It took unknowingly gaining 30 pounds in a year to get me to make a conscious change, and in the journey I’ve realized there are an insane number of parallels between weight loss and the journey to financial independence. Here are a few I learned whie losing over 50 pounds and saving over one million dollars.

There are no blessed stone tablets of personal finance truth by which you need to live your life, and any expert that tells you your choices are wrong because they’re different is not an “expert” you should listen to.

While there is a more “how-to” chapter from Ariely and Kreisler at the end of the book, the primary focus of Dollars and Sense is to illuminate patterns and principles around our human relationships with money: How we spend, why we spend, and fostering more mindful money approaches.

My condolences. Seriously, car shopping sucks. Here are a few lessons we picked up to make it less sucky, mostly focused on buying from a dealership

Anyone can be a bad-ass problem solver to save money, time, and sanity. All you have to do is condition yourself and choose your battles wisely.