News flash: I hate the word frivolous. Why? Because it's a judgement on how someone has spent their money. Shame is shown to be ineffective at changing money behaviors and can actually lead to financial disengagement instead (the opposite of what we want!). Imagine telling your wife "you spend too much money on clothes, we have to spend less to save for retirement!" and expecting that to inspire her to cut spending. Let's explore what tools you can use instead to assess your own spending habits, or to assess spending habits together with a partner.

Aspiring Adults are unfinished. The finished state, or so we are told, is "adulthood". But what is adulthood? Who ever truly reaches it? Of the broad 4 phases of human life, adulthood is the only one that has markers of having reached it (or... not if that's the case). I decided to take that rule book and throw it in the trash because “human beings are a work in progress that mistakenly think they are finished”. This is a favorite quote of mine by Dan Gilbert, in reference to his research and talks on the psychology of our future self. The Aspiring Adult is a blog for sharing ways to reach financial independence by dispelling the myths of adulthood and the shame of having never reached it.

From the myth of the homeownership dream to the myth of mid-life crises, read on to explore the origin story of this blog and it's name.