Three years ago, almost to this day, I went on my first Adventure Tuesday. I was newly self-employed and realized that, while I had bitten off more than I could chew and was still working too much, I really wanted to make spending time with friends in the outdoors a priority. After years of working full-time for a startup + blogging and freelancing on the side, I was done hustling. I wanted to spend more time with the people I loved doing the things we loved. And since one of the benefits of self-employment is that you’re able to set your own hours, that’s exactly what I did. I made my friends + the outdoors a priority, and pencilled in a standing date to explore a new town or trail with someone every Tuesday.

Approximately 156 Tuesday’s have passed, since then, and I can’t say I’ve gone on an adventure for each one. However, the intention behind Adventure Tuesday has stuck with me. To this day, I make sure there is breathing room in my calendar so I can say yes to walk/hike requests. This summer, I also made a bucket list of things I wanted to do and see in and around Squamish, and crossed most things off. I explored new areas, stepped on new trails, swam in new lakes. I made my friends + the outdoors a priority.

I’m not telling you this so you will lace up your shoes and head out. And this newsletter isn’t going to be filled with hiking tips or recaps of mine. Adventure Tuesday isn’t really about the outdoors at all. It’s about paying attention to your thoughts about how you want to be spending your time, and figuring out how you can turn them into realities. It’s also about setting healthier boundaries in your life, so you can show up for yourself and for others. I’ve made a lot of big changes in my life, over the past eight years. But putting Adventure Tuesday in the calendar felt like the first (tiny) step towards actively creating the life I wanted, rather than passively consuming the one I thought I should have.

That’s what I want to talk about in this season of Adventure Tuesday: the idea of creating vs. consuming. I want to talk about how we, as humans, are consumers. We consume non-stop around the clock, and it impacts our mindsets, our health, our money and our relationships. But we, as humans, are also creators. You might not think you create anything physical (and maybe you don’t really, aside from the meals you eat). However, you are a creative problem-solving human being, and that means you have a little more control over your life than you might currently believe.

This won’t be a how-to kind of newsletter. I’m not an expert, and I don’t have many answers about how or why we do things. What I am is a human with a lot of questions and ideas, and a writer who wants to share what she observes. (That’s what a writer’s job is, by the way: to observe and report back. It’s so simple. I won’t overcomplicate it.) I will do this by sharing stories: some mine, some others, and some things I research. I may also suggest the occasional “mini adventure” or “slow adventure” to dip your toes into the topics we discuss. But overall, the purpose of this newsletter is to share my thoughts, and hopefully have some great conversations with you each week. :)

Here’s what you can expect:

• a weekly email delivered every Tuesday from now until the end of November,
• we’ll take December off, and I’ll think about what the next season could look like,
• and when we reconnect in January, I may switch things up and write less frequently (bi-weekly instead of weekly) or change anything else so it feels like it’s working for all of us.

I meant what I said last week about not only respecting my own boundaries as a creator but also yours as a consumer, which is why I will always be questioning how I can best show up (including giving us all space). But if it ever gets to a point where you find yourself deleting the emails rather than reading them, exercise your ability to hit the unsubscribe button (which is always at the bottom). It is my hope that we will all develop and practice healthier consumption habits together, and I’m not afraid to say that might mean you eventually don’t need my emails. Pay attention to how the things you consume make you think and feel, and let go of anything that isn’t serving you. If I’m one of the things you let go of, that means our work together is done. :)

x Cait

With previous startups of mine, you could rely on a few channels -- maybe even one -- to grow effectively. But in 2018, startups are having to do more, and better, than ever before.

Channels take longer to figure out. Channels don’t return as much as they once did. Channels don’t scale up as fast. Channels dry up.

In 2018, you must take on a lot of simultaneous projects to grow.

In any given week, you and your team will need to test, improve, and launch new things -- and it’s going to take a lot of resources (people and money) to do so.

(Side note: This is why I wrote this article back in 2017: raising money is almost a requirement for startups looking to grow quickly.)

Let’s look at an example from Podia

On any given week, we’re simultaneously tweaking and improving the marketing channels that are working for us and taking on new projects on both sides of the funnel (top and bottom).

Whether it’s launching our new YouTube channel to see how YouTube plays out for us, A/B testing our homepage with a video testimonial, working on new top of the funnel projects, or tweaking our onboarding sequence.

None of these efforts will single-handedly grow customers fast enough for us, but when you add them up, we’ll see growth. That’s one reason why you should credit all touch points of your funnel rather than just the last point.

We use Trello to manage this process, and in our Podia Marketing board, we’ve divided it into several buckets:

• Quick Wins
• Bigger Experiments
• Backlog
• This Week (our ongoing tasks)

If everything goes according to plan for that week, we’ll work on a few from every bucket and together they’ll compound to grow Podia.

But to do this effectively, you need to have a tremendous team of people all working together to drive growth and you can’t half-ass anything. It’s not enough to just do the tasks, you need to do them well, based on metrics and customer interviews, and you need to do a lot of them all at once.

Takeaways for your startup

The best advice I can give you is to stop thinking about growth by channel and think of it more as a collective whole where everything feeds everything else. Focusing on only Social or only SEM isn’t going to get you long-term growth for most of us.

That’s why I don’t even like talking about marketing without talking about all of the marketing we’re doing as a collective whole, because it’s so intertwined.

Once you’re more established and growing faster, you will see certain channels outperform others and you can put more resources into those channels, but remember to continue to diversify and that you need to do 100 small things to be successful in 2018.

Last week, I opened up about my mental breakdown from late in my mini-retirement. Recounting the most challenging and painful period in my life left a big question unanswered:

Do you regret it?

You may have been wondering the same as you read about where my head was at over the spring and summer. Was the mini-retirement a mistake?

A Financial Failure

Looking at the mini-retirement from a purely financial perspective, there’s little to be excited about:

• We spent over $60,000 covering our living and travel expenses
• We brought in only a few thousand dollars of income to offset those expenses
• We haven’t established any real passive income from our work over the year
• We made no additional investment in our retirement accounts
• My salary after the mini-retirement is roughly 25% less than my salary before

By almost every standard measure, my mini-retirement was a miserable failure. (Tweet this )

But I don’t look at this year as a failure at all. Despite all the heartache and pain, the challenge and struggle, I have no regrets about the leap we took this year. On the contrary - I think this year was one of the most important and successful years of my life.

A Personal Success

Sure, the finances didn’t turn out great. But, on the flip side, I take stock of these victories:

• I enjoyed over 5 weeks of travel with Jaime and the girls
• I participated as a more active parent in our daughters’ classrooms and in their daily lives
• I gained a newfound appreciation for the love and support of the people around me - friends, family, even people I hadn’t talked with in years
• I found clarity on what I really wanted in a career and found a job I love in a team that I can grow and learn
• I built a stronger faith in God than I’ve had in my whole life, now trusting I can lean on Him in any situation

Because of the mini-retirement, I’m becoming a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better engineer, and most importantly, a better child of God.

By every measure that actually matters, my mini-retirement was an incredible success. (Tweet this )

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

The financial and psychological cost of the mini-retirement was worth every cent and every panic attack because of where we are now.

Success is How You Choose to Define It

Too often, we view ourselves as failures because we’re using the wrong measures of success.

Success isn’t a big house, a fancy car, or an overflowing 401k account. Success isn’t financial independence, early retirement, or winning the lottery.

Real success is growth - becoming a better version of yourself. Success is learning what’s really important in life so you have the confidence to pursue it. Success is seeing the love you have around you and the opportunities for love you’re not taking advantage of.

That kind of success means more. That kind of success is always within your grasp. That kind of success doesn’t depend on luck, personality or privilege.

Success is how you choose to define it. (Tweet this )

Don’t conform to the way the world measures success - with money, celebrity, and appearance. Choose a better set of measures - growth, learning, and love.

Go. Redefine success. You’ll be surprised to find that you already have it all around you.

I love taking our kids to the playground, walking the trails of a state park, and visiting the beach on a hot summer day. I love the beauty of this world - giant trees providing shade or changing colors, trails weaving through forests, and the fresh air outside my doorstep. I feel a peace come over me when I get outside and take in the beauty around me.

This love for nature leads me to want to live differently, to handle trash and recycling consciously. I don’t want to add to the landfills. I want to preserve what we have. When I see trash floating around at the beach or park I feel sad. When I see a garbage can overflowing I think - we can do better than this! And when I hear about plastics in our oceans I want to cry.

I want to help take care of our environment. And one way I can do this is by recycling as much as I can. The recycling pick up in our town takes cardboard, paper, food boxes, mail, beverage cans, food cans, glass bottles, glass and plastic jars, jugs, and plastic bottles & caps. We fill our recycling with these items, but I find that we have a lot of other items in our home that can’t be placed in our recycling bin - worn out flip flops, old bicycle helmets, dried up markers, small plastic toys, old paint brushes, and a lot of non-recyclable plastic packaging.

This was completely disheartening to me. In response, I told myself to avoid most of these items. If I didn’t have them coming into our home, I wouldn’t have to eventually throw them in the trash. Unfortunately, this is REALLY hard to do. My kids come home from a birthday party with small trinket toys in a favor bag. I need a paint brush to paint our walls. We need bicycle helmets for safety. And sometimes buying convenience foods makes my life less stressful. In order to truly avoid all these items, I would have to cook from scratch all the time, not allow my kids to accept gifts, and extremely limit the art supplies in my home that inspire creativity. This wasn’t going to work, but I was serious about doing what I could and finding another way to reduce our trash!

