This Ain't Slow Travel!

Slowed down. 2007. Hanging with grandma at Little Sandy Bottom Pond, MA. 

One thing that I wanted to do once I quit my job was to slow down a little and spend some time really getting to know a location before moving onto the next. I have found over the years that I do love seeing a lot of places, but often when we travel quickly, we end up seeing a lot of the touristy or busy places and really missing some of the hidden gems. My favorite trip to Paris was after I had already been once and I had seen the Eifel Tower and the Louvre and all of the other things. I went back and spent a month there and I had the best time ever just walking along the Sienne, reading my book in the park and getting groceries (and a baguette, let's be real here) every day and eating regular meals. I also liked to spend time in a café with a café au lait and my journal, whiling away hours watching people walk by. 

2004 vs. 2019: I look exactly the same! 👵 Right?

I actually went back again with a friend and had a great time with him, as he had never been, but was more into food than attractions, so we ate a lot and it was all delicious. I went back again in November and it was rainy, but I was with a running friend and we just ran from place to place, even the Eifel Tower and Arch de Triumph and we covered a ton of ground on foot, much of which I hadn't seen before, which was also nice. He also had no expectations of food, so I took us to four different places that had duck confit so we could do a confit-off and see which one was best (PS I love duck confit). I could easily go back again and explore a different neighborhood and be totally happy. I could probably go back ten times and be totally happy and see new things each time. Speaking of, I just read Melissa's post about Monet's Garden and of course now I want to go there next time! 

I want to see all of the places, but I am not really a fan of very touristy places, and I hate waiting in line, especially when it's hot and humid (Italy-cough-Sistine Chapel) and the woman behind you keeps saying in the loudest obnoxious voice that she is from CALIFORNIA (cringe!). Gag me. The good thing about my new existence is that I can take the time to find either less touristy places, or to go to the more touristy places in the off season, and hopefully have the city or the beach to myself. Do I care about swimming every day? Not really. But I do like it if there will be things to do, so I will plan accordingly. I also want to do some hiking, and of course, there is a limited time for that due to weather, so it may take a little jiggering to get it right. 

For the last year, I have been lucky mostly. Even thought I was definitely not slow traveling, I got lucky with the seasons, and I arrived in Canada when many of the provincial parks were still closed. However, the cool thing about BC, which is where I was, is that if you can go around the closed and locked gate, you can stay in some of them! There is no running water or facilities (I had to pack out my trash) but you can use the camping pad and picnic table, which was a blessing. Also, there are sites called recreation sites that are first come first served where you can camp either for free or for a nominal fee, like $8 or $13 in some cases. The great thing is that I was there in April and May and so I always got a spot! 

Camping near Banff, Alberta

In June I went to Banff and it was not yet the high season, although by the end of my week there, it was getting more busy for sure. However, when I first arrived, some of the lakes on the Icefields Parkway were still frozen and many of the park campgrounds were still closed. I figured it out though and got to have some nice nights there. Then it was the Tour Divide, when I camped a lot or just took what I could get! I was really worried about Fourth of July weekend but I ended up being in a place where it was not an issue! 

Crowsnest Highway, Alberta

Then I got to the Midwest and it got a little harder. Not that I could not get a room somewhere but the prices were a lot steeper and there was a lot less camping. The same applied in Ontario, where a campsite was often $80 or $90!! For one night! For a tent and a bike and no services! What the H-E-double hockeysticks Ontario! In Quebec there was some camping, but it was not really on my route, so I opted to take the lazy way out and get a room, but they were not cheap! 

The Toaster House, NM

I have seen a lot of great places and met up with people and done some fun things this year. However, this is not the slow travel that I had planned. I knew this going in of course, but still, I have definitely experienced waves of decision fatigue, especially over the last couple of months, where camping was more sparse, motels were more expensive, and biking infrastructure was not always great. I am really looking forward to cutting down on costs and mental power by being able to plan things a little more ahead and also to not have each day be in a completely different place. 

