People who read this blog and know me in real life are sometimes surprised by my choice of possessions. On one hand, I can be seen frugally squeezing life out of a 6-year-old smartphone, sharing a single used vehicle with my wife, and typing this…
Every time we scream from the rooftops that you can retire several decades early by working a middle-class job, living frugally, and investing in passive index funds, we get a few common objections yelled back at us. One of those complaints is actually super reasonable:…
Last year, we picked a country off our wishlist and booked a flight. We weren’t a part of an exchange student program or a research project. We didn’t have a work visa or a job offer. We were just randomly going on vacation…for three months.…
The year is 2021. You’re a happy Apple customer with a brand new iPhone 12. Your previous device was an iPhone X, which you managed to keep for nearly four years before replacing it. You look at your X and think, “Nobody wants this ancient…
Ever since college, I’ve done physics tutoring as a side hustle — a way to make a little extra cash here and there. But in 2016, after returning from a travel sabbatical in Hawaii, I found myself jobless, and I decided to try turning my…
We were warned not to write this article by well-meaning friends in the world of personal finance. “Banks won’t touch you if you talk about that,” they said. See, the most lucrative way for a personal finance website like ours to make money is by…
We’ve had lots of experience working remotely -- from that time we vacationed in Hawaii for six months, to the time we spent seven months driving cross country to visit every National Park, to the quiet times in between when we’ve settled into our home…
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…
Our drive from Lassen Volcanic National Park to Yellowstone would be at least 14 hours without including any stops, and it would take us right through the heart of Nevada. That sounds pretty exciting until you realize that “the heart of Nevada” is a dusty…
