March 2019 - THE THREE YEAR EXPERIMENT

The Golden Rule of Building Wealth

Everyone wants the magic formula, the hat trick, the secret, to becoming wealthy. And no, it’s not “you attract to you what you think about.”

The golden rule of building wealth is simple. It’s so simple, it’s been repeated ad infinitum by the personal finance community, financial planners, and people who actually have wealth.

It’s been systematically attacked, hacked, subjugated, by practically every other entity in our society.

Ready? Here it is: spend less than you earn.

Oh, and we can’t forget the corollary: invest the difference.

Boom. We’re done.

Oh, if only, dear reader. If only it were that simple. If only I hadn’t felt dread course up and down my body yesterday as I calculated how much we’ve gone over budget in March. If only Payday Loan Centers didn’t sprout like fire ants across the small rural communities of this country.

If only we didn’t have the hear the siren call of advertisements fill our every waking moment, to peruse the endless streams of social media promising you’ll be better, faster, and stronger, if you click here and buy it now.

Spending less than you earn, as simple as it sounds, is one of the hardest things to do as a human being living in our modern (especially first world) society. It involves saying “no” one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand times per day to what can feel like everyone and everything around you. It involves staying true to a distant goal for a distant self, living like you’re in a different economic class, developing copious amounts of will power over time, and not letting it all fall apart if your life becomes unglued, through death, divorce, or some other tragedy.

It sometimes feels like an impossible task. And yet, people accumulate wealth every day. People save; people retire; they pay off their mortgages.

In my experience, as a reformed spend-a-holic, we’ve been able to slowly accumulate wealth in the face of all these temptations because of a couple of behaviors that have allowed us to practice “The Golden Rule of Building Wealth” while still existing in a consumerist society.

8 Ways to Save Money on Summer Camps

While it’s not yet time for summer, we are starting to think about summer plans, and which summer camps our boys will attend. One of the things we’ve tried to do is give our kids fun camp experiences without breaking the bank, especially since I’m a teacher and don’t have an income during the summer. Here are my favorite ways to save on summer camps.

For our family, summer is a time to be together and visit family, since I’m a teacher and am off during the summers. However, when I worked during the summer, camp planning was a big preoccupation this time of year. The massive expense of camp was a big concern, because I needed a safe, fun place for my kids to spend their days during the summer weekdays. But camps are pricey. Here are some ideas for ways to decrease the cost of camps for your kids this summer.

Research “hidden gems”

Three years ago, a friend told me about a camp in a neighboring town. It was a one-week day camp held at the local airport, and it was completely free! The kids who attended were able to fly with local pilots and learn the basics of aviation, at no cost. The camp was started as an initiative for this lower-income community, but anyone could participate. In subsequent years, they increased the cost to $40 for the week, still an incredible deal for a camp that takes kids flying.

The camp wasn’t well publicized and I only heard about it through several friends who lived in the community. We put it on our list for this summer as this is the first year both boys would be able to participate.

There are lots of day camp opportunities available for little or no cost, but they’re not always easy to find. Sometimes, they’re advertised in local newspapers, on town websites, or other out-of-the-way places. I let friends know that I’m looking for interesting, low-cost opportunities for my kids so they’ll pass on any info. Continue reading “8 Ways to Save Money on Summer Camps”

Teacher on FIRE: Guest Post on Principal FI

Today, I’m excited to share a guest post I wrote on the new financial independence site for educators, Principal FI.

Principal FI is an educator as is his wife, and he writes for the education community about pursuing financial independence as a teacher or administrator.

Most of us see education as a profession with low pay, but Thomas Stanley found that this profession was one of the best (along with engineers) at converting their incomes into wealth. In fact, he found that educators were much better than so-called high-profile jobs like doctors and lawyers at converting their income into net worth. One of his hypotheses was that educators didn’t spend money on high-status items like cars, clothing, and housing, because no one expected them to be rich so they didn’t have to impress anyone.

I found this to be true at my old schools. The teachers I worked with tended to have frugal habits like bringing their lunches to school each day, driving older cars, and wearing everyday clothing.

