Caroline

On a recent road trip from Florida to New York, we had rain the whole way, and as we drove north, we hit colder temperatures, more wind, then sleet and sometimes even snow! The week before our trip, we had an internet outage in our service area, exactly at the time I was presenting a training webinar, Scott had a client meeting and our oldest happened to be at our [...]

The two most influential teachers in my financial literacy journey were also my piano teachers. My first financial literacy teacher was my first piano teacher and also my mom. Many people probably learned about money from their parents. My mom didn’t talk about money management or investing directly, but I learned by watching. My parents separated right after I was born, so my mom raised two kids on a single [...]

Last month we closed on the sale of Casa Salita, the second property we purchased in Costa Rica. Though we bought it only in December 2017 (just over four years ago), we started thinking about selling it in the midst of the pandemic because we weren’t sure where rentals were heading, and the market for selling Costa Rica real estate was hot. However, we didn’t put the home on the [...]

Writing has been a gamechanger for establishing and growing my consulting business (consulting is an excellent career or side hustle to jumpstart your FIRE fund!). When you’re published, people see you as an authority in your field. If you’re new, it’s a way to get established. If you’re pivoting, getting published on different topics can give you traction in a new target area. Of course, writing itself can be monetized [...]

One of the fun perks of writing for a well-known publication like Forbes is that I wind up on PR lists and hear about leading-edge developments early. Recently, I was invited to a webinar with a LinkedIn product director to promote the new Career Breaks feature. With this feature, instead of just posting an employment gap of months or years (and employers don’t like gaps), you can choose the Career [...]

Generational wealth for my kids, their kids and beyond is a key priority for the same reason I also prioritized financial independence – as a hedge against an increasingly difficult job market. It’s not that I don’t expect my kids to work. I just don’t want them to get stuck if AI reduces job prospects considerably, or if future careers (and therefore earning potential) are even shorter than careers are [...]

It's early February, but I'm still keeping up with the 300-day good habit-building program I joined as my 2022 personal development focus. (It’s called Optimize, and they have a lot of free resources and a new app coming soon). Depending on which statistic you believe, most people get derailed from their new year’s resolutions as early as January or February! If you’ve already fallen off track or are feeling momentum [...]

At the end of each year, I pre-fill my Time Diary for the upcoming year with activities I know I will be doing. This includes three entries for checking my credit report. I make three entries because I check each of the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion), and I separate when I check each of them by four months. Why four months? You can check your credit [...]

I have kept an Excel log of the books I have read since 2000, or 22 years and counting. In total, I have read 732, or an average of 33 books per year. In 2020, I read exactly 33 books. In 2021, I also read exactly 33 books! This was a bit of a cheat because I realized during the last week of the year that I had just 32 [...]