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The year in money goals: 2018

Yep, it’s the last day of January and I’m still doing 2018 wrap-up posts (this is what happens when you stop posting regularly, whoops).

In lieu of doing New Year’s resolutions for 2018, I did monthly experiments instead (and yes, the months I didn’t do set experiments were experiments in slowing down/taking pressure off myself. That totally counts ?). But I also set some money goals for the year.

In that post, I wrote that I failed at my 2017 money goals. But failing while still making progress means failing upward, so for probably the first time in my life, I embraced failure.

Did I, seasoned money blogger that I now am, kick ass on my goals last year? Or did I fail upward (or just straight-up fail) for a second year in a row? Let’s find out. Continue reading “The year in money goals: 2018”

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Everything I spent in 2018

The fact that it took me multiple tries of adding up numbers to get ones that were reasonably the same means I a) am not as much of a recovering perfectionist as I thought and b) probably need to slightly rethink my system of tracking numbers. I think a lot of it is inconsistency in categorization, which is frustrating but ultimately doesn’t affect the total (so I could’ve spent a way healthier ratio of time spent writing this post compared to spreadsheeting for this post ?‍♀️).

But, I am finally done spreadsheeting. And in total, I spent $28,629.03 in 2018. Continue reading “Everything I spent in 2018”

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A first-timer at FinCon18

FinCon18 (and, coincidentally, my last post) was almost three weeks ago at this point, so it seems a bit ridiculous to go into a long, detailed recap of what I spent and what I did each day. So I’m not going to (although it’ll be long anyway because that’s how I operate #verboseforlife). You can thank the fact that I’m STILL, an entire week later from when I realized I did not escape unscathed, recovering from some sort of crud I picked up at either FinCon or Disney, which meant I spent most of last week in bed (dear lord, can I just be better already??), for the extreme tardiness of this post ?‍♀️ Continue reading “A first-timer at FinCon18”

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Failing upward and looking towards 2018

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” -Norman Vincent Peale, apparently/countless motivational Instagram posts
“Aw, isn’t that some sweet inspirational bullshit?” -me from not that many moons ago[*]

I’ve never really been a goals person. My concrete plans ended after graduate high school/go to college/get a job, and I’ve never really known what I want to do with my life. Perhaps there’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation going on here (if I had goals maybe I’d know better what I want to be when I grow up?), but it also always seemed silly to me to make goals. “Figure out your life and get your shit together in this next year” doesn’t really work, you know? (Trust me, I’ve tried.)

And yet. Continue reading “Failing upward and looking towards 2018”

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What are your trade-offs?

Essentially all of life is a trade-off: when we say yes to something, we’re saying no to something else. We trade our time and energy 40 hours a week at our jobs in exchange for a paycheck, which means saying no to the myriad of other things we could or would rather be doing during that time.

When we say yes to an evening in reading a book or watching tv, we say no to an evening out somewhere or spending time with friends. And vice versa.

When we stay up late writing blog posts, we say no to getting more sleep. Ahem, I digress. Continue reading “What are your trade-offs?”

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The intersection of money and mental health

While this is ostensibly a personal finance/financial independence blog, I don’t want it to be strictly about money. I tell a lot of stories about my life to illustrate points, that yes, are related to personal finance, but I want to continue talking about travel, food, privilege, mindsets, habits, and my ridiculous collection of brightly-colored flats. This blog is about my journey, which involves way more than the cold, hard numbers of grocery price comparisons.

Here’s a big thing I haven’t talked about yet: I deal with depression and anxiety. Continue reading “The intersection of money and mental health”

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Some of the things I’ve bought over the years

(aka Amazon is sometimes a dangerous game)

I’ve talked before about how I’m a natural spender. I’ve been noticing a tendency lately to want to buy things—and I succumbed and bought two prints the other day. At some point I’m going to run out of wall space for those, but I suspect it’ll be that event that makes me finally stop, not some act of self control on my part.

I had a tab open earlier today for a pine-scented candle. It took me a few minutes to blink, take a second look at that tab, and close it out. I’ve got a bunch of candles. Hell, I have the supplies to make my own. I don’t need an expensive holiday-scented candle, as fantastic as that would smell. I’ve got better things to do with my money. But I still had that tab open. Continue reading “Some of the things I’ve bought over the years”