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How the toss of a coin determined my fate

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Hello! I have returned from my final big trip of the year, and I've resumed working behind the scenes here at Get Rich Slowly. Soon, new articles will begin to appear on this site.

Oh, wait. Here's a new article now!

On my most recent trip, I happened to tell the same story twice to two different groups. In doing so, I realized that it's a story I've never told here. That's unfortunate. It's about an event that had a profound impact on the course of my life — and my finances.

To bide the time while I work on longer articles, today I'd like to share how my fate was decided by the literal toss of a coin.

Going to College

My parents never pushed higher education on my brothers and me. Both my father and mother had attended church schools briefly — Goshen College for him, Brigham Young University for her — but neither one graduated. My uncle got a math degree from a local junior college, and my cousin Duane got a business degree from yet another church school.

Growing up, I can't remember that college was ever discussed in depth. It came up in conversation now and then, but there was never any expectation that my brothers and I would go.

But: I was a nerd. I hung out with other nerds. I read and I wrote. I entered math contests for fun. My favorite movies were about college and about college professors. I romanticized college life (and still do today).

Mitch and J.D. were (and are) nerds

Mitch and J.D., nerds in 1984, nerds in 2019

[Read more…]

Spare change: Awesome articles from elsewhere

How to learn in two days what normally takes six months

Inside a luxurious $15.6 million Miami penthouse [video]

"Why I'm sick of self-care." [YouTube]

Fostering the habit of being NOT busy

Larry Swedroe on sequence-of-return risk

90% of married women will need to manage money on their own at some point in their lives. The time to prepare is NOW.

How much does it cost to be a stay-at-home parent?

"I outsourced my life to subscription services."

Reddit: Tips for getting out of poverty

Do FICO scores matter anymore?

Find an archive of all past spare change links on Pinboard.

How to supplement retirement income with a part-time job

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Could you pay your mortgage, groceries, rent, insurance, medical expenses, and other bills on $2000/month? If you could, what kind of lifestyle might you lead?

Millions of retirees across America live it every day.

The Social Security Administration reports that 50% of elderly married beneficiaries and 70% of singles rely on Social Security for more than half of their monthly income. Considering that the average Social Security check is around $1361/month, this is a really tough place to be in for so many of these retirees.

And I’ve met them. Many of them.

Every year at my insurance agency, we meet thousands of baby boomers aging into Medicare at 65. We often see their shock, dismay, and confusion when they realize that the cost of their healthcare in retirement will easily eat up at least 20% to 30% of that Social Security check every month.

No matter how you slice it, even the best of the retiree budgeters out there are likely to have trouble making ends meet on Social Security income alone.

Sometimes when it comes to personal finance, budgeting isn’t the problem.

Sometimes income is the problem.

Fortunately, there's good news on that front, because we live in an age where there are more opportunities to earn extra money than ever before. Our digital world has made this possible, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

When you're on a fixed income and struggling to make ends meet, a side hustle that pays you even a few hundred dollars a month can be a tremendous help.

At Boomer Benefits, we polled our Facebook fans – largely baby boomers and seniors – to ask what kind of side-hustles they are rocking out there in the real world. What we learned is that there's a wide array of ways in which creative retirees are supplementing their Social Security income.

Polling people about working in retirement Side hustles in retirement

Today, I’ll share a few of their stories to give you some ideas for your own possible side-hustle that could potentially help to reduce financial worry and afford you a better lifestyle in retirement. [Read more…]

Should I stay or should I go? Wrestling with the decision to quit a career

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J.D.'s note: In the olden days at Get Rich Slowly, I shared reader stories every Sunday. I haven't done that since I re-purchased the site because nobody sends them to me anymore. But earlier this year, Mike did. I love it. I hope you will too.

Earlier this year, I sent my wife a text message: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how freaked out would you be if I quit my job this afternoon?”

My wife and I had only been married a short while, but she'd known since our second date that I didn't plan to work in my traditional job until normal retirement age. She also knew that I hadn't been very happy at work in recent months.

We're very compatible financially — both savers raised in working-class families that didn't always have a lot. We make a point of having what we like to call “Fun Family Finance Day” from time to time. On Fun Family Finance Day, we do everything from competitively checking our credit scores to discussing questions that get at the root of our money mindsets to help us create our goals.

But this question wasn't part of the plan. Not then.

