It's pretty typical in the personal finance space to recommend to people to automate their investing. The reasoning goes that if you set it and forget it then you won't spend the money and you also won't forget to do this "boring" task each month. But I have taken a completely opposite position that seeks to create a different kind of non-boring relationship with investing.

Back by popular demand: another case study on buying vs renting. My most popular blog post comes back around to look at the death of San Francisco real estate. I take on the myth and cult of home ownership to show that renting is sometimes the better financial decision and you aren't throwing money away if you choose to rent instead. Let's look at the opportunity costs of the buyer and the renter that took advantage of them.

My financial literacy journey really started in late 2015 when I got an email from a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual. We ended up working together, putting up a savings and investing plan, and got to work. He recommended 2 mutual funds to me which I poured any spare money into. Fast forward to February 2021 and I sold these losers. Now we look back and see how bad these were and one reason he recommended them to me.

I keep a lot of spreadsheets to track my income, expenses, savings, investments, wealth, and more. Here is my breakdown of how 2023 went for me on my journey towards financial independence. I will also share some backwards looking charts to show where I've come from.

It's important to have guiding principles in life. Otherwise why do we do the things that we do? I know that a lot of people survive on this earth living on the "life escalator" (and the "relationship escalator") which really doesn't require you to have guiding principles. As long as you stay on the escalator, it gently takes you along and you do the things in life mostly "because that's what adults do". Which is a trend I like to buck with this blog. Today I write my own retirement manifesto, so I can check in with myself on my "why" when faced with difficult decisions and to make sure I've not gone off track with my purpose.

Last year after talking to a friend about FIRE, she said something that struck me "I didn't grow up in a household with aspirations". Dazed and confused, I realized that I didn't either. So I wanted to see "how did I bumble along through life and eventually stumble into my current financial independence trajectory?". Let's look back together with both a money lense, and a motivations/values lense.

I have always lived a relatively frugal life. I grew up on the border of poverty and suffered through my house burning down as a child. Some of us learn that possessions mean nothing when we've lost them all. But I was heading along the "escalator of life" certainly making financial choices because "that's what adults do". Until I discovered the FIRE movement in 2021 and my world was turned upside down. Here are my 4 success factors that have put me on the track to reach financial independence 5 years from now at the age of 43. And they do not include giving up avocado toast (love).

I keep a lot of spreadsheets to track my income, expenses, savings, investments, wealth, and more. Here is my first time sharing the breakdown of how 2022 went for me on my journey towards financial independence. I will also share some backwards looking charts to show where I've come from. My savings rate dropped significantly in 2022 because my tax rate went through the roof. But even though my savings rate as a percentage dropped, it was my highest contribution year in terms of actual dollars.

In 2021 I re-evaluated my life through my FIRE-lense and realized that I needed to move back closer to the mountains to do my favorite hobby: hiking. I made a short list of countries in Europe with good hiking. I narrowed that list to countries with a self-employment visa/residence permit. Lastly, I narrowed that list down to countries I could save money (e.g. cost of living, and taxes). Italy ticked all the boxes. It took about 1 year of bureaucracy but I'm finally here, and now I share with you the breakdown of the €14,000 total expenses to make this happen (and how I will recoup that in 1 year).

Back in 2020, I had an idea for an innovative travel app. I was so energized by this new business idea that I was seriously contemplating dropping $30K of my savings into paying developers to build it. Then a friend recommended that I go through an incubator, which is a program that helps entrepreneurs "incubate" their idea. Most people will never complete these programs because they don't have a viable idea that will make money. I dropped out 1/3 of the way through for mental health reasons, fully intending to restart at a later date. But after reflecting on everything I had learned, I took away the most important lesson possible....

I've heard it said that if you love your job then you never need to worry about retirement or financial independence. Or that the FIRE movement is a symptom of people hating their jobs more than anything else. I've been noodling on this for the last 12 months and still arrive at the same answer: financial independence gives the future versions of myself a platform from which to take flight.

