financial independence
-

Another month has flown by, and as I’ve continued to avoid paying too much attention to the stock market, it’s up another 2% and some change. Work has been pretty consuming, so dwelling on money movements has been less appealing than usual. I continue to be suspicious about the growth we’re experiencing, but as usual,…
-

August was a high spend month, thanks to buying a bunch of plane tickets to Japan and several other travel-related expenses, so thankfully it was also a high income month, being another stock vest month. Putting aside $10k for travel expenses and immediately consuming $9,300 of it was not the best feeling, but feels better…
-

As I write this from my European vacation (what a pretentious way to start a post), Iβll note that I donβt usually pay too much attention to the market when Iβm traveling. However, two days ago I remembered to open Monarch and refresh our retirement account balances, and discovered that I was quite close to…
-

One foot in front of the other this month. It felt like the first two weeks sped by, then everything ground down to a much slower pace. It was also one of those annoying months where my semi-monthly pay schedule had my first paycheck arriving on a Sunday, which moved it to Friday the 13th…
-

I have to admit, when, at the peak in February, our investments reached $1,071,XXX, I thought to myself, “We’re probably safely above a million now.” I’m a fairly superstitious person, but I am pretty sure that I didn’t knock on wood, and April made me regret it. I don’t usually show the monthly chart of…
-

I don’t think my cover images are ever particularly subtle, but this one is probably the least subtle yet. We seem to have returned to a tariffs era, for better or for worse (at present, “worse” seems like the more obvious outcome), during a time when we’re still struggling with inflation and weirdly, the price…
-

Another killer month. Last year, we went on a two week vacation to Italy at the end of the month of June, and came back to a substantial increase in our net worth despite the $20k or so we poured into the trip. I did not do a very good job not checking the markets…