Hey There!
I just started blogging, and I am here to document my everyday adventures and journey to financial independence.
An adventure to me is getting out of your comfort zone and being open to experiencing something new. Sometimes that adventure is climbing the highest peak, other times it is eating new weird food, and today for me it is starting a blog and sharing my life with the world.
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link on this blog. I would never recommend a product I don’t use or love myself.
Granted, not all adventures are equal. My favorite ones usually revolve around nature (or obscene quantities of food). The outdoors offers so many opportunities to test your limits and experience the world differently. I never stop being amazed by how awe-inspiring the mountains are. Now, I don’t think that I have been to the most remote or even most beautiful places on earth, and I am far from the most athletic person, but every time I get outside I feel like it is something that can be cherished and shared. So I am going to be sharing my journeys with you.
Having recently moved from the city to the mountains, I have many more opportunities to get outside, go hiking, and explore the wilderness. I have loved it. With so much more available to me, my limiting factor is now time. And let’s face it, TIME is almost always our most precious resource.
That brings us to the personal finance part.
My initial motivator for trying to gain wealth, in all honesty, was ENVY. I was trying to keep up with the people around me. But, what has kept me on the path is what I feel like I could gain – and that’s FREEDOM.
After finishing college, I had accrued a substantial (high six figure) amount of student debt, debt that I am still paying off. But it was something that I had chosen. I actually really love my work, I get a lot of satisfaction from what I do. I just don’t want to feel like my work owns me. I want to be IN CONTROL of how I spend my TIME and what I prioritize.
What I want to gain from Financial Independence is:
- The ability to choose how I allocate my time and the opportunity to pursue things I am passionate about
- A feeling of security and stability
- Control over my work-life balance
- I never want to feel like I have to work in a job that I hate, or be resentful of having to work.
I started to discover great resources with useful information, notably Millennial Revolution, Mr. Money Mustache, and How to Money. When I first started on this search, everything that I read and listened to made me feel like I had already been failing miserably. I felt like I didn’t know anything. But feeling like I knew nothing was a good motivator to keep studying, and after decades of schooling, that I am pretty good at. I started tracking everything with Personal Capital and started a budget on Mint.com. I found things like automating easy, and other things like really sticking to my budget to be so much harder than I thought it would be. Over time, things have changed. It is still a struggle. But things that started out hard have gotten easier and then my goals have gotten broader, creating new challenges. The path has not been perfect, but it has been working, and you will get insight into everything I am learning as we go.
I think the overarching theme of this blog is going to be that if I can do it, anyone can. Nothing I am doing is complicated or requires extensive training. It is really just applying information that is widely available to a specific situation. But it has changed my life. With every step that I move closer to financial independence and with every step that I take on a trail, I feel like there is a weight that slowly lifts. It opens up opportunities, creativity, and confidence. Knowing me, it will be a struggle, one with more failures than I would like to count, but one that’s worth it.
I welcome you to my personal project and invite you to join me.
Grab a seat, browse around. You can learn all About Me and this blog. For now, I won’t say too much about my personal information because I am still currently working, but I will still be honest and up front about my experiences. And with that, catch up on the Latest Information and hopefully get inspired.
If you have any questions or want to Leave a Comment, I would love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again soon!