I was able to make a few changes that work for my family. I buy foods like rice, oatmeal, chocolate covered pretzels, and syrup in the bulk section of my grocery story with my personal glass jars. This greatly reduces trash (and some recycling). When I can, I’ll spend the extra money to purchase a clothing item from Patagonia because I can send those clothes back to be recycled when they wear out. These changes have helped, but I still wanted to find a solution to those flip flops, markers, plastic toys, and non-recyclable plastics?

After reading a few books and blogs, I found the answer. There is a company that will take all these items (and more) and make sure they are recycled responsibly. I couldn’t contain my excitement when I discovered this. I wanted to leap right in and send them all my stuff, but then I saw the price tag. It’s not free. It’s not even affordable. It’s expensive. I debated for a long time whether it was worth our money.

Do we want to spend our money on recycling trash? I mean, that money could go towards our financial freedom goals! Then one day I looked at my cash back from my credit card. I had enough to purchase an All-In-One Zero Waste Box. I would be able to recycle just about anything besides organics, sharps, or hazardous waste. I figured this was a good way to try it out for free (or felt like free). I filled that box up in less than a week with random plastic trash from all over our home!

I was so happy to have all those items being diverted from the landfills, parks, and oceans. I felt I was using my financial resources within my values and to help keep this world beautiful. I followed up that free investment with intentional spending on other zero waste boxes from TerraCycle. We currently have two different boxes in our kitchen collecting trash to be recycled!

While this may not be the best financial investment according to some, it’s an investment in our planet. An investment that leads to an awesome return on investment - a beautiful world that we can all enjoy!

We handled our finances differently during our Mini-Retirement. We had set an annual budget and deducted from that amount each month. Now that the mini-retirement is over and we are back to receiving a paycheck, we want to get back to a healthy monthly budget.

This kind of stresses me out. I mean, budgets can be complicated! When things get complicated I curl into a ball and have a hard time moving forward. Over time, I’ve found the best way to uncurl myself is to break the complicated into small easy tasks.

That’s what I’m going to do with our budget now. I’m not going to take it all on right away. I’m going to take on a small category (or small cluster of related categories) one at at time. I’ll dive into how we’ve spent our money in that category and how we want to adjust our spending.

The following month I’ll share how we did and any further adjustments we want to make. I’ll also add in a new category to tackle. By taking on a single category at a time and building from there, I’m hoping we’ll have a refreshed budget for 2019!

Pizza and Movie Night is an important tradition in our family. Friday nights are traditionally reserved for ordering pizza and ice cream from our favorite pizza place. Originally, this was a 16 inch pizza with one topping and 2 pints of ice cream. Then we added in a large order of breadsticks. And more recently, we added a 10 inch gluten free veggie pizza (I was trying to go gluten free). This increased our weekly Friday dinner cost from roughly $35.00 to $53.00!

When I think about it - we don’t need to consume that much food. While I like being gluten free, it’s not worth $15. Nor do I need a separate individual pizza. We also usually have leftovers. I would love to get back to the basics here. For October, we are going to try ordering the single topping 16 inch pizza and a single pint of ice cream. This will bring our weekly budget down to $27 (monthly $108).

We have also switched from renting a movie from the library to renting movies from Redbox in the hopes that we can get a more current movie we can all enjoy. We will probably continue this, but I would like us to limit it to a single movie per Friday. This will cost 1.85 (monthly $7.40)

Date Night is something that Chris and I have budgeted for in the past, but find that we usually don’t make it happen. When we do, it hasn’t always been worth the money. This past month we went out a on triple date that cost us $120 (totally worth it). Seeing as this isn’t a regular occurrence though and we don’t enjoy spending on regular dates, I don’t want a regular monthly budget for this. I would rather have a weekend getaway with Chris and a some extra wiggle room in our overall budget for the random triple date!

Eating out is something we have wanted to minimize over the years. We saw it as a waste of money when we ate out instead of making our own meals. On the flip side, we ate out a few times with friends this past month and I feel that was money well spent! With this in mind, I want to make sure that we have a budget for eating out with friends because it’s an investment in friendship. For October, I’m budgeting $100 for friendship investment!

Our Grocery budget was also way higher in September than normal. Some of this was wasteful and some was stocking up on pantry items. I want to focus on buying more non perishables in bulk so that when we are feeling tired we can gather the energy to make a quick pasta dinner instead of grabbing fast food or pizza. I’m also going to try to cut out the waste. Hopefully I can get back to a monthly budget of $800.

If we can make these changes, we will end up spending $1015.40 on these categories. This would allow us to divert over $500 towards a weekend getaway!

Do you need to refresh your food budget too? Is there a food category you spend money on that you feel is a waste or very valuable to you?

It seems like the world is buzzing these days with talk of financial independence and early retirement. Jaime and I big proponents of the power of financial freedom, but it’s healthy to recognize that for many people, it may seem like an impossible dream.

After all, here’s what the state of retirement savings looks like for people in the US:

Is that enough? Most people think they’ll need $1,000,000 to retire comfortably. If that’s the case, I highly doubt that having $172,000 at age 60 puts someone on track to comfortably retire with $1,000,000 at age 65.

For the majority of Americans, the concern isn’t retiring early. Their concern is retiring ever.
(Tweet this )

If you’re trying to answer that question, then this is the guide for you. Let’s go through how to figure out if you’ll ever be able to retire.

Will I Ever Be Able to Retire?

It’s not a simple question and there are certainly many ways to look at answering it. Below, I’ve got an approach (with embedded calculations for your situation along the way) that lets you measure what you’d need to retire and how long it’ll take you to get there.

Disclaimer: any retirement calculator out there - this one included - operates on a wide variety of assumptions. While these assumptions usually come based on some data about how things have worked out in recent history, there’s no guarantee that the future will look the same. Consider this guide an introduction to retirement calculators. I highly encourage you to look at others as well.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s get started with the first question we need to answer.

How Much Will I Spend In Retirement?

The first thing we need to understand is what your annual expenses will look like. If you’ve ever tracked your spending, you’ll likely have an idea of what your spending would look like in retirement.

If you haven’t tracked your spending before, you might consider using the MIT living wage calculator to estimate your annual expenses. This won’t provide for a lavish retirement with cruises and getaways, but it can help answer the question of whether you could ever retire.

To use the living wage calculator, enter your location (either your zip code or your state/county).

Scroll down to the “Typical Expenses” section and find the row labeled “Required annual income before taxes” at the bottom of the table.

We’ll assume you aren’t taking care of children in retirement, so the only question is whether or not your retirement funds are for you alone or if there’s a spouse in the picture.

If you’re single, find the number under “1 Adult”. If you’re married, find the number under “2 Adults”.

Enter that number here:

How Much Do I Need to Save to Retire?

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use the 4% rule to estimate how much money you need to retire. With this rule, you need to save up 25 times your annual expenses in order to retire.

Based on the annual expenses you entered earlier, here’s what you’d need saved up to retire today:

But unfortunately, that doesn’t tell us how much you’ll need saved in the future. You know how the cost of milk (and everything else) goes up a bit every year? That’s what we call inflation. With everything costing more next year than this year, you’ll need more saved by next year to retire than you would have needed to retire today.

We’ll assume inflation is 2.5% every year. If something cost you $10.00 to buy this year, you could expect that inflation to bring the price up to $10.25 by next year.

Here’s what inflation would do to your retirement target for next year:

Bummer, right? The good news is you can work to “beat” inflation by investing your retirement savings instead of stuffing it under a mattress.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at savings and investments.

When Will I Have Enough Saved to Retire?

Do you have anything saved for retirement already? Maybe you’ve put some money in a 401k (or 403b) or an IRA. If so, that’s great; Enter the amount you’ve got here:

With any money set aside, you’re already on the way to retire at some point; it might just be “too far” down the road to be meaningful. After all, if your nest egg won’t get big enough to retire until you’re 120, that’s not going to do much good for you, is it?

If you don’t have anything set aside for retirement, don’t fret. Keep reading and we’ll handle that situation later.

For your retirement, let’s presume you choose to invest your money instead of just putting it under a mattress (or in a low-yield savings account), you can get a return that not only beats inflation but actually grows beyond that. I won’t get into the details on why to invest in index funds, but let’s say you do and can get an average annual return of 8%.

Even without putting any more money into that account, it’s going to grow - beating inflation and then some.

In fact, that investment would eventually grow to the point of hitting your retirement number, even if you didn’t contribute another penny. This concept in personal finance is called “coasting” or, as I like to call it, retirement freedom

It’s a cool concept, but what age does that put you at when you get to retire?

Will I Get To My Retirement Target While I’m Still Alive?

Put in your current age here and see what that means for your retirement prospects:

Based on what you’ve entered so far, your investments would build up for you to retire when you are:

So now, the million dollar question - are you still going to be around at that point? There are no guarantees, but here’s your life expectancy based on your current age (courtesy of the Social Security System Actuarial Life Table):

To retire “ever”, you need to get to that point before you die. So, getting there before you hit your life expectancy is a pretty good measure. If your coast retirement age is less than your life expectancy, then you’re on track to retire at some point even if you don’t contribute another penny.