Bob likes colorful art. WI

However, I am trying to hold on to the last part of THIS journey, and to remind myself  that I have done a lot and learned a lot over the past several months. I remember my first day like it was yesterday, riding away from my parents' house in the drizzle (fitting, eh?), not having a clue what I was going to see or do aside from ride my bike each day. That in itself does have a sort of freedom, and I did develop a routine of sorts. I have honed down my packing system and dialed in my grocery store hauls. I have gotten used to (but still don't love!) wearing lycra. I am more comfortable riding on the side of the highway or on a single track trail than I was six month ago. It has been a lot of fun. I am not done yet, but this part of my journey is coming to an end soon. It's kind of bittersweet, but also kind of exciting! 

Next week I will talk about what I have planned for the next leg of the journey and will talk a bit more about my travel plans for 2025. 

When you travel, how long do you stay in each place? Do you like going to the mainstream attractions or are you more of a hole-in-the-wall kind of person? Do you ever get decision fatigue? 

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here. 

Money Monday: Credit Card Hacking

Let's talk about getting to travel for free! 

But first, I realized in last week's post that I kind of jumped into the middle of the saving topic without covering the basics! However, for those of you who have not seen some of my prior posts, I do think that if you are just going to do one thing, it should be to pay into your 401k (403b/RRSP etc.) at least up to whatever your employer will match. If you don't have an employer who offers this, there are other ways to save, but I will cover them in a future post! You can find posts about a lot of these subjects on my Tips and Hacks page, but also here are a few of my favorites.

Every Quarter Counts: Three Tips for Growing Your Wealth Early 
Saving My Latte For a Rainy Day: Saving for Retirement
Make a Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents: What I Splurge and Save On 
My Last To Do List: Trusts and Other Documents 

The second thing that I think is important is to pay off all of your credit card debt. I did a review of a friend's finances once and the two things that really stood out to me were that (a) he had multiple charges for some subscriptions that he hadn't even realized because he was not looking at his statements and (b) he was not paying off his credit card in full every month! This can really add up! 

For example, if you have a balance of $5,000 with 25% interest rate and you pay it down $100 a month ($1,200 total), by the end of the year, your balance will be unchanged, at about $5,056, and you would have paid about $1,256 in interest that year. If you pay it down $200 a month ($2,400 total), your balance would be about $3,700 and you would have paid about $1,100 in interest. You would have to pay $475 per month to get it down to $0 by the end of a year, and you would still pay about $700 in interest. That is a lot of money to pay to the credit card companies! Obviously there are emergencies, but I think putting money aside for them in advance is much more prudent. 

So before I begin this post, I have to throw out the disclaimer that you should not do this if you can't pay off your card in full every month. Now let's talk about credit card hacking! If you are unfamiliar with this, it involves opening a credit card to get the welcome bonus, using the points for free stuff and possibly closing or downgrading the card later. Personally I like travel related cards, and Chase has one of the best values for that, so let's talk about that first. Side note: to my foreign friends, I am sorry, but these are US centric cards. However, please feel free to go to the bottom and let us know what card you use or any tricks you have to get the best value for your money!! 

Travel card ($600 - $1,500 bonus value) / $95 annual fee. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is currently offering $300 Chase Travel Credit + 60,000 bonus points (please verify by going to their site). What does this mean? Basically this can be worth anywhere from $600 - $1,500, depending on how you use it. Once you spend $4,000 in the first three months, you will get 60,000 points, and when you purchase any travel related items through their portal you will get up to a $300 credit. This includes the obvious things like flights, hotels and car rentals, but also has activities and cruises. 

For the points, at the very least, they can either be used to get cash back or buy gift cards at around 0.01 per point (value of $600) or you can use them to purchase travel through the portal, which is usually about $0.015 (value of $900) or you can transfer them to airline or hotel partners, which is where you can get the best bang for your buck. For example, if you transfer these points to Hyatt and use them to book a hotel room with points, the value will be about 0.02 per point ($1,200). This card does have a $95 annual fee, but it also gives you a $50 annual statement credit for hotels booked through their travel portal, so if you use this, it is only $45/year. This card also gives higher points per dollar in categories like travel and dining out and has no foreign transaction fees. 

