Freedom

Our 2020 Finances: How Much Did We Make?
- How to Negotiate Rent Part 2 - February 15, 2021
- How to Negotiate Rent - February 8, 2021
- Our 2020 Finances: How Much Did We Make? - January 18, 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 to Negotiate Rent Part 2 - February 15, 2021
- How to Negotiate Rent - February 8, 2021
- Our 2020 Finances: How Much Did We Make? - January 18, 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 […]

How Introverts Experience the Holidays
- How to Negotiate Rent Part 2 - February 15, 2021
- How to Negotiate Rent - February 8, 2021
- Our 2020 Finances: How Much Did We Make? - January 18, 2021
As we near the end of 2020 — aka “the dumpster fire that seemingly never ends”– and COVID-19 continues ruining our holidays with forced shutdowns all over the world, I started to wonder, is there anyone that’s actually benefiting from the cancellation of holidays plans? Could some people actually not just be doing well during this holiday period, but actually thriving? As ludicrous as it seems, believe it or not, one of the (very few) bright spots of the holidays being cancelled by COVID-19, is that 20% of people are somehow feeling better than they did in previous years during […]

How 2020 Taught Us What Really Matters
- Is It Time To Buy a Condo? - February 22, 2021
- Reader Case: Dentist in Debt - February 12, 2021
- Can the Gamestop Saga Crash the Stock Market? - February 1, 2021
The end of the year is typically a time of reflection. As the holidays arrive, it gives us all a quiet moment to look back on all the things that happened during the year. And while every year has its ups and downs, 2020 will forever stand out as a year we will simultaneously always remember and wish desperately we could forget. This year felt like a goddamned decade. Remember, this year started off with half of Australia on fire. Donald Trump was impeached. The US assassinated an Iranian general, putting America and Iran on the path to all-out war, […]

The Eight Stages of Early Retirement
- How to Negotiate Rent Part 2 - February 15, 2021
- How to Negotiate Rent - February 8, 2021
- Our 2020 Finances: How Much Did We Make? - January 18, 2021
When we first retired in 2015, I had a very different version of retirement in my head. The picture in my head looked something like this: Hand in notice Give my boss the finger Tap dance out of the office Travel the world. Be happy forever. Reality turned out a little differently. Instead of tap dancing out of the office, I hoofed it back to my desk worried that I’d made a huge mistake. All around my co-workers continued answering e-mails, rushing off to meetings, scurrying around doing “important things,” completely oblivious. Later that night, I woke up in a […]