And it was never on any of the lists of questions that we'd discussed with each other. It was like a pop quiz, a pothole in the smoothest relationship road I'd ever traveled…and I was the one putting it there.

Dreams Remain Dreams Without Doing

My wife and I rarely argue, but when we do it's usually about food. It's the kitchen and the grocery store that are our battleground. Our finances are fine. Thankfully, when you're confident in the life you've created and the person you chose to build it with, it's a lot easier to be honest about what's on your mind.

That still doesn't always mean you get the answer you want. Or the answer you were expecting. She responded: “Wait what. Kinda. What would you do?”

A completely reasonable and fair question. Not to mention one that I'd probably have to get comfortable answering from a lot more people.

I think my immediate reaction was: We talk about this stuff all the time, where is my, “No worries baby, YOLO!”? (I must have watched too many romcoms back before we cut cable from our lives.)

Being a grownup, it turns out, is actually really hard sometimes. I was about to learn that talking about something, and actually doing it, are a world apart.

Life is full of dreamers and doers. Sometimes those two personalities cross over. But there are plenty of people who go through life talking about so many things they'll never have the courage to try — or the discipline and determination to follow through with.

Which person was I? The dreamer? The doer? Or that fortunate combination of both? [Read more…]

Early Retirement Extreme: The ten-year update

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Today, I'm pleased to present a guest article from one of my favorite money bloggers of all time: Jacob Lund Fisker. Fisker founded Early Retirement Extreme in 2007. It quickly became an influential voice for the nascent FIRE movement. In fact, I think it's fair to say that FIRE wouldn't be what it is today with his work.

Fisker retired from blogging in 2011. Since then, he and I have exchanged long emails on sometimes arcane subjects. Occasionally I ask him for advice. Recently, I asked him if he'd be willing to update people on where he's been and what he's been doing for the past decade. He agreed.

Here, then, is Fisker's story of life after Early Retirement Extreme (and extreme early retirement). Be warned: His story is not short.

Early Retirement ExtremeStarting in 2007 (and largely finishing by 2011), I formalized a philosophical alternative to consumerism in the form of a 1000+ post blog and 100,000+ word book [J.D.'s review], which I mistakenly called “Early Retirement Extreme” (or ERE in acronym form). These days, I stick to the acronym form. :-P

Central to my philosophy was the renaissance ideal of spending your life mastering a productive level of competence in a broad range of subjects. This arsenal of “renaissance skills” would then be combined into a mutually reinforcing web-of-goals, which made living more interesting and balanced — but also more cost- and resource-efficient and resilient in the face of the growing complexities and uncertainties of the 21st century.

Being a theoretical physicist by training (and remaining one in spirit) compelled me to present all of this as a theory of everything, rather than the more typical format of a light non-fiction autobiography or overview. As I didn’t really figure on a general audience — it was fairly non-existent back in 2008 — that also meant using graphs and equations when applicable.

The benefit of that format was that others could use the ERE design principles to construct their own particular plan according to their own individual circumstances and goals instead of retracing the footsteps of one particular individual.

Retiring from blogging

Eventually, I considered the problem of “How to escape the earn-buy cycle in order to live a more interesting life” solved and sufficiently “communicated”. In 2011, I stopped blogging. I continued to follow the ERE principles in the spirit of the renaissance ideal with the goal of solving other big problems. Being financially independent (FI), I no longer require any compensation even if I still appreciate it — if nothing else than just to keep score or divert the lucre towards more useful purposes (e.g. supporting people on Kiva or Patreon).

Career workers who don't know me typically ask me what I do for a living, expecting an answer in the form of a job title. (That tends to get awkward and I still don't have a clever response.)

Similarly, people in the FIRE community (and the media that now covers it since they discovered it a couple of years ago) expect a curriculum vitae in the form of instagram-friendly bucket-list of accomplishments. However, following the systems-based web-of-goals approach, it's really hard to answer that in a way that satisfies linear formats.

I follow many different leads and do many different things — often concurrently — and sometimes in ways where they combine and result in new, unexpected opportunities (the serendipity effect). It's therefore difficult to summarize the last ten years of my life in chronological order, so let me instead attempt it as a “skill” or activity-based resume in no particular order.

This format makes more sense since the ERE strategy is to learn something and add value to the process and its environment, a side-effect of which is that I usually don't have to pay to solve problems and that I sometimes get paid. As a consequence, my spending also remains ridiculously low. (I'll get to that near the end of this article.)

