the money tools you need to be set free
As Christmas music plays in the background and mist descends over the boat-lined canal in front of my window, I think it’s a good time to do a tally of my autumn (and part of winter) spending. Each month passes by so quickly that a monthly expense report has been much more difficult to do, […]
Summer appears to be rocketing by at light speed. Here in Amsterdam we had a mild summer, with a few nice weeks of sun but still a lot of rain. I packed July and August full of activities, including a vacation to Croatia, Pride Week, dog and cat sitting, kayaking the canals, hosting guests at […]
There is an episode from the show Portlandia that always stands out in my mind. After months of cloud cover, a small patch of clouds opens up, letting through a patch of sunlight. People from all over the city flock to the sun and set up camp to grill and chill. Every time the clouds […]
Note: This post may contain affiliate links. For more info read my disclosure. I never much liked the dark, cold month of February. All I had to do was check out my expense report from last year to remember the snowy days. That changed when I spent it in Santa Barbara this year. I went on a […]
A new year, finally. I feel hope for 2021, even though there’s still a global pandemic, injustice and racial inequality, and things will still fall apart no matter the decade. Yet turning over the New Year still felt like a much needed mental refresher, an opportunity to squish all the negative things in 2020 into a box […]
Sunday Scaries (n): The Sunday evening dread that creeps in when anticipating work in the morning. Shut down Sunday Scaries with this series: Sunday Sharies! These are the articles, links, and content I’ve read this week that I think are worth sharing. FIRE Articles Our 2020 Finances (Millennial Revolution) If I can’t use geographic arbitrage, […]
I’m positive that 2020 will be a bookmark year, one that we can flip to easily in our minds and remember exactly what we were doing when the whole world shut down. For me personally, 2020 brought on lots of change and forced flexibility. I moved from New York to California, worked from home the […]
Due to COVID-19 and other concerns, instead of flying home after Thanksgiving I decided to stick around my parents’ home for the month of December. I always enjoy Denver’s blue skies, but I was missing MechaniCat badly. To ease my homesickness and liven up my childhood home, we looked into picking up a foster cat. […]
No Negativity November The theme of this month was “self-care.” It’s easy to get used to the day-to-day rhythm of life and forget to make that extra effort to take care of ourselves. I pushed hard in November for all forms of self-care. I got myself a therapist, went for yoga and a run (yes […]
October Expenses My October expense report is coming late this month. A lot happened in October, which I will likely write about in the future, but is too much to cover in one report. However, I’m not one to break a streak so here is the expense report for October! Note: This is the spending […]