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Posted on June 14, 2019June 14, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 25 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 23)

The last few months have been a cycle of getting to see blogger friends in person - either again or for the first time - likely because now is probably the best time of year to visit the Pacific Northwest, plus the kiddo and I made a visit down to Portland happen to celebrate Uriah's…

Posted on May 31, 2019June 1, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 28 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (Orcas Island Edition)

We spent last weekend (ie Memorial Day weekend) out on Orcas Island, which was our first overnight trip to the San Juan Islands in much too long, though we did spend a day on San Juan Island just last month. We don't typically venture out that way during the summer months because it's the busy…

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 35 Comments

Spring Garden Update: May 2019

After not writing a garden update for a good six months, I'm finding myself publishing them two months in a row. Clearly, it's spring, and there's a lot more going on in the garden. After four summers of minimal time spent in the garden, it feels really good to give it some real attention this…

Posted on May 10, 2019May 10, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 26 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 18)

Growing up, the month of May used to look a lot like April: gray, wet, and dreary. If we were lucky, Memorial Day weekend might have decent enough weather for a barbecue outside. This year though, and the last few before that, have been unseasonably warm, and we've been seeing weather in the seventies and…

Posted on May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 16 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (Arizona Edition)

We got back from a long weekend visit to Arizona on Tuesday morning, and it's completely thrown my week off because of it after I returned to work on Wednesday. Hopefully I'm actually posting this on a Friday because I haven't known what day it was all week long. Even so, I do like splitting…

Posted on April 26, 2019April 27, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 26 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 16)

It's rained quite a bit lately, with a few breaks for the sun, but the weather has warmed up enough that it feels like spring. And really, it's the mild rain that makes it most feel like spring, more than the sun, because that and the gray is what we tend to see most up…

Posted on April 19, 2019April 19, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 27 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 15)

This past Sunday, a meetup was scheduled at Gas Works Park in Seattle as part of the Financial Freedom book tour. I don't remember exactly how the conversation started on Twitter, but somehow it ended with Seonwoo buying plane tickets for the weekend first for himself and then for Moriah to show up for the…

Posted on April 12, 2019April 17, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 16 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 14)

We went out to San Juan Island for the day on Saturday for the first time in far too long. While Lopez Island is our favorite of the islands, we very much enjoy spending time on Orcas Island and San Juan Island as well. The major upside of heading to San Juan is that Friday…

Posted on March 29, 2019April 4, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early · 32 Comments

Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 12)

Last Friday the kiddo and I took the train down to Portland for Uriah's third birthday party. It was an absolutely lovely trip and I'm so glad that the two of them got to hang in real life instead of just by FaceTime, and seeing and hugging his mama just fed my soul. Love you…