I apologize that this is long and boring, but ten years is a long time and one can get a lot done in ten years — not all of which might be as interesting to the reader as it is or was to me. So, for the sake of completeness and in no particular order, and perhaps with the hope that I don't have to write another autobiography for the next ten years, here's a first-hand answer to the question: “Whatever happened to Jacob Lund Fisker?” [Read more…]

Experimenting with ultra-light packing: How I packed light for 20 days on the road

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Hello from Portugal!

Last Thursday, I returned to Europe for the fourth time in the past ten months. This time, I'm here for work. I'm speaking at yet-another chautauqua about financial independence and early retirement. As always, it's fascinating — and the people attending the event are amazing.

For this trip, I decided to experiment with ultra-light packing. I am not a minimalist, but I like minimalist travel. I wanted to see if I could carry everything I needed for 20 days of travel in a single small backpack.

After traveling to thirty countries in the past twelve years, I've learned that “more is less” when it comes to packing. It's senseless to carry things you're not going to use. And most of the time, you don't need to pack items you'll find (or can buy) at your destination.

It costs less — physically, mentally, and financially — to travel light.

Here's a quick look at my current ultra-light packing experiment (and how my packing habits have changed over the past decade).

Packing for Africa

Since my first overseas trip to England and Ireland in 2007, my packing has…evolved. Twelve years ago, I carried far too much. I brought along anything I thought I could possibly want or need. It was crazy. Then, to make matters worse, I bought a ton of stuff as the trip went along.

By the time I flew home, I was overloaded.

Trip by trip, I've learned to pack lighter. By February 2011, this is what I packed for three weeks of travel to southern Africa.

Holy cats! years earlier, I was still carrying all sorts of stuff I didn't need. My mind is boggled. A radio? Binoculars? $500 cash? Tons of books? What was I thinking?

By the Africa trip, though, I was starting to pack for function rather than form. I still carried some items (including my bags) that I thought looked cool, but in the back of my mind, I'd begun to grasp the concept that fun, efficient travel has little to do with what you pack and everything to do with your experience in the moment. And when you're burdened by baggage, it's tough to be in the moment.

Packing Light for Ecuador

Fast-forward three years. Here's what I packed for fifteen days in Ecuador during late summer 2014. Although I still carried items that went unused, my choices were mostly functional by this point and had little to do with form.

The system I show in this video is still my standard system. In fact, for our trip to Italy and Washington D.C. last month, I used these exact bags. And the items I packed inside the bags were similar to what I was carrying five years ago. (The major difference? I rarely use zip-off pants anymore. I'm not nearly as paranoid as I used to be.)

For my current trip to Portugal, I decided I wanted to experiment with ultra-light packing. Could I compress everything for 20 days of travel into a single “personal item” that fits under an airplane seat? Would I regret taking so little?

Ultra-Light Packing for Portugal

Here's what my ultra-light packing attempt looks like for my current trip to Portugal and California.

My bag for this trip is a Synapse 19 from Tom Bihn. It's roughly 11-1/2 x 8 x 16 inches tall. As the name implies, it holds 19 liters of stuff. What kind of stuff?

For this trip, I'm carrying:

  • My laptop (a 13″ MacBook Pro) with associated cables and adapters.
  • My phone (an iPhone X) with associated cables and adapters.
  • A small notebook with pens and pencils.
  • An envelope containing various travel documents.
  • Two ziploc bags with travel-sized toiletries. (One bag contains liquid items for TSA.)
  • A packing cube containing one wool t-shirt, one button-down travel shirt, three pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, and a pair of shorts. (I'm also wearing similar socks, underwear, a pair of pants, a wool t-shirt, and another button-down shirt.)
  • A pair of sweats that I rolled up and secured with a rubber band. This was a last-minute addition, but I'm glad I brought them.
  • Three “pouches”: one with electronic stuff, one with sleep stuff, and one with outdoor stuff (like mosquito repellant and sunscreen).
  • A few miscellaneous items, such as gum, my European power adapter, my retainer, my Kindle, and my reading glasses.
  • A ziploc bag for my cash and change, plus a ziploc bag with my passport and other travel info.

I've been on the road for five days day now. It's been very easy. My biggest complaint is that I don't have a second pair of footwear. I like to have flip-flops or Birkenstocks with me, and I don't have those for this trip. (Plus, I had to wash my underwear last night because I'm only traveling with four pairs. Only a minor inconvenience, though.)