I cannot contain my excitement at sharing my new discovery with you: a new payment disrupter called Atlantic Money targeting the exchange and transfer of money cross border for large value transactions. Wise and Revolut really cover the small value market but their fees increase as the transaction value rises which makes their service far less attractive. Sold your house in Berlin and now need to move €100,000 to your US bank account for low cost? You can do that for €3 with Atlantic Money. Read on to find out my review.

For a long time, I thought one of the most obvious financial health tools was to have a budget. I even told my friends they should have a budget. And then one day I realized... "I don't have a budget". My immediate thought was to make a budget, because we all know you need one, rather than stopping and asking myself "but do I need one?". In this blog I lay out why I don't have one and what I use in its place.

I hate alarmist content, but my friend is F**KED. Like, $87,000 of taxable income fucked with no money to pay the 32% tax. Many subscribers of FI/RE dream of moving out of the US (if that is their place of origin) to save money in retirement. Dropping money on a home in their new country of residence could be a dream come true. Until so-called "phantom foreign currency income" taxes whack you over the head with a baseball bat. Read on for the dangers of buying real estate outside of the US so you can discuss with your tax advisor BEFORE you buy.

I've made mistakes. I've made sub-optimal choices. But they were always based on the information that I had at the time of the decision. Here I've made a short form list which I'll add to as I keep learning on my journey. Drop in the comments any item you want to hear more about in it's own blog post, so hopefully you can make more informed decisions on your own journey.

If you have ADHD, you know the vicious cycle called "The To-Do List For My To-Do List". Keeping track of our thoughts can be chaotic and so overwhelming that we completely shut down and end up doing nothing at all. Each person and their experience is unique, but today I'm sharing two tools I am successfully using to manage my life and thoughts. Read on to learn what works for me, and a bit about what doesn't work.

On top of doing FI/RE solo, I'm also a serial migrant. This creates more complexity than a digital nomad, as I move to a country for 2-3 year periods where I become a local taxpayer, open local utilities/bills, and create local assets (like buying a house or pension investments). I'm the only one that knows what I have and how to access it. Though planning for my own death may seem morbid, having organized an up-to-date treasure map for my beneficiaries means that they can spend more time on grieving their loss and less time being buried in hunting down my recurring bills and assets. They'll remember me fondly rather than cursing me and my missing paperwork. Read on for how I set this up.

Since discovering the FIRE movement I've been intensely studying the myth and cult of homeownership. This concept is also tied up in societal noise that if you are renting then you are throwing your money away. Or that you haven't reached adulthood if you are still renting. I wanted to find out in a case study if renting could give you the financial upper hand over buying. I took 7.5 years of records owning my house and renting it out once it was no longer my primary residence. Read on to see the numbers.

There are very few things I can definitively tell my friends “you should do that thing” when it comes to money, and vice versa them to me. I was recently asked by a two different friends: “Should I buy iBonds? 7-10% interest is really good!”. I started laying out all of the different questions I asked myself to determine if those iBonds are appropriate for my situation. I shared the thought process with my friends. When a friend says you should do something specific with your money, you don't directly know their circumstances that led to that decision being the right one for them. In many cases “7-10% interest is really good" was the only reason (and it's not a good enough reason for me). I will use this blog to walk through specific money decisions I might need to make, the questions I ask, how the answers map to a decision, and the opportunity costs of one option over another. If you've ever asked yourself “Should I....?” about a money decision, I hope this exercise gives you some more direction for your own situation.

I am not an economist. I cannot predict if we have entered or will enter a recession. But it's hard to ignore the news talking about it (I call it "noise"). Recently I have been approached by a friend who is considered selling their house in order to "take the money and run". So the question became: with the tides turning, mortgage interest rates rising, demand dropping, supply rising, and price cuts increasing, should they hold off on selling the house until the economy turns around? Read on to learn my case study response from the 2008 recession.