In conclusion, if you travel at least once a year, this card may be a great fit for you! And if you don't love it after a year, you can cancel or downgrade to a no fee card. Basically with the current welcome bonus, you could stop using it after you get the bonus and still get value out of it for approximately six years (or more). If you travel a lot, you may want to go with the Chase Sapphire Reserve which gives you extra perks like lounge access and TSA Pre/Global Entry, but comes with a higher annual fee. 

Cash back card ($200 bonus value) / $0 annual fee. If you don't really travel a lot or you don't spend a lot on travel related items, you can get the Freedom Flex card, which currently has a welcome bonus of $200 after you spend $500 on purchases in the first 3 months. It gives you 5% cash back for a quarterly rotating bonus category, which includes groceries, gas, Amazon and pet services, which if you max this out, could equate to $300 per year. It has no annual fee and a 0% introductory APR. There are tons of different cash back cards with different % for different categories, so a combo of best bonus + best % for what you spend on is the way to go! 

Hotel card ($500 - $1,000 bonus value) / $99 annual fee. If you travel at least once a year and stay in at least one hotel/motel per year, I highly suggest getting a hotel credit card. I think the current best bang for your buck is either the IHG Premier or the Hyatt card. Let's talk about the IHG card. This is good for hotels like the Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and Staybridge Suites (list here). The good thing about IHG is that they are literally everywhere, versus places like Hyatt and Marriott which are sometimes pretty few and far between (or very expensive). 

It currently has a 140,000 point bonus (please verify by going to their site), which they state is up to 4 nights free, but I just booked a Holiday Inn Express in Strasbourg for ~24,000 points per night, plus with this card you get the fourth night free, so my four nights cost me 71,000 points, so this could possibly be more like eight hotel nights (or more in places like SE Asia or South America). If I would have paid for this room, it would have cost me about $500, which means that if I can book another at the same price, the welcome bonus would be worth about $1,000. In addition, you get an annual free night's certificate, which is good for up to 40,000 point hotel, which could equate to a value of about $200. This card does cost $99 per year, but if you use your certificate for a $200 hotel, it still "saves" you money! Last but not least, you get automatic Premier Elite status, which can give you perks like upgrades, early check in, late check out, and possibly a snack or a drink. Once again, if you decide this is not for you after a year or two, you can downgrade to a no fee card with no ding on your credit, or you can cancel if you choose. 

One last thing I want to talk about is a card that does not currently offer a bonus so is not really one for "hacking," but could be a great option for people who pay rent and that is the Bilt Rewards card. Please note that I have not used this myself, so you will have to do your own research. However, my understanding is that you can use it to pay your rent with no credit card transaction fees, even if you normally pay by check (they will issue the check for you) and you will get one point per dollar spent on rent plus extra points for other categories on rent day (the first of the month). You also get points for travel and other categories and it has no annual fee. You can then use the points for free travel, to pay part of your rent or for gym memberships etc. FYI currently a RT flight to Europe in Feb would cost about 40,000 points. 

Have you fallen asleep yet? No? Great, because one other thing I want to add is that if you do travel, many of these credit cards also come with added perks like rental car collision (LDW) insurance (normally $10 - $30 per day), travel trip delay or lost luggage protection, purchase protection, roadside assistance (~ $99/year value), TSA-Pre (~$100 value every four years), cell phone protection (~$75/year value) and more. These extras may cover the cost of your fee in some cases! 

Have you ever done any credit card hacking? Do you already have any of these cards? What is your favorite credit card and why? 

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here. 

Money Monday: Easy Ways to Save or Make Money

You know I like a good bargain just like the rest of you, and I am frugal to a fault in some people's eyes. However, I don't think that I give up quality in many cases, and I do prioritize quality in others. For example, I don't need to pay an extra $50 for a hotel with free breakfast when I would rather hit the streets and buy breakfast along the way or have a snack of peanut butter and a bagel in my room. Or, I don't need to eat three meals out when traveling, when I can just as easily eat a bagel and peanut butter in my room and then splurge on lunch. I guess the key is that you have to be willing to eat a bagel and peanut butter! Here are a few other ways to save without sacrificing happiness. 