My bag is full, but there's still a little room for me to pick up stuff along the way. That's good, because I've already been given two t-shirts!

Whereas there are often items that go unused in my luggage, this time I've used almost everything. I haven't used my collapsible chopsticks yet (I rarely do, but they don't take much room) and, surprisingly, I haven't used my reading glasses. I haven't used my Kindle yet either, but I suspect I will during the latter half of the trip.

Final Thoughts

So, that's my experiment with ultra-light packing. Will I do this again in the future? Yes, I think I will. But only selectively. Ultra-light packing is a terrific option for trips where my environment is relatively constant (I'm mostly in hotels, for instance) and I have no companions.

But on last month's vacation to Italy, Kim and I had to pack for hot and humid weather, for air-conditioned hotels, for hiking, for business meetings, etcetera. There's no way I could have fit everything in one small bag. Besides, when I'm traveling with other people, the advantages of packing light are reduced somewhat.

Ultra-light packing is a terrific tool to have at my disposal. It's easier than you might think. After five days, I'm certain this system will work for the entire twenty-day trip. And I'll bet nearly anyone could make this work for a weekend.

How adopting two girls changed my money mindset

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I’ll never forget the moment I got the text message from my wife: “Do you want to adopt two girls?”

I was at work. We'd been exploring adoption for the previous year but had hit some roadblocks. Adoption wasn’t really on my radar anymore, and we had never discussed adopting more than one child.

And if I’m being honest? Girls weren’t really on my radar either. We have two biological sons, and I thought one more boy would be nice. Adopting two girls wasn’t part of the plan.

But my response? “Sure.”

At that moment, regardless of my preconceived thoughts and dreams, I knew I was supposed to say yes. I felt it inside of me. I'm glad I did.

My wife and I adopted two girls. It was expensive. There are a lot of adoption costs that people don't think so. All the same, we're glad we did it.

 

Our Adoption Story

Our adoption story is unique. All adoption stories are unique. No adoption is normal.

As I mentioned, we have two biological boys. They're pretty cool — most of the time. At the start of our adoption journey, they were ages five and two. The girls were ages eight and five.

We live in Ohio. The girls were from Florida. The eldest was born in Thailand (where their biological mom used to live) and the youngest was born in Florida, where their dad resided.

Their family suffered a couple of major health tragedies so that their parents were no longer able to care for them. They feared the girls would be taken away and put in the foster care system — possibly separated. As much as they didn’t want to lose them, they wanted to find a good family that would adopt them both so they could stay together.

I have so much respect for their parents and what they did for their girls, knowing it was probably the hardest decision they ever had to make. It turned out to be a smart decision. Both parents have now passed away.

Anyhow, the girls had come to visit cousins in Ohio for the summer. My wife, who is a teacher, heard about the girls' story through a colleague. It was then that she sent me the text message.

[Read more…]

How Americans spend money: A look at the latest Consumer Expenditure Survey

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When I discuss American spending habits, I try to cite specific numbers. Sometimes people write to ask where I get my info. Simple. Whenever I cite figures about American earning, saving, and spending, I get them from the U.S. government. In particular, I use the Consumer Expenditure Survey (or CEX) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here's how the BLS website describes the Consumer Expenditure Survey:

The Consumer Expenditure Survey program consists of two surveys, the Quarterly Interview Survey and the Diary Survey, that provide information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit (families and single consumers) characteristics. The survey data are collected for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau. The CEX is important because it is the only Federal survey to provide information on the complete range of consumers' expenditures and incomes, as well as the characteristics of those consumers.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey is the only reliable source I've found about actual spending habits. Most similar projects have much smaller sample sizes and/or provide theoretical numbers. The CEX is a great way to develop a descriptive budget (one that deals with real behavior) instead of a prescriptive budget (one that pushes an agenda).

Naturally, the CEX has its drawbacks. As always, averages (and medians) only provide a limited view of a dataset. Plus, what might be true for an entire population (a country, in this case), probably isn't true for a small subsection (your state or city, for instance). Still, for looking at the Big Picture, nothing I've found beats the Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Because I'm a money nerd, I get very excited when the new Consumer Expenditure Survey numbers are released each year. And guess what! The 2018 data was released two weeks ago. I spent some time yesterday sitting in the hot tub and geeking out over U.S. spending stats on my iPad. Then I updated my personal CEX spreadsheet. (What? You don't have one of your own?)

