CHASING FIRE INTERVIEW SERIES

FIRE Starter – The Non-Financial Side of the Rent vs. Buy Debate

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You can find all of Zach’s previous posts here. Today, Zach is going to discuss what often becomes a very heated debate in personal finance circles. It’s easy to do the math to find the optimal financial decision, but not every problem should be solved with math alone. It’s a little like trying to build a house with just a hammer: when you have just a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I know…this goes against my mantra that “the path is all math.” But sometimes personal finance gets, well, personal! Many people forget to account for the time and emotion variables that should be weighed in conjunction with the math.  I hope you enjoy Zach’s latest FIRE Starter post …

Building a Body, a Business, and a Baby

Gen Y Finance Guy Entrepreneurship 4 Comments

Life is good! What did I get myself into? Everything is going far better than I could have ever imagined. I’m tired. I feel like superman. Did I make the right choice? The magic happens outside of your comfort zone. This is the roller-coaster of thoughts that have been swirling around in my head over the past twelve months. The GYFG household has experienced some massive changes. We welcomed our first child into the world back in October of 2018. And for some reason that wasn’t enough chaos and shock to the system, so I decided to start my own business about six months later. My intention was to do this business thing on the side but it took off …

CHASING FIRE INTERVIEW SERIES

FIRE Starter – What to do When You Hit the Upper Limit of Your Savings Rate

Gen Y Finance Guy Financial Freedom 1 Comment

You can find all of Zach’s previous posts here. Today, Zach is going to discuss some options available to the Freedom Fighter who feels that he or she has hit the upper limit of their savings rate. If you have followed this blog for any length of time you know that the approach I preach is #2 below. I agree it is prudent to get your expenses in check, especially early on in your journey, but we don’t preach the ultra-frugal lifestyle on this corner of the internet. In my opinion, extreme frugality is for the birds, and relative frugality is the shiznits!!! I hope you enjoy Zach’s latest FIRE Starter post below. First, a Quick Reminder of Why I …

Income Report

August 2019 – Detailed Financial Report #56 – Net Worth $1,312,526 | Income $59,115

Gen Y Finance Guy Monthly Financial Reports 6 Comments

There is blood in the streets and it’s coming from the GYFG house. We burned through a big chunk of cash this month in order to make our backyard look like the pictures below. We added two covered patios and restarted the landscaping and irrigation from scratch. These new additions go well with the outdoor BBQ and kitchen area we put in a few years ago. The new backyard set us back about $30,000 but it is now a place to chill and is more conducive to being outside year-round. We recently paid off our mortgage in May, and I look at this $30,000 enhancement as an investment that will allow us to stay here for another 3-5 years before …

Letter to Executive Coach – Planning Success for Year One in Business

Gen Y Finance Guy Entrepreneurship Leave a Comment

In late 2018 and early 2019, I was working with an executive coach. One of the exercises my coach had me do was to write a letter to her for one year in the future. This was an exercise I was familiar with as I had already done a similar exercise but ten years in the future to myself (posted here). When I first started working with this coach I was preparing/pitching to start a new business line under the umbrella of my current employer at the time, and the focus of the exercise was to describe what a year of success looked like with that new business. I did end up starting the business discussed below, but as many …