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).

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'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.

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.

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.