the money tools you need to be set free
For those following along, I retired this week. My last day of work fell on a Wednesday. The next morning, I woke up early, like it was Christmas. I’m always interested in how people fare in the transition from working full-time to not working at all, so I thought I’d write a Money Diaries post about it!
When you think of Dutch food, what comes to mind? Maybe the “caramel cookie wafers” some airlines hand out– known to Nederlanders as stroopwafel? Or perhaps you’re obsessed with Trader Joe’s cookie butter, based off of the Dutch treat speculoos. Aside from knowing about a couple of desserts, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect […]
In 2021 I moved from Santa Barbara to Amsterdam and made it my goal to spend more. This report will go into detail about every dollar I spent in 2021.
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 […]
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 […]
I blinked and July disappeared. At least, that’s what it felt like. The news cycle blares bad news and rising COVID-19 cases every day, and I sometimes feel like a straight-faced duck– calm and serene above the water but paddling like crazy underneath. As you know by now, we moved cross-country and spent a good […]
It’s been 6 months since Mr. Mechanic and I adopted MechaniCat, so it seems like a good time to do an assessment of how much money we’ve spent on our first pet. As with everything, we went the frugal route, so it will be interesting to see if we spent more or less than expected. […]
I’m so curious to see what a month of (mostly) solitude did to my spending in the month of February.
Wow, I just realized that I completely forgot to write up my expense report for January. I had to wrack my brain a bit to remember what we did! Mr. Mechanic had a rotation in surgery which meant that I didn’t see him much. I didn’t see much at all, really, as it started getting […]
It’s the time of the year for reflection, and looking back on my expenses for the year reminds me of all of the adventures I’ve had. This year I said goodbye to friends and family in Portland, Oregon and moved with Mr. Mechanic to upstate New York. Note: some links in this article are affiliate […]