How Much Faster Can I Retire If I Invest More?

Depending on your situation, those figures may have been exciting or terrifying (or perfectly reasonable). No matter what the case, there’s one thing that should hold true - your retirement date should get better if you make regular contributions.

So, let’s build those in and see where you’re at. To keep things simple, we’ll use a “percentage of income” approach to figure out how much you’ll put toward retirement investing every year. With that in mind, go ahead and put in your household income and the percentage of that income you can save for retirement every year. If your employer includes a “401k match”, don’t forget to include their portion here as well - that money counts!

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume you get annual cost-of-living income increases at the same rate as inflation.

With what you put in, here’s where you end up:

If this age is less than your life expectancy (see above), then you should be on track to retire assuming you can continue to work and make the investments you entered above!

What do you think? If you’re not happy with the results, don’t worry - not all is lost. The result is based on what you entered above and you’ve got the power to adjust your path.

Adjusting Your Path

While this calculator made a lot of assumptions, you still have some flexibility. To accelerate your timeline, increase your income and/or your savings rate in the How Much Faster Can I Retire If I Invest More section. Otherwise, you could reduce your needed spending by changing your expected annual expenses in the How Much Will I Spend In Retirement? section.

What’s Next?

There you have it. Consider this an “entry-level” retirement calculator. There are plenty of others out there to explore as you dig into the details. Many of these will let you tweak the assumptions and try more complex scenarios. Here are a few I recommend you give a shot:

• When Can I Retire? When Will I Be Financially Independent? from ESI Money
• Early Retirement Calculator from Millennial Money
• Ultimate Retirement Calculator from Financial Mentor

And here are a couple retirement-related calculators I’ve worked on that might help you think differently about your path to financial freedom:

• Would You Trade $25 for an Extra Day of Freedom?
• Introducing Retirement Freedom
• Annual Savings to Walk Away Calculator
• Savings Rate to Walk Away Calculator

Happy number-crunching!

What if you were granted every conceivable luxury of life, financial freedom and even more, but it came with expectations that made your soul miserable? Would you let the money dictate your life or would you be willing to let it all go for a different type of freedom? This is the battle that Liz endured. She was forced to make a decision she never imagined. Here is her story:

Everything I Had

My childhood was one of fairy tales. I grew up in a mansion with staff attending to my every need. My every desire was granted. This was all thanks to my father’s success.

My father has a business empire that sprawls across the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, China, and Singapore. As I grew up, my father enticed me in taking an interest in helming his empire. I started traveling with him to all these exotic places, marveling first-hand at all his business acquisitions. We stayed in the fanciest hotels and enjoyed the most luxurious transportation. Nothing was off limits. I certainly saw the benefit in joining my father’s business empire!

Before I could join my father in running his business, he insisted that I go to law school and work at a top law firm for a few years. I completely understood and entered law school without hesitation. One semester in, however, I found my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t enjoy what I was learning and I was terrified of the cut throat culture. I ended up crying myself to sleep most nights, dreaming of becoming an author, a musician, or a linguist. Although I dreamed of pursuing a different career, the thing I desired most was making my dad proud. With this as my priority, I buried my dreams and persevered. Not only was I going to join his business empire, I was also sitting on a 9-digit inheritance.

Losing It All

While I was pushing myself forward through law school, I fell in love. This relationship meant the world to me, but I was nervous to share this part of my life with my parents. I was afraid they wouldn’t be accepting of my partner - a beautiful girl with the heartiest laugh and warmest embrace.

Before telling my parents, my partner and I came out to our closest friends. I was nervous introducing my partner to my Christian friends. I even expected resistance, but there was none. Their warm response gave me the courage to talk to my parents.

My parents’ initial resistance to my relationship didn’t surprise me, but I thought they would come around to accepting us. Instead, they tried to manipulate me into ending my relationship. They took away my allowance, my credit cards, and forced me to return the $250,000 that they had previously gifted me for my 21st birthday. Then they wrote me out of their wills, leaving a nominal sum to prevent me from contesting their wills.

Related Post: The One Life Lesson I Wish I Had Learnt, Before I Lost My 9-Digit Inheritance Overnight

That was hard to endure, but it continued to get uglier. They told me I was no longer fit to helm my dad’s empire. They felt that I was now poor and would have the inclination to steal their riches. They kicked me out of their home and accused me of being a “useless f*cking daughter”. All this just because I started dating someone they didn’t approve of. All the effort I had made in trying to make them proud of me was discounted.

I became a homeless, penniless 22 year old with no future. All the love and support I once had from my parents became non-existent. The loss I felt was more than I could endure. I became depressed with anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia, and thoughts of suicide took over. My once-perfect life had vanished.

Tug-Of-War Struggle

The next two years of my life were a struggle for survival. For every step I tried taking forward, I felt like I was pushed back a step or two. I graduated from law school with dismal grades. This resulted in only 1 out of the 200 jobs I applied for taking a chance on me. Unfortunately, that employer took complete advantage of my desperation, paying me very little for my hard work.

Related Post: The Time I Was Paid $0.10 an Hour at a Corporate Job

The money I made wasn’t enough to cover all my expenses. Luckily, my partner’s father opened his house to me when I became homeless. My parents didn’t like this and insisted that I move back home. I agreed, hoping we could salvage our relationship, but it only made things worse. My relationship with my parents got so toxic that my partner told me that I needed to break up with her. She knew that I had a lot to lose, and she thought that maybe, this relationship wasn’t worth all of that. That broke my heart, but no matter how tough things got, my partner and I always found a way back to each other.

Eventually, I got to the point where I couldn’t keep living this tug-of-war. I could no longer try to salvage my relationship with my parents and find happiness. No longer could I keep trying to succeed in a career that made me miserable. If I was going to pull myself out of my depression, I needed to change my focus.

So I started focusing on what I had left, not what I had lost. I had a loving partner, the freedom to pursue something different, and the ability to change my future. I was finally ready to let go of trying to make my parents proud of me. It took me two years, but I was ready to start pursuing my own life, my own dreams.

The Blessing

My parents had taught me that a life without riches is a sad life. For a very long time, I had believed them. Until the day I became utterly broke - financially and mentally. But in the midst of all that, I realized that I had amazing friends and a partner that loved me as I was. That gave me the strength to fight for myself. So I started fighting for my own happiness. No longer was I going to look to my parents as the only source of acceptance.

I saw for the first time that I could have a wonderful life without a 9-digit inheritance. Better yet, I saw that I could have a wonderful life without much money at all! I only needed enough money to pay for shelter and food. I could find joy in spending time with the people who loved me. I found joy in writing, reading, and making music. I enjoy the sunshine and walking through the park. I started seeing joy in the very simple things in life. And I’ve come to realise that, as cliché as it sounds, some of the best things in life are absolutely free. All the money I had before had blinded me from this truth. But I’m happy to have found a life beyond power, business empires, and millions of dollars.

Related Post: How to Live a Life of Freedom – A Comprehensive 5-Step Guide

These days I’m working as a lowly analyst in a small company. I don’t get paid a lot, and I don’t love what I do, but it allows me to take care of myself and build a comfortable amount of savings. After everything I’ve gone through, I’ve learned the importance of having money set aside for the unexpected. And I’m learning to be proud of myself for accomplishing this much despite all the pain in my life.

While I don’t have the luxurious life that had been planned for me, I have a life of my own. I have a life with unconditional love and a simple joy that money could never buy. I’ve even started to focus on pursuing one of my dream careers on the side, by writing and trying to inspire others on my blog. It’s only a matter of time before I quit my job and start chasing all my dreams. I may have foolishly buried these dreams before, but no longer will they stay buried in my new life.

If there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s this - My new life is a blessing I never could have imagined before.

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

Two weeks ago I looked at our Food Budget and this week I’m moving forward to tackle another budget category.

Our Household category needs to be overhauled! Do you have a budget category that you feel is out of control? Our household spending has been all over the place. Just to show you how bad it is, here is a look at August and September.

August: $545.35 September: $231.96

This is crazy. When I looked into what I was actually spending this money on, it began to make more sense. I listed toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrushes, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, etc. These were all necessary and needed to be replenished. Then I saw I that I listed a new beach bag, glass containers for the kitchen, new water bottles, etc. These items made life nicer/easier, but don’t need to be replenished from month to month. When I took these items out of this category, here is how the spending in August and September looked.

August: $185.76 September: $189.96

With this knowledge, I’ve decided to separate out those nice to have items from the consumables. The consumables will be our Hygiene Budget, while we will move those other purchases over to a Fun Category (I’ll address this in another post).

In an effort to help be a bit more conscientious of our spending, I’m making a goal to only spend $150 in October. We’ve spent $102.52 so far, but I think we are pretty set. If we can make this happen, I can save us $30 a month and hopefully a lot more by not disguising those fun purchases as necessities!

Is there a spending category you feel you need to split into two different groups? Or have you found a unique way to save on your hygiene budget?

Do you know what you want your future retirement to look like? Or where you want to be? Jen and Tom found their ideal retirement in Door County, Wisconsin. Here’s how they discovered their ideal lifestyle.

