I think it’s one of the work hazards of being a coach, but I spend an inordinate amount of money on learning & development, self-help and other personal and professional improvement resources. We spent just over $6,000 this year, and since 95% of that was directly attributed to me, I feel wholly responsible for the training line item. This is actually a pretty mild year in comparison. A few years ago, we joined a real estate mastermind group that cost $8,000 just by itself – and we spent on other courses, conferences and groups that year. A few years before [...]
The Sunshine Blogger Award is a peer-recognition award, given to those who inspire you, motivate you, or otherwise add “sunshine” to your day. There’s no formal, nomination process nor awarding ceremony but it’s a chance to be spotlighted by peers and then to pass on the sunshine to others – as you’ll see in the Award Rules. When you are nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award, you must follow these four rules: Thank the person who nominated you. Add backlinks to their blog.Answer the 11 questions they posed to you.Nominate another 11 new bloggers and give them 11 new questions.Include [...]
A friend of mine invited me to participate in a My Ten project, inspired by the NY Times series where celebrities, experts and other influencers from all walks of life share their list of ten things relating to a specific theme. In this case, we were all going to write about 10 things we did during the pandemic to keep us sane, and then my friend would collate all responses into an e-book in time for Thanksgiving. Even though I already write a lot, I jumped into this because I figured my friend’s project was going to be amazing. (She’s [...]
One of our readers wrote in with a question. It was lengthy and had personal details he didn't want to share, so it is summarized. In a nutshell, he owns a plot of vacant land in a prime area of Costa Rica but won’t be using it full-time. He was all set to start building a house on the land in March, but lost his job at that time due to the pandemic, and put it on hold. He is rethinking the situation, and wants to make sure he is making the best financial decision for himself, so is trying [...]
Last I posted, we were in the middle of a road trip to New Mexico. The first entry in the series was all about why we decided to take this trip and how we planned it, and the 2nd one covered our first day on the road, and visiting Memphis. At the time we planned the trip, we hadn't looked that closely into the quarantine situation in New Mexico. It turns out they have had a quarantine in place for travelers entering the state. We discovered this early in the trip, but we weren't very concerned because our plan was [...]
We have kicked off our road trip to New Mexico. Tuesday was day 1, and we drove to Memphis that day, where we are spending 3 nights. Previous Post: New Mexico Roadtrip: Planning Tuesday was spent driving. All day. The total distance turned out to be 720.6 miles. We started around 7am eastern time, and checked into our AirBNB around 8:45pm central time, which is almost 15 hours door to door, with the time change. We have taken many long road trips, and we've found that 750 miles for the day is about our limit. It's usually 15 hours on [...]
We love to travel, and that is one of the reasons we are working on financial independence and a lifestyle that affords us the flexibility to work from anywhere, and therefore travel whenever we want to. This week we are embarking on a 3-week road trip to New Mexico, and this post kicks off a new series about this trip. ============ A little over a year ago, our youngest went off to college, and we became empty nesters. In the months following, we travelled to Costa Rica (twice), Los Angeles, Arizona, and the Philippines, and that doesn't include several road [...]
How would you advise this reader on her rent or buy question? I recently turned 50 and got divorced after almost 20 years of marriage. I have not worked for over 15 years so I will be living off of the alimony settlement, while I retrain for a new career. I know I want to return to New York City, where I’m from, and specifically Manhattan. Based on the assets I received in the divorce settlement, my financial advisor confirmed I could safely spend up to $1.25 million on an apartment, which would get me something in the neighborhood I [...]
What is the right amount of support to give your adult kids? That's a question we think about a lot, and related to another topic we recently wrote about: how we have approached financial fairness with our own kids. Let us know what family-related expenses are testing your financial plans, in the poll at the bottom of the post. A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression – Pew Research Parents interviewed for a Money.com post reported their grocery budget went up 250%, from $400 per month to [...]
About five years ago, a finance friend of mine mentioned that his much wealthier colleague was buying property on a high elevation in Singapore as a climate change hedge. (This same climate change hedger was also stockpiling gold – not just shares of a gold ETF, but actual gold – and this was well before the pandemic.) I filed that factoid about the Singapore purchase away, but it certainly planted a seed. Should climate change dictate where you buy real estate? Wherever you fall on the climate change debate, environmental disasters are taking their toll. Reuters covered how the West [...]
