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 [...]
Several media outlets report that people give up on new year’s resolutions by as early as mid-January. It’s the second Friday of January according to Best Life. Forbes is more optimistic but still mid-February! One of my favorite hacks for sticking to new year’s resolutions is setting monthly goals instead of annual (hat tip to educator Miho Kubagawa for introducing me to that one!). If you make 12 monthly mini-resolutions [...]
If you work for a company that has an official review process, take advantage of it! I wouldn’t dread it as too many people seem to do. Embrace the chance to get some candid feedback, better understand your manager’s priorities and come up with a gameplan for next year. Preparing for a performance review also gives you an opportunity to advocate for yourself. If you had a breakout year on [...]
From 2007 to 2018, 12 full years, I had a business partner in my career coaching business, and there were pros and cons to having an official partnership. In the plus column, I wouldn’t have started the business without a partner. I’m risk averse and felt that two people building a business from scratch would enable us to get up and running faster. My partner at the time had more [...]
October marked the four-year anniversary of our first purchase in Tamarindo, Costa Rica! While we had owned long-term rental real estate for over 12 years at that point, Condo Boom was our first vacation rental. Even with a strong property manager with vacation rental experience and SuperHost status on Airbnb, we still need to manage the manager, and it’s been a steep learning curve. Guest interaction has been one good [...]
Four million US workers quit their job in July 2021 alone. So many employees are quitting that the phenomenon has been dubbed the Great Resignation all over the media (Harvard Business Review, NPR, the BBC and more). The dearth of employees makes this a great time to earn more money and jumpstart your FIRE goals. Here are four ways to make the Great Resignation work for you, whether you are [...]
October is Filipino American History Month in the US. I’m a Fil-Am, and apparently Fil-Ams are the second largest Asian American group in the US! Though Scott is not Filipino, we have been a couple for over 30 years, and he is an honorary Fil-Am, having attended many large and loud family events. We both love traveling to the Philippines and have done three trips in just the last five [...]
Maybe it’s turning 50 or maybe it’s the pandemic upending things, but whatever the root cause, I’ve become more introspective. I have been rethinking my perfect day (turning 50, part 1) and what that means for the next few years (turning 50, part 2). I feel like I’m ready for big changes to my business and maybe even our real estate investing, but the specifics I don’t know yet. In [...]