So when I saw Principal FI’s Educators on FI/RE Series, I asked to tell my story. The blog features educators who are pursuing the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement, and I thought I’d add my (somewhat atypical) educator story to the blog.

Here’s the post:

Tell us about you.

Hi! I’m Laurie, a 39-year old personal finance blogger, ESL teacher, and mom of 2. My family and I decided, almost three years ago, that we wanted to move from New Hampshire to be closer to family and have more freedom to travel. So we’ve been working on doubling our net worth and transitioned to remote jobs so we could move to North Carolina and travel extensively during our summers. I blog about our imperfect journey at The Three Year Experiment.

Lessons from a $145 Mistake

For the past month, Mr. ThreeYear and I have been working on a big DIY project in our front yard.

When we moved into our house in North Carolina in July, it was the height of summer, so it was way too hot to get started on any lawn projects.

Unfortunately, though, our front yard had some very-neglected bushes and grass that we needed to do something with.

So, in late February, we finally began “Project Make the Front Yard Look Decent.”

The first thing we did was dig up some of the neglected, scraggly bushes. I got two dug up, realized how difficult manual labor was, and promptly called some yard people to give me a quote.

I had someone come out to give me a quote, and it was a fairly reasonable charge to remove the bushes and reseed the grass, but after he gave me the initial estimate, he never returned my texts. It was the same with several other yard crews.

Apparently, the job wasn’t big enough for anyone in the landscaping industry, during a very busy time of year.

So, Mr. ThreeYear and I decided we’d do it ourselves and save the money.

To compress a weeks-long process into a sentence, it was very difficult to dig up the bushes.

They were huge, first of all. A massive row of bushes that stood chest-high on me. First, we cut off the limbs, to make it easier to get to the root balls. Then, we spent hours systematically shoveling under the roots, cutting side-growing roots with heavy-duty clippers, and pulling the root ball back and forth to loosen it up.

Why Simplifying is So Hard

Ahh, simplicity. So simple, yet so illusive.

The simplicity paradigm, of course, is that the less we have, do, and schedule, the better off we are. Less really is more.

Nowadays this truism is something like common knowledge. Our lives are inundated with so much stimulation, consumer goods, and social media that we somehow know we’re due for a step back. To borrow Joshua Becker’s quote, “Busy is the new Fine.” When I ask a friend how she’s doing, of course I’m going to hear how crazy busy she is with her kiddos. I might hear, “Fine. Busy!” But that word is usually thrown in somewhere. Badge of honor in our modern world.

I don’t say that to people (more on that below), but I know what she means. Just scrolling through my feed and reading seven articles on different important topics leaves me feeling stuffed. Can you relate?

Back in the ’90s, when I was growing up, and busy was not yet the new fine, I was busy. I share genetics with a father we affectionately call The Renaissance Man. He is always learning something new, going on a trip, picking up a new hobby. I, too, wanted to experience everything.I was a child who wanted to sign up for every after school activity. In high school, I was going to be the editor of the yearbook and the drum major of the band, amongst myriad other activities, until my parents called fowl.

In the ’90s, with cheap plastic goods beginning to flood in from Asia, our homes were filled with stuff. Kids got toys outside of Christmas and birthdays. I had a lot of toys. So many that I would fill my piggy toy chest to overflowing, and still have only started cleaning up my toys. The beginning of our over-consumption and over-scheduled lives didn’t start overnight.

How We Paid Off Our Debt, Twice: Guest Post on Financial Pilgrimage

When I saw a note on a forum about a new series featuring young families getting out of debt, I smiled. Our family has definitely achieved the former, but I don’t think we qualify for the latter at this point. After all, I’m almost 40, Mr. ThreeYear is a ripe old 45, and our kids are no longer so young. At 11 and 8, they definitely qualify for the middle-elementary category.

However, I think our story has a lot to teach young families with debt to pay off. After all, we started our debt payoff in a typical fashion, by following Dave Ramsey’s baby steps. But we took more debt on, after we’d paid off our original debt, learned how to pay off debt twice, and have somehow still managed to save a large net worth and reach our goals of location independence.

