We just got home from a 61-day road trip that took us from our home in Florida to the remote province of Labrador, Canada. To make extended trips like this more affordable, we live out of a tiny camper van without a toilet, kitchen, sink,…
This October, my computer died. Ordinarily, I’d just fix it, but since this particular computer was an Apple product, its designers made sure that would be very difficult — so difficult, in fact, that I’d need to buy a replacement. Just for fun, I punched…
A somewhat literal summary of Walden by Henry David Thoreau might call it a recollection of one man’s peaceful (and inexpensive) life in the woods of Massachusetts during the late 1840s — documentation of an uncomplicated world that’s long since past. But a book review…
The unfamiliar Taco Bell was out of Diet Pepsi, ice, and several varieties of Border Sauce. I placed my crippled order and handed over my Citi DoubleCash card. “Our machine’s broken.” After fishing a five-dollar bill out of my wallet, I paid 19th century style…
At the beginning of 2015, I was a public school teacher, Lauren was doing marketing for a small financial company near Orlando, and we were both getting a little bored with working 8+ hours a day for ~$40k/yr. Luckily, we had a plan to fix…
It’s time to come clean: We’ve done a lot of unnecessary spending in the past year. It started last August, when we moved out of our perfectly good, paid-off condo in Gainesville, Florida, and bought ourselves a fancy beach home for $204,000 instead. Sure, we…
Whenever we travel, we’re always meeting lots of cool new people we can learn from and make friends with. They all have unique perspectives and different things to share. But usually, the start of each conversation is the same: Them: Where are you two from?Us:…
A few months ago, we got really addicted to driving out to the beach. There was no rhyme or reason to the days or times we would go. We'd just head out whenever the mood struck us and take a long walk. Consistently, we had…
Your 20s can feel like an either-or proposition: You either buckle down and be responsible, or you embrace your fleeting youth and enjoy every day while you still can. Today is the very last day of my 20s, and when I look back, I feel…
Expense tracking, budget making, checkbook balancing, bill paying, stock trading — all of this stuff requires an endless input of time and brain power. That’s why, for the last eight years or so, Lauren and I haven’t done any of those things. Being good with…
When I'm sitting at home completely bored, I usually just turn to Lauren and say, "Wanna go on a walk?" It's not exactly “productive” in the sense of getting work done, but it burns calories and gives us a chance to connect. To me, that…
We’ve gone without live television for the last 11 years or so, but I recently installed a fancy antenna in our attic, and now we get a bunch of crystal clear local stations in high definition for $0 a month. Normally, I’d say that’s an…
Travel is fun, but it can get lonely sometimes, especially if you’re doing it by yourself. Even if you have a companion, it’s normal to want a fresh social scene and some new faces once in a while. That’s especially true when you prefer to…
Life is ever-changing. We’ve always engineered our living expenses to be ultra-low, and when you combine super low expenses with full-time, middle-class jobs, an explosion of wealth is inevitable. But as we close in on the finish line of financial independence, spending large amounts of…
When a major decision needs to be made, and you’re no expert on the issue at hand, you probably do the same thing most people do: ask around. Like, if you don’t know the first thing about what investments to pick in your 401(k), it’s…
It was late. Really late. Like, well-after-midnight late. But the summer sun was just starting to set in the northern latitudes of Watson Lake, Yukon. After driving for hours, we were happy to see civilization again. The only problem was our timing. In this small…
When we moved back to Florida following our honeymoon in 2015, I felt rejuvenated and ready to get back into the workforce. I spent about two months interviewing for different positions around town before landing a pretty good gig at a local web marketing startup.…
We’re a bit extreme about saving money around here. In fact, we recommend saving so much money that you never have to work a job again if you don’t want to, preferably as early in life as possible. This is usually achieved by optimizing your…
As you know, we’re not really fans of short, expensive vacations. Our preferred method of recharging is to disappear from home into fantastic, faraway places for months at a time, exercising our minds and keeping our wallets full with an enjoyable amount of freelance work…
If you want to be a happier person overall, setting and achieving personal goals is one of the best ways to do it. When you set a goal for yourself, you immediately give yourself a reason to take action (also known as purpose). This alone…
Can money buy happiness? The commonly accepted response to this question is a simple “no.” Most people seem to agree that because money is exchanged for material things, which can never fill a void in the human soul, spending your life obsessed with the accumulation…
