Yep, I’ve been writing this blog for 10 years. I already wrote about how and why I started blogging at the 5-year mark. Check that if you’re interested. But instead of rewriting what’s already been written, I want to focus on today and the future. Today’s post is a personal update about my current situation…
Common advice from life coaches and career gurus is to build a career you love so much you don’t want to retire. I appreciate this advice and wish I’d followed it more in my 20s and early 30s. But genuinely loving what you do is a rare privilege. Most people don’t love their jobs, let…
Early retirement is a loaded phrase that ignites internet skepticism. We can partly blame the mainstream financial media for picking up stories about “early retirees” that run six and seven-figure businesses. Inconsistent messaging among early retirement bloggers doesn’t help, and I suspect the phrase is tossed around liberally on YouTube and TikTok. The FIRE crowd…
The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson wrote an article about the best career advice he’s come across that “might be marginally useful.” Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life was applicable to my situation back in September 2022 when I was approaching my career departure date, and it’s still relevant today as a self-employed blogger….
I recently left my 20-year information technology (IT) career to be a full-time blogger. Most of my career involved partnering with a large government customer to modernize its massively-complex and outdated IT systems. My teammates trusted me. Managers gave me challenging assignments, and I exceeded expectations. The client was always happy with my work. But…
After 20 years in information technology (IT), I decided to change careers to be a full-time blogger in early December. It’s an exciting milestone I’ve been planning for about five years. Monday morning, after my last day at work, I sat down at a different computer without the looming threat of Microsoft Teams meetings. I…
The 2022 HBO documentary Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off is a fascinating biography of the skateboarding icon. As told through interviews with his Bones Brigade peers — all trailblazers themselves — Tony’s life is a story of risk-taking, failure, persistence, and entrepreneurship. Excelling to the top levels in any sport takes a natural…
Our perceptions of the value of time and money shift as we age. In early adulthood, time is abundant, while money is scarcer. We want more money and are willing to sacrifice our time to get it. By middle age, a thriving career helps us earn more, but job and family obligations consume our time….
Smart money habits will help you reach your financial goals, with patience. Most of us aren’t looking for extravagant wealth. We want sustainable and long-lasting wealth that provides financial security for our families and enough money to fund our desired lifestyle. That kind of wealth is more attainable than most people think. But there are…
I fell into my career at age 23. A childhood friend worked for a nearby information technology (IT) consulting company in a hiring frenzy. It was 1998. Dot-coms were booming. Y2K loomed. The U.S. government had a revenue surplus, and we lived in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Experienced talent was scarce, opening…
I’m obsessed with money. I think about earning, saving, and growing money most of the day. I’ve written about money for more than seven years. Saying someone is obsessed with money might conjure to mind words like greed, fame, power, influence, and opulence. Picture a celebrity flashing fancy clothes and jewelry on Instagram and their…
A former manager was into office gift-giving. Most of the team was over 50. As a joke, she gave everyone a pocket guide to texting acronyms. The “older folks” were still learning about terms like LOL, TL;DR, LMFAO, OMG, and WTF. This was around 2014 before we had our third child. Flipping through the pages,…
Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual. – Ernest Hemingway This Hemingway quote came up in one of my social media feeds (read to the end to learn the quote’s origin). Most of the time, I roll my eyes at quotes and memes shared…
Someone on Facebook with a very dry sense of humor commented: You misspelled dead. — Facebook Reader It took me a while — then, the epiphany. After seven years of blogging, I realized my blog name is one letter away from Retire Before Dead. And wow, far more people are probably striving for that goal…