Discovering Our Ideal Vacation

We desperately needed a break from our home in southern Indiana. The sweltering heat and humidity of summer was draining our family of four. We needed a vacation, a true vacation, where we could relax, get a break from the heat, but still enjoy the summer with our boys.

I racked my brain for a good vacation idea and remembered an article I had read in Midwest Living Magazine about Door County, WI. I don’t remember what it said, but it must have reminded me of my childhood. My parents used to take my brother and I on fishing vacations when we were kids. We would stay in a cabin on a lake and spend our days swimming while my dad fished and my mom hiked/read novels. Door County sounded like a step back in time. Maybe this is where my husband, Tom, and I could create our own version of a fishing vacation with our boys who were 9 and 12 years old.

A few weeks later we were on our way to Rowley’s Bay in Door County. I had booked a cabin for four nights at The Wagon Wheel Resort. It was a long nine hour drive before we parked in front of our little rustic cabin getaway on the edge of Lake Michigan!

The drive had been long, but well worth it. The next morning I got up before anyone else and made a pot of coffee before strolling outside in the cool morning air. It was refreshing beyond belief. With my coffee in hand, I found a place to sit back and take in the beautiful scenery. I even saw newbies get an early morning kayak lesson!

When my husband and boys woke up they were ready to take to the lake. My dad had made tackle boxes for the boys and they were eager to catch their first fish. Every day, they tried, but it didn’t come easy. Then, one day a gull swooped down and grabbed the cork on my 9 year old’s line and tried to fly away with it! That story went down in family lore as the day Drew caught a gull! When the boys weren’t feverishly trying to catch a fish, they were swimming in the lake or biking with their dad along the cedar lined roads. We kept our meals simple, using the cabin’s kitchen and always ended our day with a family board game. It was exactly what our family needed.

That week was pure bliss and went by quickly. We were all sad when it was time to head back home. We had learned that this type of vacation - a simple cabin with outdoor activities - was our favorite. We didn’t need a lot of money to take a vacation, just a bit of time. With this realization, we decided to return to Door County the following Summer. It quickly became a yearly summer getaway for our family!

Creating a Vacation Home

As the years went by and the boys grew up, we continued to visit Door County. After 10 years of summer getaways we realized that this wasn’t enough. We wanted more time at our favorite place. My husband and I started dreaming of retiring here and talked about the possibility of buying a vacation home so we could return whenever we wanted.

We looked around for five years before we found a place that fit us perfectly. There was a condo for sale in Egg Harbor with water front property. At 1,250 square foot, ground level, and a deck looking over beautiful Green Bay of Lake Michigan, we knew it was exactly what we wanted. With the condo, we could come and go without worrying about yard work or snow removal and could fully enjoy the laid back vibe of Door County whenever we were here.

When we closed on the condo, Tom was still working full time and I was caring for my ailing parents. We made it back whenever we could, even bringing my Dad with several times. He loved it there and we nicknamed the second bedroom Pop’s Room. We spent a number of years driving back and forth between our home in Indiana and the condo in Door County before Tom and I started talking plans for actually retiring in Door County.

Retirement Living in Door County

About two years ago we started talking seriously about retirement. More specifically, early retirement. I had retired several years prior, but now we were both 57 years old and were considering our ability for Tom to retire early as well.

My parents had passed away and our boys had moved to Florida and Kentucky. With no family in Indiana, we figured we would sell our home and move into our condo full time. Tom announced his early retirement at work, but his company asked him to stay on as a senior adviser and work remotely. He would still need to go into the office every 6-7 weeks though. This meant that we would still need a place to live in Indiana.

We weighed our options and felt that the offer to stay with the company would work wonderfully for us. Not only would it be a great transition towards full retirement, it was less hours, offered flexibility, had a salary that would cover our expenses (no need to dip into our retirement savings yet), and included our health insurance until we are eligible for Medicare. Plus, Tom loves his job!

Since we could spend a majority of our time in Door County, we didn’t need our big family house in Indiana. We decided to sell and rent a duplex near Tom’s work. The transition has been really easy.

It’s been over 2 months since we made this change and we are enjoying the blissful lifestyle of Door Country we discovered 20 years ago! Life here is relaxing yet active. We head over to the YMCA most days and I spend Wednesday afternoons with an awesome knitting group. We’ve even found a tiny church with a big heart in Fish Creek! Tom works out on the deck during the summer while and I read. And when we feel like doing a little something special, we take an afternoon break to visit one of our favorite coffee shops for coffee and biscotti!

We love our life here, but we do take a break from the cold winter in January and February by visiting our son in Tampa!

Then, over the 4th of July our boys and their families return to Door County for a week of vacation! I love that we are keeping our little family fishing vacation alive! It’s amazing how 20 years ago, the need to find some family rejuvenation led us to where we would eventually find retirement bliss!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

October has shaped up to be a month of consuming content. Not creating much—just a lot of consuming. This seems to be what happens whenever I travel at a fast pace, which is exactly what’s happening right now. I spent 3 days in Washington, DC followed by 5 days in New York City. Tomorrow, I fly to Edmonton for 5 more days. And the week after that, I’m travelling to Richmond, Virginia for another few days. (Then I’m done for 2018.)

With all the travel and slow living experiments I’ve done, I’ve learned there’s a simple equation for how my output is impacted by the rate at which I’m moving through the world. It goes like this:

slow pace of life = create more

fast pace of life = create less

In this instance, “create” doesn’t just apply to content. It means the way I show up altogether. When I’m settled in, I cook more, try more new recipes, spend more time maintaining my relationships and so on. And that makes sense—the same way being busy often results in letting some of those things fall by the wayside. When I move too quickly, I feel like I can only manage what’s at the surface. But when I slow down, I can dive deeper—and that’s how I prefer to live.

The reason I love doing experiments is because they teach me so much about myself. Now, I just know: when I travel a lot, I probably won’t get much deep work done. But that doesn’t mean I’m not being productive. If anything, I’ve found myself reading/listening to more books, audiobooks and podcasts this month—and I’m getting pickier about what I consume. I want to consume content that inspires me, or at least makes me think. Like the interview with Louis, the can of cola.

I was recently introduced to the new podcast Everything Is Alive. Each episode is an interview with an inanimate object. Things you would find around your house or in your neighbourhood. A bar of soap, an elevator, a lamppost. Through a series of thoughtful questions, it shares its life story, and I have never listened to anything like it. It’s a fantastic podcast for hopeful minimalists, because it makes you think about how you would treat your belongings if they were alive.

The episode with Louis has really stuck with me. Without giving much away, I will just tell you that Louis has been sitting on the shelf for a long time. He’s a generic can of cola, so it seems he’s been forgotten—continually shoved to the back of the fridge. Where things took a turn for me was when the host, Ian, began to prompt Louis to talk about what his inevitable future is: to expire and be tossed out, or to be consumed. Louis’ answer to one question hit home.

Ian: When you think about being consumed by a human, do you think about the human you want to be in?

Louis: If and when I’m finally consumed, I hope I’m consumed by someone who enjoys it.

YES! Yes yes yes. So much food for thought (no pun intended). This is what I’m talking about!

He then goes on to say: Truthfully, here’s how I expect to go. Assuming that I am consumed, I’m expecting it’s going to happen in the middle of the night. Someone’s going to open the fridge and pull me out and that’ll be that. It would be nice to be poured into a nice big pint glass, you know? A frosty mug would be a pretty good way to go. That would be pleasant. I doubt that’s going to happen though.

If that doesn’t make you think twice about how you consume things. Wow. Louis isn’t looking so generic, after all.

Since this is a month of consuming for me, I thought I would share some of the things I’ve enjoyed. :)

Books

Company of One by Paul Jarvis – It comes out on January 15th, and if you read just the description you’ll know exactly why I love it so much. I seriously can’t wait for more people to read it, so we can have conversations about it. SOON!

Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow – A look at how our subliminal brain (or unconscious mind) influences our experiences, how we view ourselves and others, and the meaning we attach to things. The cover alone is wild (you have to see it).

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu – This is all about how our attention is captured (often by “free” information) and sold. It’s an entire industry. Blogging is part of it. I’m obsessed with this topic + anything Tim does, right now.

The End of Absence by Michael Harris – A look at how technology (like smartphones) has created what he calls a “loss of lack”—basically, we have no opportunities to be alone with our thoughts. He encourages us to take pleasure in those moments when we find them.

To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins – This is a memoir about his 14,000-mile bike ride from Oregon to Patagonia. I’m nearly halfway through the audiobook and never want it to end. Genuinely savouring this one.

Podcasts

Everything Is Alive – Unscripted interviews with inanimate objects. Aside from Louis the can of cola, I think Dennis the pillow and Paul the tooth were the two funniest guests. Enjoy the laughs—and deep thoughts.

How to Fail – Interviews with now successful writers about their careers, including all the mistakes and failures. I resonated with Jessie Burton and Olivia Laing, and am curious how the new episode with James Frey will be.

