Funding the Adventurous Life
Escaping the grind is wonderful and often needed. But life is long and money scarcity motivates us to do hard things that make life rewarding.
Continue reading “Life Without Money Scarcity Might Just Make You Lazy”
When I left my corporate career in early 2020, I didn’t fully understand the ways that I would, in later years, slowly become decoupled and desynchronized from a society that values hustle, status, and self-worth generated to a large degree around our career titles. You’ll read the same thing repeatedly on the internet: Ignore the haters, do your thing.
But when I actually sit down and talk with those who are living a similar nontraditional lifestyle, regardless of their financial position, I find that the tidy internet talking points leave many of us dissatisfied. After all, humans are one of the most social species on the planet. We shouldn’t be surprised by the difficulty in overriding instinct, to go against the grain of what the herd values most. My thinking has evolved dramatically on this subject in recent years, so let’s dig in.
Continue reading “Facing the Rest of the World with a Nontraditional Lifestyle”
Good morning. My ankle is doing much better. Sorry to alarm some of you with last week’s post. The photo was bad, but I’m fairly certain it’s only a sprain. Much more importantly, this week I want to welcome Eliza Marsh.
In this week’s interview, we discuss how Eliza has balanced a career with extended travel, and some of her unexpected surprises of life on the road. We examine how she manages full-time remote work, and how she recently stumbled on a new and exciting path towards saving for financial independence, which she rightfully recognizes as a great privilege. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll see how Eliza has completely reframed her mindset around money, her future, and how she plans to use this great gift of financial freedom.
Continue reading “Eliza Marsh: We Can Make This Happen”
The global coronavirus pandemic flipped the world on its head: spreading tentacles of infection led to a stock market collapse and unprecedented unemployment for those not fortunate to have remote work. A thick, dry underbrush of discontent and polarization grew unchecked for months, sparked by a series of lightning strikes, resulting in a raging inferno. People amassed on the streets in search of change, driving each side someplace closer to their dreaded corners of hate.
With a new decade came so much promise, yet the rate of change experienced in the first seven months of 2020 feels like that new decade has already come to pass. So much to consider in seven months.
But with all this negativity can come so much promise. While there can be an element of guilt to consider silver linings, we must. We must always look for promise and hope in times of darkness, for every night eventually turns to day.
One such ray of sunshine is the movement towards a more permanent remote work culture. The fortunate white-collar world has been working business on top, party on the bottom (nice shirt for the screen, underwear in the seat) since March.
So…what’s it going to take to keep that cushy remote job in a post-pandemic world?
Continue reading “Keeping Remote Work in a Post-Pandemic World”
We started working intently towards financial independence in 2015. Less than five years later, we crossed the finish line. I pinned the merit badge on my flair vest and decided to call it quits on the corporate world, just as COVID-19 was quietly putting the world in a strangle hold. A few weeks later, the stock market crashed, and along with it, our net worth. Is waking up each Monday without needing a job as great as it seems? Am I just running from something?
Well…maybe.
Continue reading “What It’s Really Like to Not Have to Work on Monday”
Alrighty folks, we’re back on the interview bandwagon! This week I am pleased to bring you an interview with the industrious and energetic Lauren Abernathy. Lauren is a 25-year old professional, fully-obsessed climber, writer, and lover of adventure. And she’s a boss of her money.
At an age when Lauren began optimizing her professional life and learning to save for her freedom, I was trying to free myself from four to three nightly PBR’s.
Grab a cup of coffee, PBR, or whatever and let’s settle into some incredibly important life lessons for those at any point along their journey.
Continue reading “Lauren Abernathy: Finding the Balance”
We all want to live the best life. Today we examine the paradox of how attempting to do just that can result in less happiness after all. For all of us that dream of the greener grass on the other side⏤a full-freedom lifestyle or a better job⏤why do so few find a life of contentment once they’ve hopped the fence?
Continue reading “The Fallacy of Happiness and Meaningful Work”
Raise your hand if you want to climb more but work seems to always take up so much time? This notion of balancing work and life is essentially the essence of what we do on this site, and there’s nobody better to discuss this intricate balance than elite-level climber and software engineer Mike Doyle.
Continue reading “Mike Doyle: A Remote-Controlled Climbing Life”
Hey you guys, it’s 2020, a new year! One of my favorite (past) pastimes is to begin each year with a plan for using all of my vacation. Studies, however, reveal that Americans are rarely capitalizing on the full gift of paid time to not work, and it’s costing us all big-time. The rippling effects go far beyond our own well-being and can affect society at large.
How much are we truly leaving on the table?
Continue reading “The Astonishing Cost of Unused Vacation”
When it comes to jobs and careers, parents the world over tell their children more-or-less the same message: you can do anything you want in life. Follow your dreams, and the rest will work out in the end. Of course, those same parents leave early each morning to go to a job that — as statistics show — they probably don’t love.
Years later we find reality to be something a little bit different than a dream. Work is still work, we might have a boss with an ever-so-slightly different vision, and MY GOD why is that woman using the blender right now?!!
So, should we chase our dreams? Are we being misled by pages of digital content and feel-good aphorisms created by outliers? Let’s first begin with a true story.
Continue reading “Chasing Your Dreams is Probably a Bad Idea”