Be aware. This is the number one thing in my opinion. This kind of goes along with culling your subscriptions, which I talk about below, but I think that you should take a look at what you are spending each month or quarter or year and then change what needs to be changed. Even if you think that nothing needs to be changed, I think it is important to know what you are spending your money on instead of just letting it all go out the door without thinking. This is easy enough as a lot of our banks will let us add external accounts so we can track our spending, but I use Fidelity's Full View. This is free for customers, and if you are not already a customer, you can open a cash management account, which is what I did. 

Open a high interest savings account. The reason I opened a cash management account at Fidelity is twofold. First, they reimburse all ATM fees, so when you are traveling abroad or are going to be in small towns where you may not find your regular bank, you can withdraw money with ease. I rarely withdraw cash, but when I do, it is nice to just be able to get out a little bit and not worry about the $9+ fees that my brick and mortar bank sometimes charges me each time. I was often getting out more (too much) cash because I did not want to go back again for another withdrawal.  

The second reason I did this is also due to their high interest rate. You can either leave your funds in cash, which will get you about 2.44% as of the time of this writing, or you can buy a money market fund, which is currently yielding about 4.50%. If you have money sitting in a checking or regular savings account, I highly suggest you move some of it to a higher yielding account. If you don't like Fidelity, there are also high yield savings accounts online like Marcus or Citizens which also will give you a better rate (FYI: currently my main brick and mortar bank checking account has 0% and my savings has about 0.03%, vs. the high yield accounts, which are around 4.0% - 4.5%.) It literally takes two minutes to open and maybe one or two days to transfer the funds over to a new account. 

Change your phone plan. People, we are past the era where we need to be paying $75 or $80 per month for a cell phone plan. There are so many plans out there now that are cheaper, and they are not worse quality! I personally have Google Fi (this is not a sponsored post, but if you click this link, you can get $60 off) and I have had it for years now and I do not miss my expensive AT&T plan! I was paying $80 per month, and now I pay about $80 for myself and two other people. Before I added the family members, my bill was about $30/month. Google Fi also triangulates between T-Mobile and US Cellular, so it will pick up the one that has the best service and use that. Also, it works internationally with little to no extra charge. When we traveled to Mexico, a friend of mine who had Verizon paid $10 a day to have international roaming, therefore adding about $100 to his bill that month. I paid NOTHING. 

I don't know all about the other plans, but I think Mint Mobile has a deal for $15 a month with unlimited data. Also, the All The Hacks podcast did a more thorough review of all of them if you want to learn more. However, the bottom line is that you pay per GB if you don't use a lot of data, or you can get unlimited data if you need it. Most of us are at home or work most of the day, where we have WiFi, and when that is the case, you do not use any data. I use less than 1GB of data every month. 

After reading this post by CCR, I am adding an addition to this in that if you are traveling internationally, even if you have the expensive Verizon plan, you do not need to pay the $10 per day international fee. Most newer phones now support e-SIM cards, which means that all you need to do is download an app (I use Airalo and if you use my referral code KYRIA0085, you will get $3 off your first purchase). From home you can load up some GB of data and then as soon as you step off the plane, your data will work. Easy-peasy. If you have an older phone, you can also get a real SIM card at most airports or city centers. You can then download things like maps, podcasts and audiobooks so that they can be used offline, use any streaming while in WiFi land and you will barely use any data on the road.

