Just finished booking accomodations for my vacation in August! It’s my first trip to South America and it’s currently looking like it’s going to be the cheapest trip I’ve taken on a per day basis, and possibly overall. I’m super excited and a little nervous about this trip!

Lol, I actually hit it Friday morning. Then it dropped Friday, but I hit it again after close on Monday! Of course based on today’s market, I’ll drop below it again… 🤷‍♂️

Sooo close to an $X00,000 milestone invested! Come on markets…do your thing!

Hopefully with my paycheck contribution and if the market keeps creeping up, I might be able to hit it by the end of this week.

Having said that, I apologize for the massive dump the market is about to take to prevent me hitting this milestone as hoped.

Not fucked so long as you are making efforts towards reaching your goals. I can’t imagine how different my life at 45 will look compared to my current life at 35.

Wow, I’m super grossed out by an email I woke up to in my inbox. Peg this as reason #1879 for pursuing FIRE.

Recently, a senior level leader in my company (one step below C suite) was let go by the new C level leader. They sent out a digital card to sign saying thanks/farewell. However, they also made sure to specify they enabled a donation option to gift the recipient money. That just feels wildly inappropriate! This person was almost certainly earning at least several multiples of the average salary of the staff.

Am I crazy for being so disgusted by this?

Sounds like my first nibling will be born today or tomorrow (sister is being induced today)! Anyone ever deposit a gift to a 529 for someone who isn’t their child? Curious if it’s better to start one myself with them as the beneficiary or ask the parents for their account (assuming they set one up)?

Got a check in the mail for a payout for a class action lawsuit. The email for it felt pretty scammy when I signed up, but the $40 is now sitting in my account. This is the first time I was a part of a class action.

I’m gonna sit on that check for a few weeks, because I’m still sceptical of its validity.

It’s both my birthday and spreadsheet day!

It’s pretty crazy to think about how far I’ve come, since it was exactly 10 years ago I started making major moves for FIRE. Back then I was stuck in a dead-end job, had a bad relationship, and was living in my parents basement. I decided around that birthday I was going to go back to school and get a masters degree to jumpstart a career change.

That choice led me to my current job that I’ve been at for roughly 9 years, am happily married to someone who respects me, have my own house and dog, have been able to travel to multiple countries, and have increased my net worth by roughly $750k.

For anyone in their mid-20s who thinks getting ahead in life is impossible and is feeling hopeless. I am living proof that it’s not. A decade can change absolutely everything so long as you can work up the courage to jump out of a bad situation.

Experienced quite the culture shock this weekend while visiting a southern state for the first time. Apparently free water isn’t a guarantee in restaurants everywhere. We went to dinner at a fast food style restaurant and if I wanted water I would’ve had to buy a bottle from them. I went without any drinks, but I now understand why some people in the south only drink soda (if you have to pay either way may as well get the one that comes with refills).

In a hopefully fortuitous turn of events, my paycheck is coming a day early this week because much of the world gets Friday off for Easter. That means my buy order is executing today instead of tomorrow. I may be lucky enough to time the dip!

…or it will keep falling and I’ll wish I’d bought on the usual day. But I’m headed out of town for the rest of the week so I won’t have to think about it until next week!

Good God, this takes me back to middle school when we were obsessed with this song/chant/animation (what even was it?)

Based on the second one, you must work in IT. I swear every IT person I’ve called has this super power

…if it identifies a pathway it can claim to be legal

Based on everything else they have done ignoring legality, I have very little faith they won’t just start doing it anyways.

I’m really, really good at peeling oranges with my bare hands (or at least I used to be in grade school when all my friends would make me do it for them). The problem is, I hate the taste of oranges so I never use this power.

Reminder: This is why we don’t panic sell.

For some reason, everyone always assumes the next downturn will look exactly like the last one. And then they’re always surprised when it’s caused by something completely different, so they assume this is the time everything will go to zero.

Maybe someday they will be right and this is the time everything collapses. Or maybe it won’t. But it is different every time. Either way, I hate that the US gov is intentionally crashing the market for stupid reasons. I can only hope it is temporary and people aren’t too badly hurt by this.

The challenge being, even if you had sold to avoid the dip, would you be able to time buying back in before the recovery?

You have to get it right twice to be better off than if you had just stayed invested.

Had dinner at my parents house last night. My dad asked if I sold all my stocks to invest in bonds. No dad, why would I do that? -_-

Would they be interested in learning about those things from someone other than you? JL Collins’s stock series was enormously helpful for my understanding of investing when I started out. You could give them the book the “Simple Path to Wealth” (the edited/published version of the series) and it would be zero effort on your part. Bonus: he started writing it to teach his teenage daughter about investing, so the target audience would be perfect for your nieces (making some assumptions re: ages).

This week my credit union announced they will start depositing paychecks/social security up to 2 days early. Imagine my surprise when I logged in today and saw my paycheck already deposited!

Unfortunately, this is only my joint account and my primary bank where I make my investment purchases through doesn’t even show the paycheck as pending. I might consider switching my direct deposit entirely to this company, so I can buy my index funds 2 days earlier…