“Hi Mechanic,” my friend’s voice played over the voicemail, “I am going to Japan for six months, and was wondering if you had any advice on how to handle finances while abroad,” My heart beat faster, excitement coursing through me. Three of my favorite things: Travel, finance, and giving actually solicited advice! Is this real […]
The Beginner’s Guide to Investing – For When You Just Want To Be Told What To Do
So you’ve followed The Ultimate Flowchart and you have a budget. You save up 3-6 months of expenses for an emergency fund, and now you’re sitting pretty. What next? When I finished with school I had knowledge piled up in my head: I knew how to calculate fluid velocity in a pipe, the fracture toughness of a […]
Don’t Climb The Ladder; Take the Elevator
In the last few months, I have applied to several jobs. I talked to recruiters, endured phone screens, coded up a couple take-home tests, whiteboarded, live coded, and answered probing questions such as: what are your biggest weaknesses? and who would you want to play you if your life was made into a motion picture? […]
What is Financial Independence?
I am part of a growing movement of people looking for a way out of the rat race. The movement is called FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early. The blogosphere is growing with people embracing the movement, and I at first felt like I had little to add to this space. After all, Gwen of fiery millennials is another […]
The Ultimate Flowchart
At some point after becoming an adult, you wish there was an instruction booklet or something telling you exactly what you need to know. People will tell you, “It depends on the situation!” and you will say, “Yeah, yeah, I know, so what should I do for my situation?” Eventually, you go off and get a financial […]
Frugal Roots
My parents set the example for frugality. I’m sure my dad had a mental catalog of every item in the grocery store and how much it should cost. After shopping for our staples at King Soopers, our local Kroger mart, we’d walk across the street to Safeway because milk and bagels were cheaper there. We never […]
The Makings of a Financial Mechanic
“You can have a dog when your sister is your age,” my dad promised. Which meant in four long, painstaking, wishful years I could have a dog. I asked how much a dog would cost me, and my dad said, “One hundred dollars.” He knew my five-year-old brain would convert that to “a lot of […]
