We are taught not to question the ridiculous levels of consumption and waste as a way of life in our culture. When Annelise and I downsized our lives a year ago, we saw first-hand just how wasteful we can be…and that’s after years of making less-ridiculous decisions about what to bring into our lives.
What’s life like six months into my first mini-retirement? There’s been lots of accomplishments and achievements, but also lots of challenges and struggles. In this post I dig deep into what I’ve been up to, what’s been working and not working, and where I’m headed in the coming months.
It’s not at all impossible to keep cost of living reasonable when living in an expensive city. I moved to DC in 2014, and was able to drastically slash expenses. But I didn’t stop enjoying life. In fact, I enjoy it even more. Here are my tips on how to live well in an expensive city.
Quitting my job (without another one lined up) was one of the toughest decisions of my life. It’s also been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. When you challenge yourself to explore the hard questions, you gain a ton of insight into yourself and find answers you may have otherwise never knew existed.
Two accomplishments I am most proud of to this point in my life are losing weight and building a solid financial foundation. As I was reflecting more on this, I realized that there are many similarities in the habits and traits needed to be successful in both of these areas. The lessons learned and strengths built when losing weight can be directly applied to getting your financial ducks in a row.