Financial Pilgrimage is a blog about a young family who is also in the process of paying off their debt, including their mortgage. They focus on advice for young families, those who are just getting started, have young kids, or both.

Here’s our Debt Payoff Story (times two):

1) Start by telling us about yourself. Please include any details you feel comfortable sharing about your family, job situation, income level, and amount of debt paid.

I’m Laurie and I’ll start by saying that my family is probably a few years past the “young” stage. I’m 39, my husband is 45, and our boys are now 11 and 8. When we started our debt repayment journey, though, we only had one son who was about 18 months old.

Don’t worry, it didn’t take us ten years to pay off all our debt! But we had to learn some lessons twice, so I thought our story would be a great case study for young families.

When we started our debt repayment journey, my husband worked for a Fortune 50 company in marketing, I had just become a stay-at-home mom, and we were adjusting to life as new parents.

It was July 4^th, 2008, and my husband had been laid off six months before. It was the middle of the housing crisis, and his company had been hit hard. They laid off thousands of employees.

At first, we were frantic—he’d received a 3-month severance, but what would we do after that? After all, I was no longer working, we had a mortgage, and we now had a young son to support.

Hate Your Job? Don’t Worry; You’re Not Wasting Your Time

Yesterday Paula Pant posted a quote on Instagram:

Okay, let’s analyze this one for a minute.

I know that this could have easily been a throwaway quote designed to inspire people to find their dream jobs.

But this quote bothered me in a real and visceral way.

Here’s why.

Let’s say you’re currently in a job you hate. According to this little pearl of wisdom, your life right now has no value. You are doing absolutely nothing of worth. There is nothing that you can glean from this job to help you with the rest of your life.

I call bull on that.

Curbside Composting: Guest Post on Tread Lightly, Retire Early

I don’t talk a lot about environmental matters on this blog, but getting better with money has definitely made me think more about making waste, and my family’s impact on the earth over the years.

Angela from Tread Lightly, Retire Early offered to share our story about bringing curbside compost to our town in New Hampshire and I thought other people would want to hear how we got it set up.

Curbside compost is a service that picks up your leftover food scraps and composts them for you in an industrial facility, then brings compost back to you. It was great for my family because we could compost all of our food scraps, even meat, without worrying about bears, or composting during the winter.

Angela’s blog focuses on ways you can lessen your impact on the planet and create financial independence. Check out her personal finance roundups on Wednesdays and her Frugal Five features on Fridays, in addition to posts about the intersection of the environment and finances.

Are You the 1%?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the dumb luck of being born in one of the world’s wealthiest countries. It reminded me of this post, which is one of my favorites. Every once in a while, I find it really helpful to go drone-like and fly up above my privileged circumstances to reflect on how fortunate I and my family really are. Videos like the one below help me to take a few minutes to put things in perspective.

Last night, my son asked me to replay a video I’d shown him last year. It’s called If the World Were 100 People. Maybe you’ve seen it. One of my professors in my Master’s course introduced me to the video last Spring.

If you’ve got two and a half minutes, it’s a great watch.

The company that developed the video, GOOD Magazine, used research from the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook to give us an idea of what our world would look like if its almost 7.5 billion inhabitants were reduced to a mere 100 people. 100 is a number we can wrap our brains around fairly easily. We all know 100 people. We’re probably friends with 100 people. Continue reading “Are You the 1%?”

How We Stacked Financial Wins to Grow Our Net Worth

Ten years ago, in 2009, we had just started getting paying off our $38,000 in debt and had very little savings to speak of. We had a 30-year home mortgage on our house in Atlanta, and because we’d only put 5% down and the market tanked so bad, we had negative equity in it.

I thought we’d never get our debt paid off, but we finally did, in December of 2009. For awhile, we were only focused on building up an emergency fund, and didn’t think about our net worth at all.

But once we found the FIRE community and began to learn more about personal finance, we wanted to grow our net worth and become financially free.

Here’s what we did to stack our financial wins and grow our net worth to the level it is now.

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