“You take what the enemy meant for evil And you turn it for good” – See a Victory (Elevation Worship)” Hey friends, been awhile I know, thanks for finding your way back here. As you can see with the big headline, we finally became debt free at the beginning of 2020 and this post is the story of how we got there; spoiler alert, it wasn’t supposed to be … Read More
“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent” – Marilyn Vos Savant
“Our most important thoughts are those which contradict our emotions” – Paul Valery
“I guess they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention” because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.” – Viola Davis
“Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive” – Angela Duckworth, Author-Grit I recently stumbled upon a TED talk that led to different YouTube talks by Angela Duckworth, Psychologist, and author of … Read More
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think, and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” Thomas A. Edison I don’t know about you but ever since I realized I had an issue with money, I started finding ways to get myself out of my jam and started getting my hands on books, audio books, blogs, podcasts and anything to … Read More
“Ninety-six percent of self-made millionaires read 30 minutes each day for education, career or self-improvement” Tom Corley Inspired by the award winning book “Change Your Habits Change Your Life” by Tom Corley Related Posts: 5 ATTITUDES THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE 5 LESSONS I LEARNED WHILE BROKE Can I just be honest? I’m so tired of being one of the poor folks 🙁 It’s really getting … Read More
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine Last month I had the privilege to travel from Los Angeles to Manila to pick up my wife and daughter and had to go through 3 different airports as part of the trip. This is my first foray into travel blogging 🙂 as I share my experience going through these 3 airports en … Read More
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert This past month we put our debt free journey on hold to travel to the Philippines and then South Korea. One of the reasons we agreed to do this despite starting our debt free journey 4 months in now, is because it’s our 25th year wedding anniversary this year … Read More
‘Do you like the music i’m playing?” Seb asks Mia Bear with me, this is a long one…. I flew from LAX to Manila via Incheon Korea onboard an Asiana Flight last week, I originally was reading one of the Bourne books The Bourne Dominion which I bought a couple years back that I never got to reading. After two and a half hours into … Read More
Last weekend, I took my family out to breakfast in one of the local hangouts in our neighborhood. When we were done, I paid about $55 for our breakfast for three. Kinda pricey if you ask me 🙁 Even though we have a $250 monthly restaurant (eat out) budget, it would have been better to not blow a 5th of it in one sitting. Needless to … Read More
“Making a big life change is pretty scary. But know what’s even scarier? Regret” Anonymous As my wife and I embarked on our debt free journey, we began to take stock of our situation and where we were not only financially but also emotionally. We realized that a major lifestyle change not only needed an attitude adjustment but also a fresh outlook on what really mattered … Read More
“Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.” John Maxwell, Failing Forward Sometimes failing is the only way to move forward. My most recent bout with failure happened as I was sitting for my Cybersecurity exams last year. I was so confident since I had earlier passed a similar security exam … Read More
A couple of weeks ago, as I was reflecting on my current situation, I couldn’t help but have a flurry of emotions go through me; first was of anger, then regret, anxiety, and finally guilt. As I gathered myself and realized I was still breathing, still have a beautiful and supportive family, I can’t help but instead be grateful for this pickle I’m in 🙂 In a … Read More
A wise man once said, “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have” Socrates I preface that to begin our ‘stupid tax’ story on how we descended into our debt spiral that ultimately affected our family. EARLY YEARS First off, both of us were products of broken homes where there were no father … Read More
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? What’s our end goal besides being debt free? What do we have to offer out of all the thousands of personal finance blogs out there? Our simple answer to that is just our unique experiences. A LIFE CHANGING STORY FOR US I remember a particular day 25 years ago, Moira and I were just married and lived in … Read More
TIPPING POINT Okay, so first off, I hate to admit, but I’m drowning in debt, $124K plus worth, $111K plus of it in credit card, student, and car loans; and a $13K personal loan from my Mom 🙁 It was a sobering moment after I downloaded the CreditKarma app as it showed me just exactly how deep we were. The first reaction was RAGE, then despair set … Read More