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This past weekend I was fortunate to attend Cents Positive in Chicago and it was an absolutely amazing experience. Cents positive is a retreat where women can talk openly and candidly about money and financial independence. The conference was started by Tanja Hester in 2018, and this year there were two locations, one in Seattle and the other in Chicago. I would have loved to fly out to Seattle, but it was just not possible with my schedule, and Chicago was a lot closer!

I was only vaguely aware of Cents Positive (mostly from listening to the Fairer Cents Podcast)  and had not really considered going until chatting with Tanja at FinCon. Talking to her really got me thinking about going and after getting back from FinCon I spent the next week trying to figure out a way to make the logistics of attending work. I did eventually find a way, and wow I am glad I did!

My Experience

I am struggling a little bit to describe my experience at the retreat in adequate terms since providing a description of the events does not even begin to do the experience justice. I can certainly talk about key moments and highlights from my perspective, but aside from framing this as a phenomenological discussion I will just have to use words like awesome, empowering, and uplifting.

If you are a woman who is interested in financial independence and cares deeply about the success of other women in this space, this is a retreat for you!

So here is a little bit about my experience…

[Read more…] about Cents Positive 2019 in Chicago: Looking back on an Amazing Weekend

When we set out on our journey to financial independence we did a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the areas we wanted to spend on without cutting back (mostly kids and travel), and what we want to cut back on significantly to increase our savings rate. One of the areas that was and continues to be a problem area for us is our spending on food. In our budget we have set what we feel is a reasonable target for spending for a family of four on both groceries, and occasionally eating out, but we routinely go over our budget in this area. Some months we do OK, and other months we completely blow past our budgeted amount. This in turn either lowers our savings rate, or makes us have to cut in other places. This is definitely a weak area in our spending and one we should be able to better control.

[Read more…] about Some thoughts on Food Costs

Well we technically made it two weeks with just one car, but as of today our one car experiment has come to an end. We spent a lot of time juggling schedules and moving appointments but after a thorough analysis of our schedules and responsibilities we just are not set up to be a one car household at this time. We could have made it work with one car for another month, but after that we realistically could not have just one car without impacting our income. If we lived somewhere with strong public transportation or one of us had the ability to bike or walk to work it could have worked, but unfortunately we are not in that situation right now. We even looked at the cost of Lyft and Uber to supplement only having one car but the cost of those services did not even come close to making financial sense, even if used very infrequently. So in the end after looking at logistics and the spreadsheets we created (I mean who doesn’t use spreadsheets for this type of decision :p) we decided to find and purchase a second car…

[Read more…] about The Unexpected One Car Experiment Ends

For most people and families, there are usually three big spending areas that can have a significant impact on the path to financial independence. Typically in the order of significance they are housing, cars, and food. The scale and size of the impact of these areas will vary quite a bit depending on personal circumstances, but outside of additional income, addressing these items can have a huge impact on how long it takes to reach FI. 

Since we have been together, we have always been a two car family (one per adult), and have never considered the possibility of trying to get by with just one car. One reason why we never even discussed it is we have not had a car payment in almost 10 years, and we both planned to keep our cars until they stop running or cost way too much in repairs. Also, based on our schedules, kids activities, and work locations it just never seemed practical, and we never gave it much thought. While we planned on keeping our cars until they wouldn’t run anymore, this changed when our 11 year old Toyota Matrix was totaled by a college student who decided to run a red light at an intersection and directly into my wife’s car. Luckily no one was injured, including both of our children who were in the car at the time, but the car did not survive. This has left us with only one car to use for the last week once the other driver’s insurance company paid us the small amount of value they determined the car was worth. It is a very frustrating outcome because the Kelly Blue Book value is no way near the value we placed on and was provided by the vehicle. So while unplanned we are now operating with only one car, and decided to document this process and whether it is possible given our circumstances to realistically (and I do mean this literally) have only one vehicle in our family. We will probably make this a multi-part post from two different perspectives, and we will see how long this experiment can last, although based on this first week I doubt it will last long…

[Read more…] about The Unexpected One Car Experiment