Month: July 2021

How to Stay Motivated to Save When Your Investments are Booming

Like so many of my posts, this is one I’m writing for myself. Because my spending is…

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Luckily, our investments are doing well (as are pretty much everyone’s at this point). Mr. ThreeYear and I have been investing most of our adult lives, and are finally at the point where our net worth increases more each year than we make.

We’ve never been particularly frugal (I haven’t, especially), so we are cruising through life at this point, eating out, buying food (food is always our Achilles Heel), planning vacations, and generally not being especially careful with our money.

Luckily, our old standby tricks of saving are helping, somewhat, but as I look at our cash reserves throughout the year, they are decreasing, precipitously, as the months roll on.

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Semi-Minimalist Home: Updated

Years ago, I published pictures of what I called our semi-minimalist home in New Hampshire. Minimalism isn’t a contest and there is no right way to undertake it, but I hesitated to call myself a full-one minimalist because I don’t believe I have gotten to the place where I eschew material items enough to warrant the full title.

Still, we practice a reduced aesthetic in our family, and while we still consume too many material goods, we regularly reflect upon and rid ourselves of extraneous belongings in order to make our home calmer and more inviting.

I gave you a tour, four and a half years ago now (wow!), of our New Hampshire home, and I thought you might be interested in seeing how we’ve organized our North Carolina home. It has taken a lot to get our home pared down, as it is a full one thousand square feet smaller than our previous home, but luckily it has more bedrooms, so we have been able to create spaces for everyone in the family (and for Mr. ThreeYear’s office!) and to make our home work. And we’re trying valiantly not to move into a bigger home, given that we would probably have to spend double to find a larger home in this crazy market.

Our home was built in 1999, so it is a bit of an older home, but it has been a great home in a solid location for three years now.

First, here is our living room.

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Eating Plant-Based: How’s It Going?

In early November, I posted about how our family had made the decision to eat plant-based. Ok, I made the decision to eat plant-based and made my family go along with me.

So how’s it going?

It’s been approximately eight months since we transitioned to a plant-based lifestyle, meaning we mainly eat veggies, fruits, and grains (lots of grains to keep full) and rarely or ever eat meat, cheese, or other dairy products. I say rarely because I have occasionally eaten ceviche and cheese, and my boys eat meat as often as they can, which is usually when we go out to eat.

How has the transition gone, and have we noticed any benefits or any negatives to this lifestyle?

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