What I would like to discuss today is best introduced in the form of a poem: What do you do when you are missing a skill?Where do you turn when you have some time to kill? Do you ever want to escape your day to day routine,get lost in a fantasy land or learn to make the very best poutine? I encourage you to hop on your computer and complete a small query,you’ll need to figure out the quickest path to your local library. It is full of every resource you could ever imagine or seek;books, DVDs, classes, and more, go ahead, take a peek. Seriously y’all, wherever you live you should definitely figure out where your local library is located. Allyson and I are probably in our library at least every other week, stockpiling on books for fun, resource books to learn new skills, or even DVDs. Currently we…

I’d like to apologize to you all to begin this week. You may have noticed that this post is going up on a Tuesday night rather than the typical Sunday. I’ll freely admit that part of the reason for that is poor planning on my part, as I knew I would be gone this weekend on a bucket list type trip. On Sunday I went to watch a Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field against the Carolina Panthers. As a lifelong Packers fan, this was an amazing experience that I won’t soon forget. The temperature at kickoff was a balmy 33°F and only got colder throughout the game. By halftime there was solid snowfall and at the end of the game the field had been covered by a layer of fluffy snow. The environment combined with a last second stand by the Packers to come away with victory made…

How do you spend your free time? It’s a pretty straight forward question you may be asked approximately 100 times if you go to a party with a lot of people you’ve never met before. It’s either that or “what do you do for work?”, which has got to be one of the worst questions out there.  I want to talk about what you do in your free time. Specifically, I want to ask if it is costing you financial freedom and security. Because, for many of us, a lot of our hobbies and interests can end up costing us more than we may realize. Now, I want to be clear, it is important to do things that you love to do and to seek joy in life as much as possible. But, I think it is worth considering what truly brings us happiness and if it is achievable on…

The true cost of commuting. Not something that I was going to discuss in the near future, but recent events have brought this issue to the forefront for me. For the majority of us, a commute is a part of everyday life, something we do multiple times a week. Many of us probably don’t think about it outside of the times we are sitting in our vehicle of choice, yelling at the person in front of us to move. I’m here to tell you it may be time to think about that commute and what it is truly costing, both in your time/happiness and true cost to your vehicle. Before getting into the topic more deeply, I do want to acknowledge that I have privilege in this regard. The story I will tell later is only possible because I have options in my job, and I recognize that that is…

Last week I gave an initial insight into some of our goals for our finances and what that could allow us to do in the future. By saving now, we will be able to pursue second careers, hobbies, or anything else we want without needing to make additional money (that doesn’t mean that we can’t though). Specifically, we push to save around 60% of our income every year to hopefully allow for financial independence within the next 10 years. That’s what we want for our future, but I want to talk about our present. Let me lead off by saying that being present is not easy for me. I’m always planning for the future, thinking about how if we do this one thing now it will allow for this other thing in five years. This outlook manifests itself a lot in my job. As a part of a rotational program,…

Let’s talk about money. Wait, don’t go!  I know that this can be a touchy subject for some (while also the favorite subject of others), but I think it is important for me to occasionally touch on Allyson’s and my approach to our finances. After all, from day 1 of this blog I’ve been planning on discussing personal finance and now seems like as good a time as ever to breach the subject.  Ironically, part of what pushed me to discuss this topic today came from someone who has made more money than you (I’m assuming) and I will ever make in our lifetimes. Andrew Luck. For those of you who haven’t heard or don’t care (like Allyson), Andrew luck is was the starting quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts. In fact, he was one of the best quarterbacks in the league who had been on pace for a Hall of…