Hurry Slowly – My favourite podcast! The new season just started! I loved the episode with Priya Parker about the art of gathering. I really want to create some intentional gatherings for us in 2019, so I will read her book. :)

The Ezra Klein Show – I’ve listened to countless episodes of this podcast, and have now found myself digging into the archives. His interview with Tim Wu (Dec 20, 2016) was great. And listen to his chat with my friend Chris Bailey about his new book, Hyperfocus.

Waking Up – I’ve known about this podcast for years, but only started listening recently. Episode 136 on “digital humanism” gave me so much food for thought. Honestly, any interview you find with Jaron Lanier will be interesting. (Actually, Ezra Klein has had him on a few times! Check those out, too.)

TV (Pure Entertainment)

Follow This: Part 2 (Netflix) – There are two episodes that touch on topics we discuss here: (1) Tech Addict and (2) Teen Boss. Teen Boss is about teen “influencers” and it is particularly scary.

Killing Eve – I watched the first 4 episodes on my flight to DC and was hooked!

To end things on a delicious note, here’s a new recipe I tried and loved: magic garlicky tofu! The name says it all.

x Cait

This was originally shared in my newsletter.

So, you’ve figured out whether you’ll ever be able to retire. Now you are itching for that next step - figuring out how to retire early. After hearing all of these amazing stories of people retiring in their 30’s and 40’s, you want to know the secrets to getting there on your own.

If you’re ready to go there, I’m ready to take you through it. The trick to retiring early is beating inflation. Today we’ll go through how to do that with a one-two punch.

A Typical Money Situation

Let’s build a baseline scenario to understand why the combination of earning and frugality are so powerful.

A 2018 college graduate can expect an average starting salary of roughly $50,000. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey, let’s say the average person making $50,000 is spending about $48,500. That’s a savings rate of about 3.5%.

Let’s call our hypothetical worker Mo Ney.

From this point on, if Mo does an adequate job, we can expect annual raises that are roughly in line with inflation - about 2.5% each year.

While those raises might look fine on paper, they aren’t really making anything better. If Mo’s income goes up at the same rate as the cost of the stuff, Mo will be stuck at that 3.5% savings rate for the rest of time.

The personal finance community lovingly refers to the distance between the earning and spending lines as “the gap”. And as the experts will tell you, minding the gap is the most important money lesson you can learn.

With this scenario, Mo hits age 65 with about $725,000 saved up for retirement, which falls well short of a 25x spending goal of $3.5 million.

So, we need to find a way for Mo to either increase earnings or decrease spending. In both cases, Mo is currently tied to inflation, so this is really about beating inflation.

Beating Inflation with a Frugality Punch

What if Mo could have a “personal” inflation rate that’s less than everyone else’s? By being smart about spending, looking for deals, and doing some things by hand (instead of hiring someone for every little job), what if Mo could keep to a personal inflation rate of just 1%?

The results are staggering. The spending and earning lines move further apart from each other every year by a bigger amount. That’s a gap that’s improving by leaps and bounds.

By the time Mo reaches retirement age, we’re seeing a savings rate of nearly 50%!

With this one simple change, Mo could retire early at age 55 - with $1.8 million in the bank.

Beating Inflation with an Earnings Punch

What about the flip side? What if Mo can be a top performer at work and get 4% annual raises instead?

Once again, the spending and earning lines are diverging - creating an even bigger gap every year. By the time Mo reaches retirement, we’re once again seeing a savings rate of nearly 50%.

With higher earnings instead, Mo could retire early at age 58 - with $3.2 million in the bank!

Beating Inflation with a One-Two Punch

When you put the two together, the gap grows big and it grows fast. In less than four years, Mo breaks a 10% savings rate. In another four, that jumps to 20%. By retirement age, Mo’s savings rate is almost 75%!

What does a 75% savings rate mean? That means in Mo’s last year of employment, one year of earnings is buying Mo three years of retirement. That’s one heck of a ratio.

And here’s the best part; increasing your earnings and decreasing your spending can be done at the same time. Getting a huge raise doesn’t mean you need to spend a whole lot more money. Pretend that raise never came and increase your spending only as you need to.

Putting these two together lets Mo retire at age 48. What do you think Mo could do with an extra 17 years of freedom?

What could you do with an extra 17 years of freedom?

Up Next - Learn to Punch

Hopefully this gave you some great motivation around beating inflation so you can improve your financial situation. Your next step? Check out our post on how exactly to beat inflation with both frugality and earnings: Earn Like a Boss, Spend Like an Intern.

Well, friends—you asked many (many, many) times and I finally listened. After three years of creating Mindful Budgeting Planners that ran for full calendar years (January 1 to December 31), I finally made them evergreen! That means you can start whenever you feel ready, not just on January 1st.

If this is your first time hearing about them though, you might be wondering what a Mindful Budgeting Planner is.

For years, I searched for this planner in bookstores. I would stand in front of the shelves, scan the titles and open every single one that looked even remotely look this—but I never found it. The daily financial planner I wanted didn’t seem to exist, so I decided to create it myself; that’s how Mindful Budgeting was born in 2015.

Inside these pages, you’ll find the things you love about a regular daily planner. There are blank calendars you can fill in. There is an area to write down your to-do list each day. There are also spaces to reflect on how you’re feeling about the changes and progress you’re noticing. (It could be a great companion to a shopping ban.)

mindful: attentive, aware, or careful

What makes this planner unique is the personal finance content. My own journey started with tracking my spending, so that’s what this planner was built around. Along with the daily spending sheets, you’ll also find spreadsheets and budget templates to track all your numbers for 12 months.

And the best part: like I said, the planner is now evergreen! That means it’s not dated (though I’ve made it easy for you to write in the dates) so you can start whenever you feel ready to change your financial life. Or pick it back up with no shame, if you’ve fallen off track. (This often happens with planners. It’s not bad. It just is.)

budget: an estimate, often itemized, of expected income and expenses for a given period of time

Unlike some other financial planning tools, you won’t find any pressure to be perfect in this planner; it doesn’t exist and that’s not the goal. But the more you use it, I think you’ll find you naturally begin to put more attention and energy into managing your money, because you’ll want to—not because I told you to.

My hope is that you’ll finish this 12-month period of your life with a new awareness of your personal finances and a vision of what you want for the future. If nothing else, I hope the planner helps you embrace the idea of being a beginner, let go of the past and start where you are. :)

So, What’s Inside?

Note: You can visit this page to see more pictures, or click to order and “preview” the whole thing!

• Daily spending sheets to track both your spending and your to-do’s (31 blank days per month)
• Monthly calendars (12 blank, so you can start whenever you’re ready, not just on Jan 1)
• Monthly budget templates (12)
• Spreadsheets to track your debt repayment, savings, bill payments and net worth
• Two pages of writing prompts to reflect at the end of each month
• Two pages of writing prompts to reflect at the 6-month mark
• Four pages of writing prompts to reflect at the end of the 12 months
• Motivational quotes to inspire you at the start of each month (12)
• Instructions on how to use the planner
• 6×9 inches, hardcover, 310 pages

Two Covers, Pick Your Favourite!

Printing, Shipping + Customer Service Info

Every copy of the Mindful Budgeting Planner is printed on demand (meaning it gets printed and bound when you place your order). You will place your order directly through the Blurb website, which is my print shop of choice. They have printers in the US, the Netherlands and Australia.

Blurb doesn’t offer wire coil binding, but their hardcovers are beautiful. That means the planners don’t lay perfectly flat, which is something I’ve been wanting since I first launched the planners in 2015. However, it does mean they are printed a little closer to home, instead of being made in China like most other planners.

When you place your order through Blurb, they handle the printing, as well as the shipping and customer service. Because they handle everything, I don’t actually receive personal information about any of the orders. If you have any issues, you can fill out this request form.

One thing to note is that some countries collect custom fees/duty on orders. In all the years I’ve sold the planner, I’ve only had two people tell me this was charged (and both were in Toronto)—but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen to you. More information about this can be found on the Blurb website.

I’ll leave it there with you, friends! Thank you for challenging me to imagine this planner could take a different shape. This exists because of YOU! And I am grateful. :)

I want to start this week’s newsletter by thanking you for being so supportive of the shift I’ve made in my work this season. Truthfully, I spent a few months’ time worrying about making this change, but your response has been overwhelmingly positive and made me excited about the future. Thank you. :)

When I first started thinking about the kinds of conversations I wanted us to have going forward, I wrote down a combination of two words over and over again in my messy notes, and realized I would have to begin by describing it—it being the term “mindful consumer”. While I don’t always like calling myself a minimalist, I will happily say “I’m a mindful consumer”. As someone who has been a binge consumer of many things, it almost feels like a gift. So, when I got an email expressing some concern that I was calling us all consumers, I knew it was time to explain what it means to me—and it started when I took back the meaning of the c-word.

By most definitions, a consumer = a person who purchases goods and services. Even if that sounds a little gross, it does describe all of us. If you’ve ever bought groceries or paid for someone to help you with anything, you are a consumer. So far, this word feels ok to me.

A consumer also = a person who eats or uses things. Again, that’s all of us! If you’ve eaten food or drank water, or worn clothes or watched/read something, you are a consumer. To that end, it’s safe to say a consumer = a living and breathing human being.

