Freedom

How Not To Lose Yourself in Retirement
- How Not To Lose Yourself in Retirement - April 12, 2021
- Are Most Degrees Useless? - March 22, 2021
- Let’s Go Exploring! Stockholm, Sweden: Dark, Twisted, and Beautiful - March 12, 2021
“So, what do you do?” How many times have you been asked this question? If you live in North American, I’m willing to bet, a lot. Given that our society places so much emphasis on “live to work” instead of “work to live”, I’m not surprised we believe we are our jobs. So, what happens if we reach financial independence and quit said job? Who do we become? My answer to that question has changed from “software engineer” to “author”, but for the first few years in retirement, I had to no idea how to answer it. Not only that, […]

Finding Love During Covid
- Reader Case: Golden Handcuffs - April 16, 2021
- Finding Love During Covid - April 5, 2021
- Is It Time To Ditch Bonds? - March 29, 2021
A few months ago, we wrote about a FIRE dating app that someone had made. Apparently, that post triggered a flood of traffic to the app, and people actually started hooking up on it! We got an email recently from the creator telling us that there was a couple, both of whom were readers of this blog, that learned about the app from that post, signed up, got matched, and were now dating. How cool is that? We were their matchmakers! So I reached out to them on Zoom to learn about their story. Meet FIRE dating couple Rebecca and […]

Let’s Go Exploring! Stockholm, Sweden: Dark, Twisted, and Beautiful
- How Not To Lose Yourself in Retirement - April 12, 2021
- Are Most Degrees Useless? - March 22, 2021
- Let’s Go Exploring! Stockholm, Sweden: Dark, Twisted, and Beautiful - March 12, 2021
Note: this post was written before the pandemic. We’re still hunkered down in Canada, waiting for the borders to open so we can go back to our nomadic life. This post is written for everyone who, like us, can’t wait to explore the world again. I’ve wanted to visit Stockholm ever since I read Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” back in 2011. One of the main characters is Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed genius computer hacker who is my favourite anti-heroine of all time. And not just because she can throw Molotov cocktails and (spoiler alert!) sodomize rapists. […]

Our 2020 Finances: How Much Did We Make?
- How Not To Lose Yourself in Retirement - April 12, 2021
- Are Most Degrees Useless? - March 22, 2021
- Let’s Go Exploring! Stockholm, Sweden: Dark, Twisted, and Beautiful - March 12, 2021
(Click here for Part 1 to see how much we spent. Click here for Part 2 to see our portfolio performance) Be an engineer. Don’t be a writer. Writers don’t make any money…. …except when they do. I never thought I’d ever make a livable income as a writer. Not when we first started writing in 2008, not when we signed with a literary agent, and not even when we got our first advance for our children’s book, Little Miss Evil. Despite my cynicism, I still framed our first $200 author paycheque smack dab in the middle of our […]

Our 2020 Finances
- How Not To Lose Yourself in Retirement - April 12, 2021
- Are Most Degrees Useless? - March 22, 2021
- Let’s Go Exploring! Stockholm, Sweden: Dark, Twisted, and Beautiful - March 12, 2021
To say that 2020 has been challenging is an understatement. After the devasting news about Wanderer’s dad’s brain cancer diagnosis, we immediately cut our nomadic life short by hopping on the 2nd to last plane back to Canada from Taiwan, just before all the borders closed. With 2020 at an end, this means that we’ve been retired for over 5 whole years! Buying our time back has been the best money we have ever spent, and in no other year has that been more apparent than this one. Despite having our ambitious schedule of conferences, a Google talk, and filming […]