I wrote this back on April 15th (of 2021), originally intending to share it with friends via social media, but for some reason the stigma of sharing that we had got Covid was… embarrassing? I still stand by everything that I wrote here, and it’s a better explanation of my state of mind at the time than I could rewrite anyways. So I wanted to wait to write this until I was 100% better, but screw it, I don’t know…
2020 had not been as bad a year for us as it had for many people. My wife and I both had jobs that could be performed remotely, our kids had hybrid / remote options at their new school for the fall (spring 2020 semester effectively ended when the pandemic started in terms of learning). I had lost my job mid-year, but thankfully one of my previous employers was more than amenable to bringing me back on. We had still…
To say that our first few months (Fall of 2020) in Longmont were a whirlwind would be an understatement. I spent that first Monday morning waiting for the moving truck, anxious to explore our new town. Even being able to walk five minutes down the road and see a partial view of the mountains was amazing. Eventually the truck arrived and we started unloading our belongings into the 1000 square foot house that was our rental. Thankfully this house had…
Back in what seems like a decade ago I wrote a post about why we decided to move from our comfortable familiar lives in suburban Pittsburgh to Colorado, and more specifically Longmont. As we have been here for 18 months now, I thought this a good a time as any to look back on our first year out here. Instead I started looking back on our move across the country and what led up to it. Here we go… The…
For as long as I can remember, I have been a “homer” (for a less nuanced term, see provincial, or even townie). I was born, raised and went to college in Pittsburgh. The only time I ever lived outside of Allegheny County was when my long distance girlfriend (now wife) was pregnant with our first son and was living in Woodbridge, VA. I was there for a grand total of 6 months before the Steel City drew me back in….
A few weeks ago I went to a local (Pittsburgh) screening of the Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) documentary. I had been following the story of this documentary (and the accompanying book) through various FI blogs and podcasts over the last year and a half so I knew a lot of the backstory already but was very anxious to see the finished product. My thoughts on it are as follows: This Isn’t a How-To for the Lower Class…
As I mentioned in our last post, we bought our first rental property about two months ago. Based on the calculations that I had done I thought it was going to cashflow (the amount left after paying all of the expenses and the mortgage) around $300 a month. I had been using this excellent spreadsheet from F.I. Nomad to analyze properties. It is a really great tool and helped me narrow my search and filter out properties that wouldn’t be…