When I look at it that way, the word doesn’t bother me. Where it starts to feel dirty is when you think about how many companies out there use the word “consumer” to describe us, as they come up with strategies to make us consume things we don’t need. They study our behaviours and our insecurities. They implement strategies to see what works. And they write entire books to share their findings with others, so even more people can try to get + alter our attention. Because more than any other statement I’ve made here, that feels the truest: it’s not just that they want our money. They want our attention. They know we, as humans, are consumers, they want to make sure we are consuming them, and it starts by getting our attention.

Starting to feel icky yet? I am—or I was, until I decided to take back the meaning of the word. Instead of worrying about what companies were thinking of me as, I embraced the fact that a consumer = a living and breathing human being. And there’s something kind of beautiful about that.

I am a human with a mind + body that takes in a lot of things every day. Because of that mind + body, I am able to breathe, think, feel, touch, smell, taste, hear, talk and see what is all around me. I am consuming the world, because I am a consumer.

And not just a “conscious consumer”. That is someone who votes with their dollars, and chooses to buy things that are ethically and/or sustainably produced. This is a noble cause, and one I believe in too! But it still focuses on the goods/services aspect of being a consumer and, as you can tell, I like to go deeper. That’s why I’ve embraced the idea of being a mindful consumer. It means I use my mind + body to pay attention to what I’m consuming, why, and how it makes me feel. The key phrase being: I pay attention. I can thank my human capabilities for that. :)

So, if you’ve noticed that I’m calling us all consumers lately, that’s because I am. We are consumers! And there’s nothing dirty or wrong about it. We are consumers because we are humans. And because we are humans, we are equipped with the ability to pay attention, think and make choices.

Choices about what we buy. What we eat and drink. What we read and watch and listen to. What kinds of conversations we have and with whom. We aren’t stupid. And we aren’t just our insecurities or our behaviours. We are human beings who consume things, and those things affect us. You could even say those things can consume us.

“I am a consumer. And I want to respect my attention, energy and time.”

You can start saying this to the people + companies you think need to be reminded that you are a human being.

And then give it to yourself. :)

x Cait

This was originally shared in my newsletter.

Last week, I returned home from a retreat in California. What I thought was going to be a creativity workshop being taught by two of my favourite authors ended up being more like two days of therapy being provided by them. While I know that the work was important for many of the people in the audience, it was work I had already done for myself over the past couple of years. Acknowledging and pushing through my fears? Yep, I’m basically always doing that. Actively pursuing things I want and creating an engaged life? It was fun to write the list of ways I’d done that recently. And trusting my clarity? I’ve been doing that, too (and is what helped me quit all the projects I’d been working on).

As I wrote each of the prescribed letters to myself, and then exchanged the words with strangers, I started to feel like I shouldn’t be there. I wasn’t going to the deep, dark places other people seemed to be venturing into. I wasn’t crying or having any kind of emotional reaction at all. I was just writing facts on paper. When others opened up and shared parts of themselves with me, I felt guilty for only giving them a few facts in return. I also hated that the whole setup reminded me of the documentary I Am Not Your Guru. It felt like a gross waste of money. So, when I realized day two was going to be a repeat of a workshop I’d done in London, I decided to skip it and sit with these thoughts.

Looking back now, I can see that might have been the most important thing I did all weekend: taken a step back. It gave me time to think about why I had signed up in the first place, as well as why I was disappointed in what it had ended up being. Sitting alone with my thoughts also prevented me from bringing other people down with me. Because, yes, I was disappointed and I did feel like I wasted my money. I could have moaned or complained. I also could have taken to social media and told others how annoyed I was. Or worse yet, used the event hashtag so the attendees/organizers could have heard my opinion too. But I knew it wasn’t meant to be shared.

And the reason I knew I shouldn’t share this is because that was my experience—not theirs. And it didn’t feel fair for me to alter someone else’s experience in an attempt to match mine (especially when mine was negative).

This has been, perhaps, one of the hardest things for me to learn—and actually practice—since embracing mindfulness: the art of not complaining. And I won’t pretend I’m good at it. Honestly, I think I’m just getting started. There are stats that say we tell anywhere from 2-10x as many people about a bad experience, compared to a good experience. Why is that? I don’t know, because I truly am just starting to think about this. What I do know is that the art of constant complaining is the main reason I deleted my Facebook profile + page, and finally decided to walk away from Twitter. I used to do it too, so zero judgment from me, but I simply grew tired of being dragged down.

So, instead of dragging anyone down at the workshop, I went for a hike then sat outside by one of the fire pits and wrote in my journal. After listing all the things I was feeling about the experience (including frustration about the non-stop pitches to visit the gift shop, which I did talk about on Instagram in a way that would hopefully open reader’s eyes to how often it happens) I asked myself why I was there. Why had I bought a ticket for this event? The answer had a few layers of influence.

1. I saw one of the author’s share it on Instagram.
2. It felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
3. I didn’t think there would be many tickets available.
4. I was in a bad place and wanted something to look forward to.

Now, let’s really break that down:

• Influence #1: my love of the author’s work (which is why I follow her).
• Influence #2: a desire/dream.
• Influence #3: a scarcity mindset (which is behind many impulse purchases).
• Influence #4: my mental health.

Notice that none of those things are anyone else’s fault. They all had to do with me. I had no one to “blame” for wasting money but myself. I made the decision to buy the ticket. As for not enjoying the content of the workshops, I can take some of the blame for that too—and it’s not all bad blame. The reason I didn’t enjoy the workshops was because I didn’t need them. And the reason I didn’t need them was because I’d already done a lot of that work for myself. If I hadn’t gone, I might not have realized just how far I’ve come this year. So, what would I complain about? Why is that anyone else’s problem? Why is it a problem at all?

When we talk about becoming mindful consumers, we are looking at how outside things/experiences affect us on the inside. What we eat affects how we feel, what we read/watch/listen to affects how we think, what we consume affects what we create, and so on. We can talk about how all of those things influence us, and two weeks ago I did suggest you start keeping track of what you consume. But the “mindful” part means being conscious and aware of what’s happening in the present moment, and that includes recognizing your role in influencing each moment as well. We can’t blame everything on everyone else. Who we are today influences us as well.

This is one of the reasons I won’t leave negative book reviews. There are lots of books I read and don’t enjoy, but it’s not the author’s fault. It’s my fault I didn’t enjoy it. Either I already knew the advice (similar to the workshop, this is actually a good thing) or didn’t agree with the content or didn’t relate to the writing style. But it’s not the author’s fault they didn’t write the perfect book for me. They don’t know me. That’s too big of a demand! So, why would I complain about it—especially in a public forum, which could alter other people’s thoughts and stop someone from reading a book that could really help them? Who am I to think I should have any control over that?

My friend David once wrote that mindfulness is the opposite of neediness—and practicing it means “observing something without trying to immediately change it”. It’s noticing and accepting. And in the example of the workshop I attended, it was noticing that I was influencing my negative experience, and accepting ownership of that rather than blaming it on anyone else. Sometimes it seems easier to place blame or to act like a victim of circumstance. In fact, it’s a lot harder to recognize your role and take responsibility for it. But being able to see—and accept—that you are part of the equation makes you a better communicator, problem solver, and member of all your communities.

The original point of this newsletter was to get you to think about what influences you. But now I’m curious: how are you influencing yourself? And who are you influencing?

x Cait

This was originally shared in my newsletter.

Before I officially made the big decision to retire from blogging, I took a bunch of smaller steps toward it; dipped my toes in the water, so to speak. You might remember the first thing I did was decide to take two weeks off. After a month, I decided to take the entire summer off. And then I did a bunch of things behind the scenes that were less visible. After hearing my friend Paul say he removed Google Analytics from his website, it dawned on me that maybe I could do the same. Then I did a huge content audit and deleted 200+ posts from my site. And finally (I think this is the last one!?) I signed out of Twitter.

If you are a blogger or content creator, some of that might shock you. I’ve heard actual gasps come out of people’s mouths, when I mention the Google Analytics step, specifically. It’s a tool that keeps track of how many people visit your site, how many pages/posts they look at on average, which country/city they are located and so on. And if you’re trying to figure out how readers find you, so you can create more content that brings even more readers in, and ultimately build a huge audience who might pay you/earn you ad revenue, it’s a great tool! But that’s not my goal (and never was).

Still, when I first heard Paul say he had deleted Google Analytics, I let out a little gasp too. Because it goes against the narrative of what we are told we “should” do. And so, my first thought was that I couldn’t possibly delete it from my site—could I!? The more I questioned it, the more it became clear that I could. For starters, I couldn’t remember why I had installed it in the first place. I also never used it the way you’re “supposed to”. So if it didn’t have a purpose and I never used it, why did I have it!? (Also a question to ask when decluttering!) There was no good answer, so I let it go. Hit delete and said goodbye.

Taking a bunch of smaller steps toward the idea of retiring from blogging was almost like testing a few theories. If I do X, what will happen? Ok, now what if I do Y? And then Z?Thanks to my wild imagination (and anxiety), I envisioned countless things that could go wrong. But in the end, even after taking the final plunge, nothing bad happened. People understood. It all worked out. If anything, it was actually one of the most exciting times of my “career” (is that what this is? lol). Because making the slow, intentional decision to let go of what I didn’t want to do anymore also gave me the time to figure out what I do want to be doing—and being “good” at the internet is not part of the equation.

