No financial blog is complete without progress towards financial independence. We are looking for financial independence, one with no debt. We call it FIND, financial independence, no debt. I don’t consider anyone with debt to be financially independent, the two things are mutually exclusive. When you have debt you are in a fragile position. Debt makes you a slave to someone else. Our mortgage is an example of debt that we are trying to eliminate.
Continue reading →We live on 50% of our income
An article on the The Simple Dollar had examples of three families of what it was like to live on half of their income. Here’s the story for Living on the Tips.
Our family of four lives on less than 50% of our income without much effort. We have what we need and can buy most things we want. We have a nice house that we upgraded ourselves. We don’t need more stuff, we need more freedom to spend our time how we want. We don’t see it as a sacrifice to live on less. We don’t feel deprived. The sacrifice what we are making is trading our time for money as full time employees. Aggressively saving money is an investment in future options to stop trading time for money.
Continue reading →2018 Living on the tips goals
A few years back we got interested in financial independence, the ability to no longer have to trade time for money. We wanted to focus more on the things we value which are time, family, security and independence. The goal of becoming financially independent was overwhelming and seemingly impossible. At that point in time, it was so far off and we didn’t really know what we were doing. Where do you start? Would it take 20 years? What was our savings rate? We didn’t know but we used the goal of financial independence as motivation to start tracking savings rate and net income and reduce spending.
Continue reading →Our Story
How did we get here? We got married young, in our early twenties. We had one income with one of us still in school. We rented a very old, very small, very dusty, very inexpensive apartment near school and work. We each had our own car and we kept them both even though we often shared a single car. We spent our time together when we weren’t in school, studying, or working. It was a big change from life before marriage but it was great to be together.
Nine months later with one of us still in school we bought a starter house at the height of the market on one income. Continue reading →