Let's take a closer look at the Consumer Expenditure Survey — and what we can learn from it. [Read more…]

How I’m fighting chronic depression and anxiety

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Hello, friends! I have four money articles in progress, plus I'm editing several guest posts for future publication. But today I want to give a brief update on my mental health. My depression and anxiety have been tough this year but it feels like I've turned a corner, and I want to share what's helped.

Each week when I go to therapy, I complete a survey regarding my recent mood and attitude. It's about what you'd expect. There's a list of maybe a dozen statements, and for each I fill in a bubble indicating how strongly I agree (or disagree) based on my experience during the previous seven days.

From memory, sample statements include:

  • I feel nervous and/or my heart races.
  • I feel anxious in social situations.
  • I have friends and family I can ask for support.
  • I have trouble finding motivation to get things done.
  • I'm able to complete everything I want to do.
  • And so on.

At my first therapy session in April, my score on this assessment was awful. I felt anxious all of the time. I was having trouble with increased heart rates. (Thanks, Apple Watch, for constantly flagging that.) And by far my biggest problem was getting done everything I wanted to get done. I wasn't doing anything. I was too deep in my anxiety and depression.

Last week, I visited my therapist for the first time in a month. As always, I completed the mental health inventory before our appointment started.

“Whoa!” my counselor said when she saw the results. She pulled up my past scores on her computer. “This is the best you've been since we started working together. You marked that everything's fine except for your ability to get work done. That's great. What happened?”

“What happened is that I got out of my routine,” I said. “I've been on vacation. Plus, I've been doing a lot of the things you and I have talked about. They've helped. Right now, the reason I can't get done everything I want to do has nothing to do with depression and anxiety. It's just that I have so much on my plate that I can't figure out how to prioritize it!”

During our time together, my therapist and I have explored a variety of steps I can take to improve my mental health. When I actually implement these things, life is great. (I have a tendency to talk about making changes without actually doing so. This was especially true early on.)

Here are three changes that have helped me cope with my depression and anxiety. [Read more…]

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Does the world of personal finance need more politics?

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Note: I've added a short addendum to this piece in an attempt to clarify some things. This may or may not have helped.

Earlier this week at The Washington Post, Helaine Olen wrote that the world of personal finance needs more politics.

Olen specifically calls out FinCon, the financial media conference I attended last week. I love FinCon. She doesn't. She's disappointed that so many members of our community emphasize personal action and responsibility instead of directing our efforts toward changing the systemic and societal issues that make it difficult for some people to succeed.

She writes:

Spending a few days at FinCon 2019 shows the limits of the nonpolitical approach to improving your financial life…Over and over again, the systemic problems facing Americans are simply accepted as a given and unfixable, and tossed back onto the individual for him or her to solve.

Rarely mentioned are the political system’s many contributions to common economic troubles.

Olen is concerned that there are larger societal and systemic issues that hold some people back and prevent them from achieving financial success. I agree.

I disagree, however, that FinCon is the place to address these issues. And I disagree that we, the financial media, should turn our attention from the personal to the political.

Personal finance is personal. It's right there on the label.

Does the world of personal finance need more politics? [Read more…]

FinCon 2019 and the future of Get Rich Slowly

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After twenty-four days on the road, I'm back home in Portland. It feels good.

In mid-August, Kim and I flew to Italy. For the first week, we visited Florence and Rome on our own. We rode trains, drank wine, toured museums, ate gelato, and explored ancient Roman ruins. We also got sunburned. And we sweated from dawn to dusk.

J.D. and Kim at the Colosseum

Next, we boarded a small (680 passenger) cruise ship for a ten-day tour of the eastern Mediterranean. We spent a day on Corfu, visited a Turkish resort town, and wandered the walled city core of Dubrovnik (where Game of Thrones' King's Landing was filmed). Mostly, though, we saw more of Italy.

After a final two nights in Venice, we flew from Italy to Washington, D.C. for FinCon, the annual conference about money and media.

FinCon 2019

FinCon started in 2011 as a small(-ish) gathering for a couple hundred financial bloggers. It's now ten times its original size and draws legit financial journalists from all sorts of platforms. It also attracts some of the biggest names in the world of financial products — USAA, Ally Bank, Capital Group, etc. — plus plenty of new companies with cool ideas that may blow up in years to come.

For me, though, FinCon isn't about meeting brands or looking for new ways to make money. Some of that happens, sure, but I spend most of my time catching up with colleagues. Ten years ago, these folks were mostly strangers. Today, they're some of my closest friends.