Before we dive deeper into this topic, I should clarify that I don’t aspire to be a luddite. I love and use technology every day, including my smartphone, computers and the electric standup desk I built last summer. On my phone, I send texts and make calls, listen to audiobooks and podcasts, take pictures and still spend a little too much time on Instagram. On my computer, I write this newsletter, read/reply to emails, do research, write, record podcasts, create graphics, watch videos and so on. I also store things in the cloud, buy products, sell products and manage all of my money online. It is an incredibly useful tool that powers so many of the good things in my life. I am very pro internet!

What I’m no longer interested in is being “good” at the internet. I’ve known this for a long time. In fact, I remember meeting an online friend at a conference and having her ask me why I wasn’t doing a long list of things to grow my site. “Don’t you want to build a big audience or start your own publishing company? You totally could!” When I said “no,” she looked confused and almost frustrated. And it wasn’t her fault for reacting that way. I was at a conference where people were literally there to talk about how to create content that would build audiences and make them money! I was just there for different reasons (to see friends, not attend sessions).

We had that conversation in September 2016, and it took two more years for me to finally realize that maybe being “good” at the internet wasn’t my career path after all. Of course, over the past two years, a lot of other things have changed the way the internet works and feels. Not just in politics, but in the world of social media in general. Some people even believe the internet is terrible now. I wouldn’t go that far, but I did enjoy this podcast interview with Tim Wu. My personal feeling is simpler: the internet is extremely reactive now. It is fast-paced, stressful and requires a lot of energy to keep up with. And that is the exact opposite of living a slow, mindful and intentional life.

So, I’m opting out—at least of the way many content creators use the internet today. In fact, I think my new career goal is to be bad at the internet. When people ask if I’ve read a certain post, or heard about what someone did or said online, I want to say no. I don’t want to keep up with what “my competitors” (that language is so toxic) are doing or which tools they are using. I just want to read/listen/watch stuff I find and then close tabs when I’m done. And I really don’t want to hear about another tool, plugin, or app that can make the internet “better” or easier to manage. I want to use the internet so little that I can’t even imagine needing them at all. Because I don’t want to be known as just a blogger or someone who lives online. I want to be a human who lives + helps in real life.

All of this is to say that, basically, I want to go back to using the internet the way I did when I was a teenager. I want to read/reply to emails, do research, create content and watch videos. And I will keep the few products I have, and of course log on for any workshops we do together, because the internet is the only way we can connect! But I’m done with all the extra stuff that happens online now. That feels scary to type, because it’s the world I’ve been caught up in for the past 12+ years. But there are a lot of people (including friends my age) who have always used the internet this way. Some have never had Facebook. Many have never read blogs. They only open their computers to do work, check email or perform a quick search. Then it’s back to real life with their humans—and that sounds really nice.

There are only a handful of things I’m excited about these days. Getting back into + improving my writing (this newsletter has been a huge help!). Launching a new podcast (already have the skills for that). Learning new design skills (just for fun). Upcoming travel. And spending more time with my family and friends. Some of those things require the internet to work, but they don’t require me to be “good” at the internet. And, as you’ll soon see with my new podcast, they actually won’t require that I spend more time on the internet at all. Right now, I’m making intentional choices and shifts, so I can work online less in order to live offline more.

x Cait

This was originally shared in my newsletter.

In our last post, I talked about the key to retiring early: by beating inflation twice - in both your earnings and spending. Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty details about how to do each.

If you’re going to grow “the gap” between your earnings and spending, here’s a mantra that can really clarify your vision:

Earn like a boss, spend like an intern (Tweet this )

Today I’ll share what we’ve learned over the past 15 years about how to manage both sides of this equation, with the goal of getting you well set-up to do the same. Along the way, I’ll link to some books that I’ve read that have really helped me in each of these areas. Every book on this page is one I’ve read and loved.

How to Earn Like a Boss

Below are the methods and approaches I’ve used over the last 15 years to grow my income an average of 8% a year (definitely beating inflation of about 2.5% during that same time period).

I can’t promise these will work in every situation. That said, if the things below don’t bring you success in the company you work for, you may want to look for a different company!

1. Keep the mission first

When you and your team have something important you’re working on together, everything becomes a whole lot clearer.

Decisions are easier, priorities are clearer, and everyone just seems to work together better.

If you find yourself in a job where everyone seems like they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, then there’s a good chance your team is missing a worthwhile purpose. What do you accomplish? Why do you exist? (and no, “to make money” is not a good enough answer).

Spend time talking with your team members and bosses about what the mission of the company and your team are so you can make the biggest impact there. Most other things are just a distraction.

Recommended Book on Team Purposes: Start with Why by Simon Sinek

2. Improve yourself

The skills or potential you showed that got you in the door at your job aren’t going to be enough to keep you successful for the rest of your career. You need to keep learning and growing.

Sure, your employer has an interest in contributing to this, but make it your responsibility to identify how you want to grow and how you want to do it.

If you’re struggling for ideas, go out and grab a few leadership/business books from the library or the bookstore.

Recommended Book on What Makes Businesses Successful: Good to Great by Jim Collins

3. Improve your team

Improving yourself helps your company a bit and you a lot. Improving your team helps your company a lot and you even more.

This might come in the form of sharing things you’ve learned with your team members. Or it might come in the form of suggesting and implementing improvements to the processes your team uses.

If you see something in your team that isn’t working, come up with a solution.

In the end, if you’re looking to make your team more efficient and effective, you will be a great asset to your business and show that you’re more than a person who can “do the job” - you’re a person who can “improve the job”.

Recommended Book on Things That Are Often Wrong In Teams (And How To Do Them Better): Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

4. Take on the hard or undesirable jobs

This is one of the biggest ones. There are always going to be pieces of a job that people avoid because it’s hard or undesirable. These things always get left for last and the person stuck with them usually complains about having to do them.

I’m going to suggest something unconventional. Volunteer for these jobs.

Undesirable jobs are ones that can almost always be improved (see #3 above) and hard jobs are the best places to learn (see #2 above). By tackling the jobs that nobody else wants, you’ll also show major initiative, which will go a long way with your bosses.

Having a reputation as an employee that has a clear understanding of the mission, is continuously improving themselves and the team, and is willing to take on the tough jobs puts you in a position of being an employee that every manager wants to keep around. When you do this, you’ll find yourself better able to advocate for raises, promotions, and increased responsibility.

Taking this road gives you the ability to increase your income at a rate way faster than inflation, which puts you on the path to financial freedom.

How to Spend Like an Intern

Ok - the income side is looking good. Now let’s take a look at spending. Below are the methods we’ve used to keep our annual spending growth to roughly 1% a year over the last 10 years (much better than inflation at 2.5%).

But first, some backstory on what my life as an intern was like :)

I had an 8-month internship during my time in college and it was a great experience. Beyond all the benefits of building my career, one of the best things that came out of it was the financial environment.

I was making pretty good money - better than any hourly job I’d had in high school or over summer break. But even though the money was coming in, I was still living on-campus in the same environment I’d been in while I was getting my degree.

I hung out with the same friends, did the same activities, and lived roughly the same lifestyle. By spending like I was still a student, I ended up padding my bank accounts quite a bit during those 8 months. It didn’t really hit me until years later what the important lesson was here, but it’s an eye-opener:

1. Your spending can (and should) be independent of your income

It’s that simple. The fact that someone makes $100,000 doesn’t mean they need to spend like they make $100,000. Some people in this situation spend like they make $200,000. Others spend like they make $50,000. Either way, there’s a lot more choice in spending than what most people think about.

Here’s another lightbulb - when you get a 10% raise (or 5% or 3% for that matter), you don’t have to increase your spending to go with it.

It’s tempting to look at increases in our income as an opportunity to “reward” ourselves for a job well-done. But what’s a better reward - blowing your raise on an overpriced new car with higher insurance costs, or using that money to secure your financial future?

I know it may sound boring, but future you would be delighted if your raise went toward paying off your mortgage or buying months or years of freedom.

So, how do you keep to the mentality of spending like an intern even while your paychecks grow?

2. Remember that you can have fun no matter your lifestyle

Look back at the times in your life that you were the happiest. Most likely, the reason you were happy wasn’t because of some infinite pile of cash at your disposal.

No, most likely your happiness came from a different kind of abundance - relationships, purpose, or adventure.

If you can find joy and fulfillment in life without incessantly swiping the credit card, then why wouldn’t you go that route?

Rather than “investing” in stuff, try investing in your friendships, family, skills, knowledge, and experiences.

But won’t you feel deprived if you’re not buying all the shiny new toys?

3. It’s not about depriving - it’s about prioritizing

Remember that it’s not deprivation if you’re prioritizing something better. If you’ve got dreams for a life that’s got more freedom, more travel, and less stress, then choosing to spend less now is putting what’s most important to you at the top of your list.

Take the time to think about where you want your money to go. Do you want to buy new furniture every 12 months to keep up with the latest styles or do you want to travel the world?

Do you want the convenience of not having to cook or do you want to eliminate that last bit of debt?

Do you want to spend on short-term conveniences or do you want to invest long-term in your values?

Your answers might be different from mine. But until you take the time to think about these questions and ask yourself what your values are, you can’t know whether your money is going to the right place.