Speaking of referral codes. Before buying most things or signing up for anything, I check Reddit to see if there is anyone offering a voucher or a referral code for it. (I also use cash back apps, which I will discuss in a future MM post). A lot of the time, you will get a discount and probably the person referring you will get something too. Sometimes it can be as high as $60 off, like my Google Fi code, or sometimes it is a % off, or a discount on your first purchase, like Airalo. And I am sure you yourself have referral codes for things you use; you can post them on this site and if someone clicks on it, you may get a bonus too. I have received statement credits on my Google Fi account of $600 (the max allowed) by doing this! You can find my referral codes on my travel tips and hacks page if you are interested in getting a discount or giving me some extra points for something you were going to get anyway. :)

Cull your subscriptions, or alternate them. I know that it is easy to just set it and forget it, but do we really need to have four or five different streaming subscriptions at the same time? What if you make a list of which shows you like on each platform and then alternate one every two or three months? This does require a little organization, but it is worth it. Also, see above; maybe your library app has the show you like! Also, often the channel itself will show the show for free; for example, ABC has the option to watch past seasons of Grey's Anatomy right on the ABC website for free. And who doesn't love Grey's Anatomy? 

Additionally, things like Amazon subscriptions can pile up (hello TP and cat food, I am looking at you!) and so it is worth reviewing them every quarter to see if you really need more of the items on your list. I make a point to review my credit card purchases every month to see if there is anything out of whack, but if you don't have time for that, I think at least once a quarter is a good idea. Even if it is something like a credit card fee on a card that you meant to cancel, you can call them and often get it removed retroactively. And...if even once a quarter is too much, there are apps like Rocket Money or Pocket Guard that will do the work for you, and will even suggest or negotiate better deals for things like your cable or phone bill. (disclaimer: I have not tried either of these apps myself) 

During NoBloPoMo, this will be a once a week feature, so stay tuned for next time, when I talk about credit card hacking! Also, if there is something you want to learn about, or any questions you have, let me know! 

Do you keep track of your spending? If so, what tips do you have? What phone plan do you have, how much data (non WiFi) do you use each month, and how much do you pay per month? Do you have a high yield savings account? 

This post is part of NaBloPoMo. You can find the rest of my posts for this challenge here. You can find the list of participants and their information here. 

Slow Travel: Week One

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend and maybe even are out doing something fun with the kiddos this week! I am feeling much more motivated and organized than I did last week! A quick update before I jump in, just to let people know how everything is going; it is going well. I have started the grand depart for the Bikepacking USA and Canada Adventure and am currently spending some time with some friends in Oregon. But I don't want to just talk about all of my bicycling woes all the time (although I did used to do that a lot with running!) so I will probably put out a bike centric post every few weeks or once a month. 

Currently here

Also, I am rounding up questions for future posts, and I need your help. If you don't mind, can you please go here and ask a few? I will sing your praises in all future posts if you do!

Now onto the beef. My first week of retirement was spent at my parents' house. So basically, I am living with my parents again. Yup. In a van, down by the river. The fun thing is that my brother also showed up to help my Dad with a job and so it was actually the whole family there at the same time. We all lived under one roof for several days and did not even kill each other even though maybe we wanted to sometimes. 

So long sucka!

Seriously though, it was so "real life." You know how sometimes when you are with family or friends for a special occasion, or only one or two days, you feel the need to behave, aka hang out and entertain and do the things you may not want to do? Well this was just regular days, with each of us flitting in and out on our own timelines, while still spending time to eat breakfast and dinner together most days. It's those low pressure visits that are really more my style. I love being able to read my book even though other people are in the room and not feel rude, like I am using up precious time. My Mom would nap, and I would read, or go for a walk, or go and play with my bike, or pick my nose. It was great. 

Spring has sprung!

I also accomplished a few things. Thanks to all of you, I got out of my reading rut! I did not mention these books on my last post as I was not finished with them yet, but I can also add A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (4.5 stars), Then She Was Gone (4 stars), The Cover Story (3.5 stars) and Die With Zero (3 stars) to my March reads and none of them sucked! In case you think 3 stars means I did not like it, that is not true; it means I thought it was good but not great, which is what I would say a 4 is. 

