Sometime around 2010, I became deeply interested in my personal finances. I started to track where my money was going, and scrutinize the spending decisions I was making. When I first discovered financial independence- the idea that I could chop 30+ years off of my working career through conscious life decisions- I was elated. Spend…
Category: Continual Improvement
2019 Goals – Midyear Update
Back in January, I created a list of 10 goals for 2019. I’m not normally a goal-setting type of person, but I thought it would be interesting to try out. I divided my goals into 3 categories: Financial, Business/Professional, and Personal. I tried to make them “SMART” goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound). This way…
10 Goals for 2019
First off, New Year’s Resolutions are stupid. Why do you have to wait until you tack up the new calendar before you start trying to improve your life? When exactly in 2018 did you stop caring about making a better you? How many cookies did you eat on December 30th because you had two more…
Short Pours #3: Holiday Cheer and Brett Beer
Short Pours is my short-format series of posts that will allow me to publish more frequently, and get a bit more creative with my content. Check out my introduction for more information on this series. In this edition of Short Pours, I’m going to cover my feelings concerning the Holiday Season, and figuring out what Christmas…
Subscriptions: Death by a Thousand Cuts
When I was 11 years old, I signed up for the BMG Music Club. If you don’t remember the 90s, BMG and their rival, Columbia House, would offer deals such as “10 CDs for the price of 1” if you signed up for their monthly music subscriptions. So I signed up for BMG and got…
Continual Improvement 101: How to Make a Better You
One of the taglines of my blog is continual improvement. It’s not because it’s a cool-sounding catch phrase. It’s because the continual improvement process is a core component of my everyday life, and has been for more than 10 years. Okay, yeah- it’s a cool-sounding catch phrase, too. So what is continual improvement, what are its…
Automate Your Finances to Simplify Your Life
It started from a place of passion. It was the 2012 timeframe, and I had just begun to discover the financial independence, early retirement movement. After learning that a lifetime in a cubicle-prison was not mandatory, I became obsessed with improving my financial situation. I started working harder, slashing costs, and investing the difference as…
Ray Dalio’s Principles Applied to Financial Independence
I must admit that I have a mild obsession with Ray Dalio. You may know Dalio as the founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds on earth. But to think of him as “just some hedge fund guy” is to miss the point of much of his life’s work. Dalio stresses the…
Your Career or Your Life
Last month I spent two weeks in Asia for work. I attended some technical meetings with customers in Taiwan for a week, and then I went to Japan to oversee a production trial for one of our new products. By pure coincidence, I was in Japan exactly during sakura (cherry blossom) season, which was pretty…