A low cost of living is attainable just about anywhere you choose to live — even in urban, coastal California
Give me your estimated monthly income, a handful of preferences, and five minutes and I can map out a (relatively) stress-free budget that will allow you to live — and live well — in San Francisco or Los Angeles.
As long as you take home, say, $3,500 a month minimum, you can do it and do it well. You can probably make it work on less, but it’s not optimal, and I don’t want to put that type of pressure on myself (or you!).
It might require some prep work to get to the point where you can confidently and…
It hurts to admit, but there’s one thing you need a lot of to be objectively rich
Sometimes all I want is a hug. It makes me feel rich.
This is true. I feel it each and every time I lay eyes on my girlfriend and we hug.
Beyond this, we need to stop with this incessant, rich is a feeling stuff. It’s not. Being rich, according to the dictionary, is “having abundant possessions and especially material wealth.”
Within that, we can argue over the quantity of possessions and amount of material wealth you require to be rich. There’s no correct answer. This is probably why the whole rich is a feeling mantra took off.
It makes…
Thinking of a realistic way to quit your job and work your passion
Let’s get a couple of things out of the way.
I don’t hate many things in life. I definitely don’t hate people.
However, there are two things I absolutely do hate:
- Traditional conceptions of retirement
- People bragging about travel on dating apps
I offer alternatives ways of arranging money, work, and life to counter the toxicity of conventional paths to retirement.
And when I mention “travel” in the title of this article, it’s not in the pretentious 36 countries and counting or must have Global Entry, or we’re not a match way you so often see on dating apps. …
We should take care with how we throw around words like “poor”
When you work in a bar, you learn a lot about how people behave with money.
You’ve definitely heard this several times before. If you spent the better part of three years working in a craft cocktail bar, you heard it several times a day.
Oh my god, I am so poor right now. I have no money!
This comment often comes right before the same person orders another $14 drink.
This is not being poor.
It’s being privileged, bad with money, or a perverse blend of both.
Real poor is there’s no way you’d ever think about spending $14…
“We’re not gonna open a Ma and Pa shop together.”
I fall in love with my girlfriend a little more each day.
Take how much I fall in love with her on a typical day and multiply it by like 1,000 to begin to understand how much more I fell in love with her the other day.
We ate dinner at a restaurant called Samosa House.
She had fun with the name — How can they call themselves Samosa House when they only have one type of samosa!? It’s difficult to argue with her. …
How the toxic retirement industry sets people up to fail
It blows my mind. And makes me angry.
Just how tone deaf can the retirement industry be?
I don’t like calling people out so I hesitate to even link to the story I read the other morning, however sometimes we need to call people out. It’s less about calling out one person and more about highlighting one person’s comments as emblematic of what’s wrong with the notion of traditional retirement and how finance types advise people on getting there.
To give credit where it’s due, I’m thrilled the professor the article quotes focuses on the psychology of investing for retirement.
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And why it matters if you want a healthy relationship with money
When I write articles, the words come to me.
Anywhere from five to 50 times per article, I look up the definitions of words, sometimes quite basic words. I do this for a number of reasons, but often to ensure I’m using the word that best fits what I aim to say.
It was through this process that I got sidetracked for about a half hour on the difference between practical and pragmatic. Usually, this flavor of tangent results in little more than useless knowledge. I’m like, that would have been fun to do while high.
With practical and pragmatic…
They mean well, but in life, this doesn’t mean much
In a recent Making of a Millionaire article, I argued you should listen to Tom Petty, not your parents:
If I had told my parents — when I was 19 — that instead of moving to Miami, I was going to marry my high school sweetheart and stay in my hometown, firmly entrenched behind a white picket fence with multiple toddlers running around the over-sized backyard, they would have been all for it.
Because it would have been in their best emotional interests, if under this hypothetical, they understood and appreciated my best interests, they would have said, “We would…
It’s a lot like knowing you’re in love — except you sleep well
Assuming you employ conventional personal finance methods, taking an alternative approach — such as the one I’m about to outline — can change your life.
It did mine.
I used to freak out because I realized there was no way I was ever gonna save $1 million.
In fact, you could give me two lifetimes, bi-weekly cryotherapy, and daily transfusions from a blonde hair/blue eye, ripped blood boy (remember Silicon Valley on HBO?), and I’d still never make it to a million.
I’m cut out to save and invest. Just not at the level to make it to a million.
…
I came to Los Angeles from San Francisco — both places rock
In a recent Medium article where I (half-jokingly) argue that Los Angeles has better hills than San Francisco, Alice Giuditta responded with just beautiful insight.
Digest some of this wisdom, then we’ll talk about it (it’s a longish quote, but worth every word):
…I first fell in love with Los Angeles when I was 10 years old (Brit, over here). I’ve been a total of 4 times in the past 12 years, and our relationship has been a roller-coaster…
Needless to say, I fell in love all over again, and harder than ever before. It felt like a real love…
