During COVID-19, I think about my mother every day. She was essential. She would have been there for other people. NOTE: My mother passed away many years ago, but not a day of the pandemic goes by that my heart does not go out to nurses, and their families. My…

Are you a maximalist? A minimalist? A bit of both? Fumio Sasaki’s Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism hit me square in the resolutions this month, at a time of year when most of us are thinking about ways to make our lives better, truer, and more meaningful.

Treading steady in debt, taking bold strokes in saving Well, here we are again. For the year ahead, I don’t know whether to let my cynicism quell my trepidation or my trepidation rattle my cynicism. Best to focus on the past for now. Moving into last year, my first surprise…

Not so fast, 2022. We have some talking to do. You‘d think I’d have learned my lesson about New Year’s resolutions. You’d be wrong. From my over-the-top, out-of-the-gate 19 goals for 2019 to my more chill and lowered expectations of 2020 and 2021, I still believe the new year can…

COVID-19 Is a Blacklight Showing Up the Garbage of Our Social Structures. And I’m the Keep On Truckin’ Poster In September 2018, our debt stood at $455,000. When our roof threatened to cave in, I thought that was the financial end of us. The roof would require total replacement and…

Learn along with me as I take more awkward steps into the future Back when I started this blog, I couldn’t have imagined that in a couple more years, I’d be factoring a big government stimulus check for a year-long climate-related pandemic into my personal finance update, but then I…

My 2021 Bottom Line Is Not Much Different from the One in 2020 In January of last year, I shared exuberantly about my cool new job and the seemingly limitless future. …

Way more action, way less judging Let’s face it: Now is no time to go about firming your resolve. If you are reading this and you are not under constant daily stress, woo-hoo for you, but chances are you’re one of us: FUBAR seven ways from Sunday, unsure who you…

What Next. In November I wrote a brief letter to my past self, two years more or less from the day a roof leak led me to start blogging my financial despair and recovery. This past month, at the closing of one of the strangest years any of us has…