No seriously! We’re ALL so dang serious! But kids on the other hand, almost take nothing seriously. They can go from crying and being upset one moment, to having the most joyful amazing moment rocking out to a song they’ve heard 1,000 times the next. So when did it all change? When did WE start to take things so dang seriously? And maybe more specifically, when did I start taking things so seriously? Adulting: A Sad Trip to Seriousville You see I started questioning this a few weeks ago when my wife commented to me that I hadn’t said ANYTHING to her the whole night. And it was true…I was so c ..read more

Book Review, Summary, Highlights, and Quotes from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson For a long time, I held off on reading it because The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck seemed a bit too cliche and marketed to the masses…but I am glad that I read it. The first few chapters are gold. I was bookmarking every other page. However after that, it cooled down a bit…still, this book proved to be a quick, insightful, and entertaining read covering everything from happiness to entitlement, and from living life to the fullest to accepting death. Mark and I see eye to eye on a lot of thin ..read more

My wife recently shared a TikTok video with me in which kids were asking their Mother (who pretended to be an 80-something Grandma) to share her “secret family recipes.” The mother then said, “Well, the first thing I do is use this old search engine called ‘Google.'” “Next I search for “best” plus whatever I’m making” And finally, “I select the top result, skip the fluff, and go straight to the recipe and make it.” Yep. That about sums up life in the 2000s! So when our kids and grandkids ask us for nostalgic family recipes that we made from scratch over the years, we’ll have to let them in on ..read more

Here Are 10 Simple Hacks to Help You Save Money When You Travel, Without Skimping Updated: March 7, 2024 We are about to head out on our first vacation of the year, and that got me thinking about the different ways that we attempt to save money whenever we travel. Even though our travel budget has gone up over the years, we are always on the hunt for the best ways to save. Because more savings = even more travel! Here are the tried and true ways that we continue to save money, even while staying at 5-star hotels, amazing rental properties, or eating at high-end restaurants: 1) Utilize your AAA ..read more

Disclaimer: this article is for informational purposes only, and should NOT be taken as legal, financial, or tax advice. My wife and I have paid $0 in taxes from 2021 to 2023.  But we didn’t cheat.  And we’re not scamming the government. The tax code favors early retirees. Here is how anyone can do it: 1. Keep Income Low It’s pretty easy to keep income low in early retirement -> don’t work!  However, many early retirees do work and earn in some capacity on either side projects, real estate rentals, one-off consulting gigs, etc. It’s good to be productive, and in the case of ..read more

It’s that time of year! No matter what you do, things seem to get busier and busier. The stress piles on despite your best efforts to get ahead of the game. There’s holiday stress, family stress, work stress…you name it it’s there. So something is going to slip through the cracks. Let it. When You’ve Taken On Too Much Lately, I have had too much on my plate. I’ve been busting my butt trying to save my affiliate site. I’ve been trying to get creative to launch a new cash-flowing side hustle. I’ve been taking a more proactive role in buying holiday presents. I’ve been working on finalizing our ..read more

Have you ever had a friend or acquaintance who started their career as an entry-level worker and before you know it they were practically running their company? I bet you know someone like that and you scratch your head at how they managed to do it, because well they seemed average. But then I bet you know someone else who you thought was brilliant, but that person is still stuck at that entry-level job today. What was the difference? Is it skill? Is it networking? Luck? The difference is pretty simple – one person figured out how to play THE game and the other didn’t. Here are 34 lessons fro ..read more

Book Review, Summary, Highlights, and Quotes from Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD Anyone picking up Why We Sleep already knows how important sleep is. Study after study has confirmed such, and even then most of us never needed the studies anyway. Just wake up after 4 hours of sleep or less. You feel it. You know it. It sucks! But even if you already know how critical sleep is, you’ll still get something out of this book. Matthew Walker does an amazing job of giving a wide scope of everything you’d ever want to know about sleep from how and why we dream to the history and evolution of sleep ..read more

I was looking back through some older articles today and was shocked to see some articles that I thought were relatively more recent were published nearly three years ago! I know the site is 3 years old now, and my early retirement is inching up on 4 years, but WOW time flies. My kids are growing so fast now, we are starting to deal with “big kid” problems rather than the cute toddler tantrums. My wife and I’s parents are getting older and dealing with more health issues. The hair on the back of my head thins ever faster now… It Is All Going By Too Fast! I can’t grasp it hard enough. I can’t ..read more

I changed careers three times. I failed with two businesses. But I STILL retired at 36. Did I get lucky? Absolutely. But I also created a heck of a lot of my own luck. Here’s how: 1. Early in Your Career, Just Say “Yes” Say a lot of “yes” now, so later on you can say “no!” Take opportunities others won’t. One of the first things that I did when I started my career was I took all the crap tasks that no one else wanted to do. I copied and pasted thousands of emails, I sent out marketing emails even though I didn’t know HTML, and then I built a website even though I had no idea how to. I said ..read more