I wrote this back on April 15th (of 2021), originally intending to share it with friends via social media, but for some reason the stigma of sharing that we had got Covid was… embarrassing? I still stand by everything that I wrote here, and it’s a better explanation of my state of mind at the time than I could rewrite anyways. So I wanted to wait to write this until I was 100% better, but screw it, I don’t know…
2020 had not been as bad a year for us as it had for many people. My wife and I both had jobs that could be performed remotely, our kids had hybrid / remote options at their new school for the fall (spring 2020 semester effectively ended when the pandemic started in terms of learning). I had lost my job mid-year, but thankfully one of my previous employers was more than amenable to bringing me back on. We had still…
To say that our first few months (Fall of 2020) in Longmont were a whirlwind would be an understatement. I spent that first Monday morning waiting for the moving truck, anxious to explore our new town. Even being able to walk five minutes down the road and see a partial view of the mountains was amazing. Eventually the truck arrived and we started unloading our belongings into the 1000 square foot house that was our rental. Thankfully this house had…
Back in what seems like a decade ago I wrote a post about why we decided to move from our comfortable familiar lives in suburban Pittsburgh to Colorado, and more specifically Longmont. As we have been here for 18 months now, I thought this a good a time as any to look back on our first year out here. Instead I started looking back on our move across the country and what led up to it. Here we go… The…
For as long as I can remember, I have been a “homer” (for a less nuanced term, see provincial, or even townie). I was born, raised and went to college in Pittsburgh. The only time I ever lived outside of Allegheny County was when my long distance girlfriend (now wife) was pregnant with our first son and was living in Woodbridge, VA. I was there for a grand total of 6 months before the Steel City drew me back in….
We have been pursuing Financial Independence for just about 4 years now. We were semi-frugal in our lifestyle and borderline valuist in our choices for a while before that though without knowing that we were doing anything special. About 10 years ago we read some financial article somewhere that everyone should have an emergency fund. We had been living paycheck to paycheck at the time so the concept was foreign to me. Savings, emergency funds? These were things spoken about…
When this COVID-19 outbreak started getting serious in the US a few weeks back, my wife and I quickly came to the realization that we were both in very “non-recession-proof” industries. She has been at the same role with an oil and gas company for the last 9 years, doing geotech / GIS work. When oil prices cratered at the end of 2015, the company that she works for had to do massive layoffs, just like many others in the…
When I think back to the “Great Recession”, I find it hard to remember how I was feeling about it while it was happening. At the time that the recession began in early 2008, my life had already been turned on its head. I had moved from Pittsburgh where I had lived my entire life down to Northern Virginia to move in with my then-girlfriend. We were expecting our first child in May of that year. I was in a…
As with most everyone else in the county / state / world, the last 10 days have been completely alien for us. We never really went out as a family often anyways, other than to visit family or go on hikes, so this social distancing / almost-lockdown is not a big deal. Also, I have been used to working remotely – my current employer allows us in-office folks to work remote 2x per week and we even had a 3…
A few weeks ago I went to a local (Pittsburgh) screening of the Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) documentary. I had been following the story of this documentary (and the accompanying book) through various FI blogs and podcasts over the last year and a half so I knew a lot of the backstory already but was very anxious to see the finished product. My thoughts on it are as follows: This Isn’t a How-To for the Lower Class…