I also now have some great songs for my Pick Me Up playlist! Thanks to all of you for contributing! There were some great adds, such as System of a Down from my friend E, who likes bands with names like Dead Fetus, so this was actually a very tame suggestion from him (I also added some White Zombie, Deftones and Korn, which all remind me of a certain time in my life, although I do not listen them as often any more.) I know many of you (including my parents) are cringing right now, but never fear, I also added Maneater, both the Hall and Oates (thanks Nicole!) and the Nelly Furtado versions, and of course a little bit of Pitbull. It was so fun hearing all of the different suggestions and so many of them were so different. I have stopped in my tracks several times over the last few days to check my phone to see what the song was. 

Case in point, the song Rasputin by Boney M. was suggested to me by my brother. I was on a run and I wanted to run on my tiptoes when the song came on and so I stopped running to see who it was. Turns out, this band is from the 70s and when I just now went to YouTube to get the link, I saw the video, and they are so groovy! You cannot help but want to dance. Also, if you listen to the lyrics, it talks about how the Russian Rasputin was feared by all but apparently was a great womanizer! It made me giggle. 

He ruled the Russian land and never mind the Czar

But the kazachok he danced really wunderbar

In all affairs of state he was the man to please

But he was real great when he had a girl to squeeze

Other than collecting books and songs, I knocked a bunch of things off of my list. Due to working in the finance industry, we were required to keep any investment accounts with our company, so the first thing I did was open new accounts and have my accounts transferred over. I also rolled over my 401k, redid all the paperwork (transfer on death designations, beneficiaries, etc.) and had to reinvest some of the accounts due to items not transferring over. I had to change my address on a buttload of things, even though most of my stuff is paper, and this of course caused issues with opening the new accounts because not only am I now not working, but what IS my mailing address? It turned out to be easier to just put my old address on the application and then call them to tell them that I need to change my mailing address. However, I had already forwarded my mail by then so I really did not want anything going to my old address!

 I also opened a new credit card that I will use to pay the contractor who is working on the house so I can get some points out of the deal (yay!), even though the points value will be a slight fraction of what I will be spending (boo!). I also sold my car, which was fairly easy, except the dudes showed up about three and a half hours later than the 6:00 pm appointment, which as you know, is way past my bedtime. Luckily the family stayed up with me and played Quirkle with me to try to keep me awake. I even finished my taxes and did lots of fiddling with Bob (wow, that sounds kind of kinky, but it's just #bobthebluebike)! 🚲

Bob is raring to go.

The one thing I left for last was health insurance! I know waiting until the last minute is not a luxury that everyone can afford, but I am still dragging my feet. Most companies will honor your health insurance until the end of the month that you resigned. In our case, we actually get 20 days, which works out better as long as you quit after the 10th, which I did. So I basically have until April 4th to decide. My conundrum is this. Most USA insurance will not cover other countries, so you would need to get travel insurance for the period you would be out of the country. Most international (or nomad) insurance only covers the USA in case of extreme emergency or for a very short period, like 30 days. There are other options, but I am still looking into them. The bottom line is that any of these options are cheaper than Cobra, but the coverage is hit and miss. For example, for Cigna Global, they will only cover inpatient hospital visits, unless you tack on an extra $150 per month for outpatient. Anyway, I will probably leave it right until the last minute. Anybody have any input here? 

I am also still working on getting the house ready for sale, and could probably write an entire post about that, so I will save it for later! 

Have you ever played Quirkle? Anybody have any good postal service/mail snafu/moving stories? If you are married, and you changed your name, in how many different places did you have to update things? (I feel this would be way harder than just updating an address, but YOU TELL ME!) 

Saving My Latte For a Rainy Day

I quit going to Starbucks a while back; perhaps you remember the "Latte Factor" article that I wrote back in June. To sum it up, some guy** on TV suggested saving your $5 per day that you would normally use on coffee (or whatever your poison happens to be) and putting it into savings instead (see here for more info).

I was already a penny pinching miser before seeing his little blurb on TV, but after that I became even more of one. I stopped going to Starbucks all together, which saved me about 5 dollars (or more) a day and I also stopped eating out for lunch (another 10 dollars a day), which all total saved my pocketbook about 100 dollars a week. This is 400 dollars a month, 4800 dollars a year that could be going towards something more productive.