Posted on March 27, 2019March 27, 2019 by Tread Lightly, Retire Early

Women’s Personal Finance Wednesdays: Week 27

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…

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We now have enough strawberries in the yard on a single day to have enough to make milkshakes! We did this a handful of times over last summer with different berries as they ripened and the kiddo remembers it as one of the best parts of summer. Even better, he got to share it last night with a couple of his friends, and you could just see how proud he was to share “his” garden’s produce. . He loves to help in the garden and in the kitchen, and I hope has he grows these memories will stick with him - not just of relaxed days in the sunshine at home, but also of being tied in to the fluctuations of the seasons and the understanding that strawberries just don’t happen in the middle of winter, that food just tastes better in season. . . . . . . #homegrownstrawberries #homegrown #urbanhomestead #frugalliving #gardening #pnwgardening #frontyardgarden #gardenwithkids #zerowasteliving #zerowaste #growyourownfood #frugal #homemademilkshakes Tuesday afternoon I had the opportunity to walk the six miles home from work because my husband picked up the kiddo. I considered taking the bus and then goes to the gym instead, but the day was just too lovely to spend on the bus. . . And then I considered the $2.75 bus fare I’d have to spend instead of the free walk, and that sold it for me. As silly, small about perhaps, but thanks to @reachingforfi a while back sharing her creation of a “found savings” bank account, I’ve done the same, so that $2.75 has been deposited there. . Without that intentionality of moving the money immediately into savings, I’ve in the past tricked myself into thinking I’ve “saved” a lot more than I actually have. Money would not get spent in one place, but then I would look back at the end of the month and I wouldn’t actually have saved any more because if just got spent on other things. . So far, my “found savings” account is small, but $2.75 here and $10 there are going to add up to real numbers over time. And it’s better incentive for me to forgo those “it’s just five dollars” temptations because I know they’re adding up to so much more. . Do you have a “found savings” account? Have you ever considered opening one? . . . . #debtfreecommunity #financialindependence #financialindependenceretireearly #frugalliving #moneysavingtips #savings #womenspersonalfinance #walkhomefromwork #walkingcommute #personalfinance #choosefi I met Liz back in November of last year at the inaugural Cents Positive. While I was so excited to meet blogger friends in person, again or for the first time, I really hadn’t given a lot of thought to the other women who would be attending the event, considering well over half of them were not bloggers (there were perhaps twenty or twenty five bloggers of more than eighty women who attended the weekend). . . Other than bloggers, I had only met one other person in real life who had retired by their mid fifties or earlier, and that was my husband’s godfather, who travels with us often. Obviously, there are many others who have also done so, but since the majority don’t talk about it publicly, we don’t really get to know them in the same way. . . At Cents Positive though, I met a number of women who had pulled the trigger on early retirement, and many others who were along all different places in their journey to financial independence. Liz was one of them. She retired in the summer of 2017 and, as I found out through conversations that weekend and then later through email and then text, she hasn’t worked a day since. . . The idea that everyone who “retires early” find some encore career or other source of income (ahem, like blogging) is perpetuated by the fact that those are the people who tend to write about it publicly. The ones who aren’t blogging or sharing online are simply living their lives, oftentimes very much off line. . . Eventually, I asked Liz if she would write a blog post for me here, and I was thrilled when she said yes. We’ve talked about a number of overlapping interests, mostly gardening and sustainability (they have an electric car and solar panels and are using gray water to water their garden), but this post today is specifically about the numbers. She tracked her finances closely through 2018, her first full year of early retirement, and she shared them with me here, as well as some snippets about her life since she walked away from her corporate career. (Link in bio). . . . . . . #financialindependence #financialindependenceretireearly #womenspersonalfinance #fire #choosefi #earlyretirement #retired #workoptional #debtfreecommunity Financial Independence For All. . . Women are joining, and changing, a movement that has been white and male. . We aren’t just joining the FIRE community (hello, Vicki Robin and the publication of Your Money or Your Life originally back in 1992), but we certainly are changing it for the better. . I know I shared the online version a couple days ago but there is something extra surreal about seeing my name in the print edition of The New York Times. And of all the things I could see my name attached to, this article about women and financial independence is probably the best thing I could have ever hoped for. . “Meet The Women Of The Financial Independence Community,” the blog post and evergreen list of women’s financial independence and personal finance bloggers, has been my most read post since I started blogging two years ago, for darn good reason. And with its inclusion here, the women listed there are ALSO getting some pretty awesome press as well. There’s nothing I love better than seeing all the referrals go out to so many amazing women writing about money and FIRE, truly shifting the tone of the community to one that is supportive and inclusive, where it doesn’t matter your sexual orientation, family structure, skin color, or career track; there’s a blog (or many) that women can read to find a story that sounds more like their own. And now those stories are being seen by so many new people this week, and that makes my heart so happy. . “Before I found you, I thought I was the only one out here!” . . “We all deserve... to see the dream is possible.” . . “I saw there were women with debt and kids that are doing it so why not me?” . . To anyone who thinks representation doesn’t matter, this is why. . . @charlottecowles @richandregular @our_nextlife @bgrpiggy @bgrkitty @frugal_asian @steppingstonestofi @nytimes . . . . . #financialindependence #financialindependenceretireearly #financialfreedom #debtfreecommunity #womenspersonalfinance #debtfree #personalfinance #frugalliving #frugality #inclusion #blackwomeninfinance #womeninfinance #womenbloggers #choosefi #firecommunity I’m in The New York Times this morning talking about women in the FIRE movement. From first publishing my list of bloggers a year and a half ago to having a (very) well written article in a major news publication talking about the very same thing - thanks to @charlottecowles for writing such a fabulous piece. I’m a bit in shock, and so, so thankful that I get to be a part of lifting up women’s voices in this wonderful personal finance community. I can’t wait to see what we do next 🔥 . . . . . S/o to the other ladies featured: @our_nextlife @richandregular @bgrpiggy @bgrkitty @frugal_asian @steppingstonestofi . . . . . #financialindependence #financialfreedom #debtfreecommunity #womenoffi #fire #earlyretirement #womenempowerment #frugalliving #financialindependenceretireearly #choosefi #personalfinance #womenspersonalfinance Yesterday we had our first ripe strawberry of the season. Today, one that was barely red this morning will be ripe tomorrow, with a handful right behind it. . . Lettuce, garlic scapes, rhubarb, asparagus, herbs, ripening strawberries and green raspberries and blueberries. . This is the time of year the garden starts to make me giddy. . . . . . . #frontyardgarden #urbanhomestead #zerowasteliving #frugalliving #debtfreecommunity #eatplants #growyourownfood #homegrown

Tread Lightly, Retire Early

Tread Lightly, Retire Early

Recent Posts

  • Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 23)
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  • Friday’s Frugal Five (2019 – Week 22)
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