There’s something dystopian about waking up on a Saturday morning and then finding out your own country has bombed Venezuela and kidnapped their president. Sounds like a dream. A bad dream. When this happened to me, I laid in back in bed and closed my eyes. My thoughts swirling and swirling, trying to absorb that absurd bit of news. My country has just kidnapped the president of another country? Strange that the US isn’t at war with Venezuela, yet this…
When I first started saving money and investing in my mid 20’s, I was fueled by some mistaken notion that I would get rich fast from the endeavor. I would buy low and sell high. How the stock market worked? I had no clue. Index funds? Tax efficiency? Diversification? Those words didn’t exist to me. All I knew then, (and probably not much more now) were that stocks prices changed over time, going up, mostly. Years have now passed since…
Fall is my favorite season for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because fall signifies change. A change from heat. A change in the color of the trees and east bay hills from dry golden yellow to a luscious rolling green. A change in age; my birthday is in September. My oldest daughter’s birthday is in October. School is in session, so our family’s routine changes back to “normal”…then the holidays come rolling around. Combine all that change with football,…
Dear readers, I have hit my FI number. Last Sunday, August 24th, to be exact, I reviewed my expenses and updated my forecasted retirement expenses on my spreadsheets. Early weekend mornings are best for this. The house is quiet. My family is upstairs fast asleep. In the summer, early light spills in through the windows flooding my house with the soft current of optimism only morning can bring. I sat downstairs at my dining room table with a cup of…
I get into work around 5:30am each morning. My walk into the office from the parking garage is an easy five minute stroll across two city blocks. It’s down a steep hill, meaning I get a pretty awesome view of the San Francisco Bay and the city itself from this walk. At that time in the morning, the street is deserted. The sun hasn’t risen yet. The streetlights glow a lonely green to empty intersections. It’s usually crisp at this…
2025 was always going to be a special year for me, solely because it was my milestone marker on this path towards financial independence. This is the year I was supposed to retire.
I have a problem. It’s the worst sort of problem because it’s not a real problem. I imagine most day dreamers and travelers and story lovers have the same sorts of problems that I encounter from time to time. My mind can wander around the edges of my reality. I can get lost in my dreams. Caught in a web of wants. Forks in the road of my ceaseless thoughts lead me to yearn for places and things I never…
As I watch the clock tick to 2:30pm, I hastily leave the office early, dropping what I’m working on to stuff my backpack and hurry home from work. I can’t help but think I’m busier now than any other time in my life. When I was younger, in my twenties and even early thirties, I used to think I was busy. How naive I was. Young kids are tough and take tons of attention and energy, but they don’t have…
I had a job walk the other day with some visitors to the project I’m on. As we neared the end of the walk, one of them asked me how long I’d worked for the company. I told him I’d started in 2004, but came up through the trades, becoming a superintendent in 2015. “You came up the right way then.” He told me, surprised by my answer. I was surprised by his answer too, as he’d gone to college…
Exciting times ahead, I’m heading to Japan in a few short weeks. While I’ve been budgeting carefully, this spring has been an expensive one. I bought the airline tickets back in December for around $4500 roundtrip, and have been sporadically booking and paying for accommodations every few weeks. Since we’re timing vacations with our kids’ school breaks, our options were either April or waiting until June. We’ll be there for around 2 weeks with stops in the tourist triangle of…