Not only did this save me scads of money, but I have found it has helped me in many other ways as well. First of all, one grande non-fat mocha has 300 calories, about a hundred of which are from fat. This is crazy; it is about the same as a McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese or a medium side of fries! As I mentioned in my "Snack Attack" article, the average female (150 lbs) needs about 2000 calories per day (and that is IF she is semi-active). So, cutting out 300 useless calories per day is not a bad idea.

Second and probably more important for the long term is the fact that I now drink less coffee. I used to have...a cup or two at my hotel before going to work, a Starbucks around 8 and then...maybe another cup of gross office coffee later in the day. Now I make a pot in the morning and drink one cup from it while driving to work. And that is all.

So, thanks to the Latte Factor guy** for not only allowing me to "Retire Rich" but also for saving my stomach from the iron grip of caffine and for saving my ass (from widening)!!


**his name may or may not be...David Bach**

The Latte Factor

“Save now. Fewer trips to the café now can lead to more vacations later,” says Fidelity.

“Figure out your ‘latte factor’, be it your frequent lunches out, your fetish for new shoes, or your everyday coffee, and minimize it or cut it out entirely,” says the man on CNBC.

This seems to be a common theme with the retirement gurus. Skip the coffee, save a few extra dollars for later. It makes sense, right? 5 dollars a day for coffee can lead to an extra 1500 dollars plus in your savings account. To me it does make sense, and to one friend whose dad’s motto is “save today, spend tomorrow” but not everyone agrees with us.

I spoke with one friend who when I suggested she start saving money now, said, “Why worry about later all the time when you should be thinking about having fun right now?” At first I thought, “Wow, she is so naïve! She is going to be screwed later!” Then I spoke to my Dad, who was the one that first taught me how to save. He said, “Sure, cut out your latte now and then, but don’t deprive yourself of all fun now by always worrying about later.”

Dad saves the day again. Leave it to him to impart some words to the wise regarding finances. Save now, sure, but have fun in the meantime. What is the point of saving all your life if you are not going to get to enjoy it? I am not saying that I am going to die tomorrow, but…what if I did? Would I be happy with my life so far? Would I wish that I had blown a little more money on shoes instead of scrimping and saving for my non-existent retirement?

No way! I am going to do it all! I am going to have fun now. AND save for later. It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

My Very Own Pot of Gold

Last night I couldn’t sleep and I was watching a show on CNBC on how to “Retire Rich”. There were some good tips and it got me thinking a little about whether or not I am following the correct path. Will I be able to retire rich?

According to the show, 70 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Seventy percent! That is a lot! And of the remaining 30 percent who are not living that way, are they investing and saving wisely?

So today I went to Google to find out more about the subject. According to The Motley Fool, it is simple to retire rich. You can do it in five easy steps and here they are:
1. Start now.
2. Save more.3. Take full advantage of employer contributions.4. Allocate your assets to make bank in the stock market.5. Don't rely on someone else to do it for you.

Ha! So it is easy! Then why aren’t we doing it? I think it is because many people are not being educated about this early on in our lives.

Not only did my father teach me to work hard and to put my money in the bank while I was in high school, but I also got much of the above advice when I was 18. I had just started a new job where they had pretty good benefits. At that time, they would match 50 cents to my dollar, up to 6 percent. A good family friend told me to invest 10 % of my paycheck (at this time, I was making about 5 dollars an hour). I wouldn’t miss the money in the long run, it was being taken out pre-tax and my company would match 6 percent of it. What did I have to lose? He also suggested putting part of it in high risk and part of it in low risk (at the time I had no idea what that meant). Luckily, I listened to him. Thanks Mike! Ten years later, I am still investing 10 % of my paycheck and I have built up a fairly good portfolio.

There is still a lot that I have to learn. I am still hesitant to put too much money in the stock market, I sometimes pick mutual funds with the “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” method, I haven’t rolled over my 401K, I am scared to buy property and I am quite conservative, even for my age. However, I think that, little by little, I am starting to learn what it takes to…retire rich.

Do you have what it takes?