Related product in our Etsy shop: 40 motivational journal prompts for your FI journey Continuing our focus on good health (since August is National Wellness Month), I wanted to share one of my favorite stress management techniques. Managing stress feels good, and it’s also one of the five key factors in maintaining brain health. Being calm and collected, after properly taming your stress, is also helpful for negotiating – e.g., for a raise, more flexibility on the job – and in this way, stress management is helpful for your FIRE journey too. The acting teacher who originally shared this technique [...]

I scored an advance copy of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s new book, Keep Sharp: Build A Better Brain At Any Age, which aims to be a science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline. (If you’re an avid reader, look into building a profile on NetGalley, which is where I get many of my free review copies.) As August is National Wellness Month, it is timely to cover a health-related book, and I was excited to hear what Gupta, a CNN journalist and neurosurgeon, had to say. As it turns out, the recommendations that Gupta shared for keeping the brain healthy [...]

August is National Wellness Month, and we are celebrating all month with posts related to wellness and self-care. ===================== Well, I did it. Ran every day in the month of July! 31 runs and 147.9 miles. Early in the month I wrote about why I was attempting this challenge, and why I wouldn't be upset if I didn't finish. But I did finish! Here's the proof - 31 days of running! My average was 4.77 miles per day. Even though the challenge called for 3.1 miles as the minimum run, the minimum I ran was 4.2, and the most was [...]

When we signed the closing paperwork last year to sell our entire Indy rental portfolio, I happened to be speaking at a business conference. When my colleagues figured out that I was dashing in and out from my presenting duties to take care of a closing, I was met with several high-fives and other forms of congratulations, since for many people, a real estate transaction is a major milestone. Unfortunately, I was so flustered with the multitasking I didn’t take any time to savor. Since then, we have hit other milestones – we finally updated our estate planning starting last [...]

HELOC, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Using a HELOC for investment property so you can look like a cash buyer even when you’re financingSmoothing out cash flow when you’re a small business with lumpy earningsHaving money to tap for emergencies in lieu of a rainy day bank account earning negative return after inflation Apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning for swiping a line from her beautiful sonnet, but if I had to write a love letter to a financial instrument, it would probably go to the HELOC. We have tapped our HELOC for all of the [...]

We recently signed up for a course on making printables. My main business is career coaching, so I do a lot of writing, keynotes and training – activities which lend themselves to printable quotes and exercises. We had been thinking about adding a product in our business to give it another stream of income. While most of my work was already virtual, I still did a significant amount of live events, which have been postponed or cancelled outright and need to be replaced. Having multiple streams of income is an established trait of the wealthy – Jay-Z and other celebrity [...]

A good friend of mine had a rent-to-own agreement on the house she was living in, but her application for a mortgage was denied so she was unable to meet the purchase deadline. A rent-to-own agreement is what it sounds like – it looks like a typical lease, except at a specified date, the tenant has the right to purchase the property for an already agreed upon price. For my friend, it was a chance to lock in the sales price while she saved up for the down payment and closing costs. For the seller, he got a buyer – [...]

I do a lot of running. I've been running very regularly since approximately the summer of 1994, which is the year after I finished college. My running log in Excel goes back 21.5 years, all the way to Dec 26, 1998! During my 21.5 'running log' years, I've run 11,495.2 miles (as of July 5 2020), completed 22 marathons in 17 states, 34 5k's, and covered and raced every distance in between. I've also had countless injuries, and endured long stretches of time where I've either not run my best, or not run at all. But one thing missing from [...]

I was recently speaking at a pan-Asian media conference (supposed to be hosted in Singapore in March but unfortunately moved to a June virtual event due to the pandemic), and listening to the keynote by Maria Ressa. She is the founder and editor of Rappler, but also recently convicted in a Philippine court for cyber libel. Her talk really made me appreciate the freedom of the press that we have in the United States. While there have been some distressing instances of journalists coming under fire in this very country during the recent protests, there are still strong protections for [...]