Category: revelations
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When Burnout Hits
I’ve been talking to a lot of personal finance-minded friends lately about depression, anxiety, and most recently, burnout. The road to paying off debt or saving for FI can be a SLOG, especially if you’re stuck in a job that you don’t particularly love, but it pays well and you need the benefits. Thankfully, I’m…
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Staying Invested (In Your Community) While Pursuing FI
There is a certain segment of the FI/PF community that really embraces the “personal” and “independence” aspects of the journey, while mostly ignoring the importance of “community” in a way that extends beyond blog comments and tweeting at each other. Social media is great – I love it, and I’m probably a bit obsessed. But for…
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Getting My Shit Together – With Money!
Phew, it’s getting a little dusty around here. What’s been up the last few months? Well, my ramped up emergency savings certainly came in handy. This year, as it turns out, has not been kind to my mental and physical well-being. After a couple months of aggressive saving and a couple of months of significant…
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Uber Frugal Month: Wrap Up and Reflection
Well, we survived January! This last month was very challenging for me, both professionally and personally. My big work project occupied the first half of the month, and left me feeling stressed out after working insane hours. The second half of the month brought an entirely different set of stressors from things mostly out of my…
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The Adventures of Austerity Girl
Anyone who’s ever lost weight knows that the “maintenance” phase is the hardest part. Getting out of debt and pursuing life-long frugality is no different. Just as dieting is not deferred eating, frugality is not deferred spending. I read posts all of the time from folks who have managed to chip away at some of their debt,…
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You Can’t Boycott Everything
First, let me get it out of the way – in case you want to boycott me as well – as a Millennial woman with a doctoral degree in the sciences who works at a university, it’s probably unsurprising that I did not vote for our president-elect. I’m hardly alone in pondering the consequences of…
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The Joy (and Tyranny) of Small Indulgences
When I was a graduate student, my monthly ritual on the Friday after payday was to go to Target, restock my household necessities, and then treat myself to a few items from the dollar section or home goods section. After Target, I’d probably go out to eat and then go home and watch Gilmore Girls. (Thrilling,…
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Lessons From a Month of Not Eating Out
We took a totally indulgent vacation with friends last fall, ate a TON of delicious delights at our destination, and spent a corresponding amount of money on all that gourmet food and booze. Mr. Green and I were both feeling guilty about the general overconsumption on the trip, so I made a pitch- for one month…
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On Being a Two-Car Family
It wasn’t until recently that I really came to terms with the cost of owning a car. I’ve owned a car since I started driving, starting with the cliché of the hand-me-down station wagon, and most recently with my first new car purchase. That’s right, personal finance universe, I purchased a new car four years…
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My Little Green Revelation
About a year ago I was reading an article on Get Rich Slowly, looking for inspiration to eat out less often. Like a lot of people do from time to time, we’d hit a rut, and we were eating out way too much. It was taking its toll on our pocketbooks (and our waistlines) and…
Little Green Revelation 