Let's Money That!

 We married in 2012. I believe our current financial status is partially a result of the timing of our engagement and marriage. The housing market had bottomed out in the Bay Area and the timing was such that as we bought, we rode the wave of appreciation for the last eight years. The same happened with the stock market. However, intentionality, goal-setting and monitoring our expenses played a crucial part in growing our wealth and using the bull markets to our advantage. This blog is to share our experiences and to give insight into strategies that have worked for us. We have not hit our absolute FI Number in liquid investable assets yet, for the standard of living we would like to have, but we are well on our way. This blog explores where we've been and will explore and analyze strategies to continue to the finish line.  The commencement of our intentionality is when the wealth really began to grow. As we witnessed this by tracking our expenses and net worth, we realized wh...

  I grew up in a small town in Texas, my mother was a stay-at-home mom and my father began as a hired-hand for his uncle, progressing to leasing farmland to farm, then finally a seed salesman for farmers, later expanding that business to a farm equipment servicer.   I never knew this while we were little, but mom told me recently we qualified for free lunches at school in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. I never felt like we were that poor. I knew things were tight, but I don’t remembering feeling poor. There was always talk about “thrift”. We would go with mom and my grandmother to garage sales on Saturdays (they loved it!) and we found some good hand-me down toys that way. We didn’t need much, anyway. We had bikes, roller skates, rollerblades, a dog, some cats and kittens, so we were plenty entertained. I loved watching the baby kittens being born and mama cat cleaning them up. I loved watching them stumble around with their eyes closed for several days. We had a great childhood....