Recommended Book on Prioritizing: The More of Less by Joshua Becker

So how can you make sure you’re sticking to your values in your spending?

4. Track your spending

As the quote goes, “That which gets measured gets managed.”

If you want to know whether your money is going toward your values, the best way is to track your spending.

We’ve used Thrifty to track our spending for the last three years and it’s done wonders in our ability to measure and reduce our spending. We’ve found a ton of bad spending habits that we’ve been able to fix, saving us thousands of dollars a year.

Plus, as a bonus, tracking our spending means we’re not only able to grow our gap between our spending and earnings - we’re able to measure it and see it improve over time!

Putting It All Together

So, there you have it. Putting these two together should put you in the position to beat inflation both on the income side and on the spending side. If you can do that, you should be well on the path to early retirement. From there, you can refine and improve your approach on both sides to get there even faster.

What about you? Any tips on how to earn like a boss or spend like an intern that you’ve used in your own life?

I’m excited to bring Caroline’s story to you! Her story shows that you don’t have to choose between living in the city or being able to retire early. You just have to be very intentional about making smart money decisions along the way in order to get there!

Living in New York City is not cheap. If anything, it’s the opposite of cheap - it’s ridiculously expensive! So expensive that many people choose to leave the city in order to live more affordable lives. That thought never even crossed our minds though. It wasn’t an option. My husband and I grew up in the city. Our families live in the city. And we LOVE this city! We love how convenient everything is, the cultural diversity, and the thriving art scene. There is never a day that goes by that you can’t find a show, fair, or museum to enjoy. This is where we wanted to live, to raise our family.

Affording NYC

With that decision made, we had to figure out how to afford this life - this crazy expensive, but awesome life! The first decision we made was to take on the highest paying jobs we could find early in our career. This ended up being in management consulting. We worked nonstop and traveled constantly! Not only did this allow us to pay off our student loans quickly and max out of 401k’s, we could afford to live right where we wanted - the creative, hip East Village of Manhattan, close to all the major transit hubs and our families!

During this time we had our first daughter and life became really full. My husband and I tried to arrange opposite travel schedules so one of us was home in the evening. When we couldn’t avoid overlapping schedules, our family was right there and able to help. Luckily, we had the money to afford a full-time nanny and the energy to keep going. We stayed in these jobs for about five years, setting us up to be able to downshift to corporate jobs that allowed us more time with our daughter and baby number two! By the time our daughters were 12 and 6 years old I was able to leave my office job adn start a consulting business with a former colleague that allowed me to work flexibly and remotely, and my husband was able to switch to a non-profit job he loved!

While our first jobs helped us set up a solid financial foundation, we needed to be very intentional with our money if we were ever going to be able to retire at age 65! With everything in the city being so expensive and housing prices so high, we needed to live small and be frugal. We had to make our 2-bed, 1-bath, 1,000 square foot apartment in Manhattan comfortable for a family of four.

I was constantly decluttering and questioning every purchase that would be brought into our home. Every nook of our apartment had a purpose, or multiple purposes. I focused on buying groceries in bulk, shopping at flea markets, and using craigslist in order to save money. When we wanted to go out and enjoy the city, instead of paying high prices, I learned to look for bargains and take advantage of Free Admission days. Developing these skills kept our cost of living down in New York City so we could allocate more money towards the future.

Investing In Our Future

Besides maxing out our 401k’s we looked into other ways to invest. I had always been interested in real estate so we decided to try investing in this market. We bought a small weekend house in New Jersey that appreciated well and allowed us to obtain a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) in order to buy our next property. We found two great places in Asheville, NC that we were able to purchase at a low cost and have profitable rent right away. With this investment being a success, we decided to use our profits to expand our real estate portfolios to Jacksonville FL, Indianapolis IN, and Tamarindo, Costa Rica - all places where the numbers worked in our favor!

I like to think of our real estate portfolio as a type of geo-arbitrage. Instead of making money in a high cost-of-living geography and then moving to a lower cost-of-living place, we did geo-arbitrage with our investments - making our money in NYC, but investing elsewhere.

Between our frugality and successful investments, my husband was able to retire last year at the age of 46! We hadn’t set out to retire early, but discovered the possibility as we were moving into our non-corporate way of living. Learning about FIRE gave us the inspiration to keep making financial decisions that would allow us to have the flexibility we desired.

Our FIRE Life

As our oldest left for college and our youngest was starting high school, my husband and I were talking about how we wanted to live in this new stage of life. We found ourselves less tied to Manhattan. We love NYC, but we didn’t feel like we needed to be in the middle of it all.

We ended up finding a comparable 2-bed, 1-bath, 1,000 square foot apartment in the Bronx we fell in love with. It was in the Riverdale area near the NY Botanical Garden in a lush, quiet, close-knit neighborhood. To make it even better, it was an estate sale, so there was a big discount! This place was a fraction of the cost of our Manhattan home and would allow us to still get into the heart of the city easily. It was an easy decision for us to move and we are enjoying our new home the change of scenery.

Looking back on this journey it’s easy to ask - Could we have moved to the Bronx earlier and retired earlier? Maybe, but choosing to stay where we really wanted to be helped us figure out our priorities and forced us to make smart money decisions early on. Had we moved out of the Manhattan we may not have been so focused. We may not have been able to retire early. Choosing to stay in Manhattan when the girls were little allowed us to be a quick walk or ride to school, activities, and family. That was completely worth it for us. We have enjoyed our journey along the way to FIRE - and that’s really important too!

Do you have a freedom story you would like to share? We would love to hear from you! Submit your story here!

After visiting Costa Rica in July, Chris and I knew we wanted to return with our girls. We had fallen in love with Nosara and decided to come up with a plan to return to the little surfing town.

A Second Home

We found an Airbnb that seemed perfect for our family. The Sea Shack had two bedrooms, a kitchen, an outdoor living space, and a pool. We booked this home for four nights over the week of Thanksgiving. As our departure date arrived we were bursting with excitement. When our flight landed it felt surreal to be back. As our shuttle dropped us off in Nosara my heart filled with joy. And as we walked up to the Sea Shack, I felt a comfort that I can only explain as home.

This home, our home for the next 4 days, was tucked back in the jungle off the main road. We could easily walk to shops, restaurants, a small organic grocery store, and a fruit stand selling the tastiest mangoes the girls have ever eaten. A little further down the road the beach welcomed us with soft sand and waves the girls loved jumping in. Hearing their giggles as a wave almost knocked them down was music to my ears. There is nothing better when you see pure joy in your children’s faces.

While we loved the beach, we spent the majority of our time at the house. We didn’t go zip lining, take surfing lessons, or go horseback riding. Instead, we just lived and loved.

One of our main goals with this trip was for Chris to work while in Costa Rica. We had talked last winter about someday living in Costa Rica for an extended period of time, but if Chris couldn’t get a good internet connection for remote work, that wouldn’t be an option. So for three days Chris planned to be working 8 hours on his computer while the girls and I figured out our days. Our outdoor living room became Chris’ office space while the girls jumped in the pool and I read a book with my legs dangling in the water.

When the girls were taking a break from the pool, I was usually walking to the grocery store, to the farmer’s market, or the fruit stand. This was a dream come true for me - grabbing fresh fruit down the street on a daily basis is the best!

When Chris finished work for the day we would go to a restaurant or make a simple dinner. We ate at our outdoor kitchen table as the sun set and we waited to be greeted by howler monkeys. The monkeys never stopped by, but we did hear them a few times.

After we cleared the table, we pulled out a game for the five of us to play. Our favorite ended up being a card game called Fab Fiction. The goal was to weave a story out of the words on the card. As we passed the card around the table we added crazy plot lines, funny characters, and filled the air with laughter.

Our time in Costa Rica was short and we were sad when it was time to pack up. Chris had successfully worked while in Costa Rica. I had learned how to navigate the town. I wasn’t ready to go. I wanted to learn more Spanish. I wanted to walk back down to the beach. I wanted to see the monkeys that hadn’t stopped by yet. I wanted to buy my girls more fresh mangoes. I wanted to experience more life here.

As we boarded the plane to come back home we were excited to see our family and friends, but we were also leaving a part of our hearts in Costa Rica. Chris turned to me at one point and said, “I feel like we have two different lives. One in Wisconsin and one in Costa Rica. When we are in Wisconsin our life in Costa Rica is on pause. And when we return we pick right back up where we left.” I couldn’t have agreed more! We are hoping that the next time we return to Costa Rica, the space we like to think of as our second home, we’ll be able to stay for an entire month! There will be more to navigate, and more to learn, but I’m excited to take on it all on!

Our Budget

Since this is a personal finance blog, I’ll also share our budget for this trip. We planned a $6,000 budget for a one week vacation in Costa Rica. This included all of our transportation, food, shelter, and any other expenses during this one week.

A brief review of our trip:

• Saturday November 17: Flew into San Jose, Stayed the night,
• Sunday November 18: Took a shuttle to Nosara, Stayed in Nosara for 4 nights
• Thursday November 22: Took a shuttle to Monteverde, Stayed the night
• Friday November 23: Took a shuttle to San Jose, Stayed the night
• Saturday November 24: Flew home

We ended up spending a total of $5426.00: