download an app for a free turmeric latte at the bougie new Australian coffee chain, or, most …

My Year of Yes

My mom died this year. She was diagnosed with lung cancer on New Year's Day in 2016, outlived her prognosis by two and a half years, and died on January 25th of this year. She was 58. When she was diagnosed we were estranged and she was in and out of homelessness. At that moment, …

But is it a Movement?

A couple weeks ago I was listening to Gaby Dunn’s interview with Vicki Robin on Bad with Money. I always like hearing Vicki Robin talk about the origins of FI, but this time I got a little fixated on Vicki's question of whether the FIRE community constitutes a movement, and her explanation of why she …

On the Deserving/Affording Fallacy

I have a seasonal job. With that seasonal job there are always a few ebbs and flows and ups and downs, just like any others, but there are also onslaughts that seriously test me. They test my ability to undersleep and still function, my ability to survive on mostly empty carbs or allegedly “whole meal” …

Playing with FIRE: my review

Thanks to a friend who’d been in on the first wave and donated to Kickstarter, for once I’ve seen a movie before it’s available on Netflix! Playing with FIRE has been heavily anticipated by the FIRE community and anyone else who listens to podcasts about financial independence. The first time I heard about it was …

My Earliest Retirement

Seven years ago I was working at a job I hated with people I didn’t like in a place that was really depressing. Every day I was verbally abused by the personal assistants of the rich and famous, people in a middle management purgatory of their own who probably had no one lower on the …

First things first

I’ve been wanting to start the blog I wish I’d discovered at the beginning of my financial independence research for a long time. It’s not that I didn’t get a lot out of the stuff I was discovering. I was as inspired by The Shockingly Simple Math of Early Retirement as anyone else. I was …