Old friends having fun

It's fun to renew existing bonds, but I also enjoy forging new ones. Each year, I connect with new folks that I come to respect and admire.

In 2016, for instance, I met Marcus Garrett. We were paired as mentor and mentee for the week. I did my best to offer advice, but he and his partner have built their site — Paychecks & Balances — far beyond any tips I provided. They're killing it. This year, Paychecks & Balances won the award for best millennial blog (and was nominated for podcast of the year).

In 2018, I met Piggy and Kitty from Bitches Get Riches. It's no secret that this is my favorite money blog. It's smart, irreverent, and hilarious. I'm pleased to report that I spent more time with the bitches this year (and Kim hung out with them too). They're even smarter, funnier, and more irreverent in person.

Piggy and Kitty are on-brand

At this year's FinCon, I also spent some time with Julien and Kiersten from rich & REGULAR, Rocky from Richer Soul, Joshua from Radical Personal Finance, and Bianca from Miss Mazuma. These are all quality folks doing quality work.

While FinCon is mostly social for me, it's not all about the friendships. I did meet with plenty of folks who want to advertise on this site, for instance. (Mostly, I said no.) Plus, I joined my business partner Tom Drake and a couple of other friends to present a panel discussion on collaboration.

And this year? This year, I actually had a huge take-away from FinCon, one that will shape the future of this site.

The Core Message of Get Rich Slowly

This year at FinCon, the opening keynote was presented by Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Ramit started as a money blogger, but has transitioned into a successful entrepreneur with a burgeoning business that helps people solve all sorts of personal problems.

Ramit giving his keynote

The core idea of Ramit's talk struck me hard. “Have a point of view,” he said. By this he means that we as content creators should stand for something. We should have a clear message. People should know what our sites or channels are about.

You know what? Not even I know what Get Rich Slowly has been about for the past two years.

When I started GRS in 2006, GRS was about my journey as I dug out of debt and built wealth. After I sold the site, the message became less clear. Eventually, I moved on, and I think GRS lost any point of view that it might have had.

When I founded Money Boss in 2015, that site had a very clear point of view. In fact, I named the site for its point of view. I wanted readers to act as the CFO of their household finances. I wanted them to accept personal responsibility for mastering their money — and their lives.

Because Money Boss had a strong point of view, it was easy to write. I always knew the angle for each article I started.

When I reacquired Get Rich Slowly in 2017, my first few months were very productive. I had lots of things I wanted to say. I had plenty of updates I wanted to share.

Gradually, though, I lost my way. I wrote less often. I didn't have direction. Why not? Because this site didn't have a point of view. It didn't have a central message. That's part of why things have been such a struggle for me this year.

Listening to Ramit's talk made me realize that in order for me to enjoy writing here, and in order for this site to be useful to readers, I need a point of view. I need to be clear on what my message is. Fortunately, I already know my message. My message is: You need to be the money boss.

I'm not going to rebrand Get Rich Slowly to Money Boss. That ship has sailed. Plus, I prefer the name Get Rich Slowly. However, I am going to deliberately steer this site's message toward my Money Boss philosophy. I subscribe to its ideals (you are ultimately responsible for your own financial success) more today than ever before.

Final Thoughts

So, that's the big news: After two years of drifting, I know what message I want to convey to you, the readers. I want to help you all become money bosses. Or to become better money bosses.

Meanwhile, the immediate future at GRS looks like this:

  • I had hoped to finish the site redesign before leaving for Italy. That didn't happen. Now I hope to finish it by October 15th at the latest. Earlier is better.
  • Today — if all goes well — I will sign a contract to produce a five-hour audio course about financial independence for the biggest audiobook distributor in the world. That's sort of vague (but not really). I'll offer actual details once the deal is done.
  • In just over two weeks, I fly out for another trip. This time I'm headed to Portugal for a financial independence “chautauqua”. (A couple of you have already told me you'll be there. Awesome!) From Porto, I fly to Joshua Tree, California for a Camp FI event.
  • Meanwhile, the pace of production around here will slow markedly as I put into practice my plan to dive deeper into subjects and not feel pressured to publish all of the time.

The bottom line for this blog: Quantity will decrease but quality should improve. Plus, I now have a clear editorial lens that should help me stay focused. Sound good? Sounds great to me!

Paula

Paula Pant hamming it up with me while taping an episode of Afford Anything