When I was offered the opportunity to receive an early copy of Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny Pinching Way, I was thrilled. Our Next Life was one of the earlier financial independence, retire early blogs I started reading regularly, well before I even considered writing my own. Beyond that, I've gotten the meet Tanja…
Last year, I had my goals in place and written out by January 1st. This year has been different though, and I just haven't felt up to the task. The biggest reason for this has been the life changing cancer diagnosis a personal finance blogger and friend is going through with her son who is…
Welcome to another week of the Women’s Personal Finance Wednesdays roundup. I started this series after months of debate because I wasn’t certain I wanted to up the ante and commit to publishing three posts a week. However, now that I’ve started sharing these posts, I’m so glad I started. There are so many fabulous…
Welcome to another week of the Women's Personal Finance Wednesdays roundup. I started this series after months of debate because I wasn't certain I wanted to up the ante and commit to publishing three posts a week. However, now that I've started sharing these posts, I'm so glad I started. There are so many fabulous…
Once, when our son was a newborn, a couple of our neighbors mowed our lawn when they noticed it had gotten quite long. I was home with our son during the day, but my husband was back to work and regularly gone 12+ hours a day, so cutting the grass just wasn't high on our…
When I first started writing this blog, there were a few other bloggers who I connected with right away because it was obvious that we shared a lot of the same values: financial independence, of course, but also looking at that and everything else through a lens of sustainability first and foremost. Kristine at Frugasaurus,…
The natural gas explosion I mentioned last week ended up being a much smaller deal than the headlines first made it sound, and everything is back to normal as far as garbage service and home natural gas usage. Whenever some acute situation requires changes to daily lives, be it a break in the natural gas…
When I first embarked on this clothes buying ban eighteen months ago, I couldn't have imagined I would have continued it on past the original year goal I'd set for myself; it seemed overly ambitious, but I wanted to challenge myself to do it regardless. My closet was bursting at the seams, I was attempting…
Quite obviously, I am personally not vegan. My husband and my extended family hunt and fish and I grew up crabbing even though I don't eat much in the way of seafood. We share in the purchase of a half or quarter cow every summer. We talk about some day adding chickens and honey bees…
While it's no secret that we love packing our bags and heading out of town to explore - be it for one night or two weeks - we also make sure to explore our local area during the days we are at home. Part of the draw of the Pacific Northwest for us, outside of…