I’ll share a few more tips in a minute, but first: Loved finding your website. It’s good to know there are fellow souls, fellow travellers on the same road.

I know the grass is always greener on the other side, but I offer this truly as a way to offer what you might find helpful: the main thing to become free is to learn to live and enjoy a rich life, on as low a budget as possible. With that, I will have succeeded in a total of 13 years of fulltime work (in about 3 years) total savings equal to 25 years’ worth…and my salary is probably 50% or 66% of yours given your field (you show me yours, I’ll show you mine), which means you can do it in even fewer years than I do, and as a fellow traveller, I’m rooting for you to succeed in just that..I’m happy for you having a higher salary, just would be sorry to not see you take full advantage of that to get to the finish line faster. Budget: you show us yours, I’ll share mine. Ok, I’ll share anyway: I live on about 18k per year. Moving to more rural or cheaper housing would lower that…But if I lived on 25k to 30k per year my “Freedom day” would be that many more years further away, towards
the horizon…Ok, off my soap box, hope this might be worthwhile to chew on for you or some readers

Other tips: got this info from a friend

http://zennioptical.com/cart/home.php

for much more affordable glasses. Now, I said, wait, what about quality…so far many months after purchase and they say it’s still good, nothing broke..and they love the look (they spent several months online looking before chosing their style)..only downside is needing a friend to measure how far apart your eyes are to nearest millimeter or two but friend says the fit on their face is very good too. I’ll see if they are still happy in 6 months and if so, I’ll consider this a good option for when eye coverage is gone after I leave fulltime work with benefits world.

Biggest expense though is general health insurance..I’ve all but decided in my case I’m going for high-deductible plan…those are about $100 per month, and you get the negotiated rates for doctors visits and bloodwork when you do pay out of pocket, so seems like a good deal versus spending many thousands for personal insurance.

Also good website with tons of links is

http://www.gallagherpress.com/pierce/index.htm

Hope above is useful and look forward to tips from you and others.

Interesting, read through alot of your articles. Agree with much of what you say. I’d like to escape the 9-5 grind but at the same time I’m aggressively trying to climb the ladder. Paradoxical.

I’ve never understood why the automobile market isn’t as standardized. I heard that toyota scion dealerships are structured so the price is WYSIWYG.

Congrats on your new car.