Hi there! I assume you’re here because you’ve been thinking about early retirement/financial independence. Maybe you got introduced to this topic later in life, didn’t start working or saving until your 30’s, or live in a high-cost-of-living (HCOL) area and don’t find other FIRE experiences and stories quite relatable. Neither did I. I started working in my late 20’s with no savings and live in one of the most expensive areas in the country (Southern California). That’s why I started this blog to document my experiences, findings and “experiments” on the path to financial independence and investigate its feasibility in a HCOL area: I’m still a little skeptical, why?
- Most FI folks live in LCOL and/or retire in a LCOL: not the case for us, we’ve lived in HI and CA and don’t plan on changing that
- Most FI folks decide not to have kids, understandably so because of the costs and setbacks to early retirement. We plan on having kids
- I’m not in tech and I don’t have a 6 figure salary, neither does my spouse
Just to mention a few reasons.
We’re here to add a few more flavors to the mix too: eco-friendliness and sustainability. We’ll explore environmental and financial frugality by using engineering and creative tools (#nerdalert) and methods like Design Thinking, Decision Making Matrix, etc in order to optimize our day-to-day decisions. Hence, “experiments”! I promise to be realistic in reporting my findings, and we’ll use the growth mindset to learn from our observations and design our way forward!
In a nutshell, Our Ecomoney is an effort to explore ways to achieve financial independence and early retirement with a focus on our environment and sustainability (i.e. being a good citizen of planet earth). I know, those aren’t always mentioned together. That’s another reason this blog is here.
We’ll attempt to make responsible financial and eco-friendly decisions as responsible ecomonks, while ecomonkeying around with ideas on how to make it fun and enjoyable.
So, I hope you enjoy being a part of this experiment and share your stories with us.