You Must Be New Here, Then?

This here is Fetching Financial Freedom. Come for the dog pictures, stay for the dog pictures, but also we talk about money sometimes.

Would you like to be happier *and* spend less money at the same time? Do you have grand but mostly amorphous goals in life and have no idea where to start, but know you don’t want to spend more time in a cubicle than with your family, and also have a tendency for ridiculously long run-on sentences?

Do you also like to question conventional wisdom and come to your own conclusions? And do you wish you could slap “citation needed” stickers on random web pages? Do websites that lead with a bunch of “do you” questions make you start raising your eyebrow and wondering what they’re selling (spoiler alert: not much*)?

Welcome! You are our kind of people.

Here, have a puppy (and then check out our story below, you know, if you have time after staring at this beautiful mug):

We Retired Pretty Dang Early

At the ages of 30 and 37, to be exact, during peak pandemic. How, you might ask?

• • Two tech jobs (roughly average salaries for large US cities)
  • Modest living expenses (owning a 2000 Camry that’s Seen Better Days  and living in a 350 sqft studio apartment modest)
  • Mindful spending (For example, eating out once a month at someplace awesome, as opposed to eating out multiple times a week at meh restaurants)
  • Lazy investing (All it takes is a John Oliver video, a supplementary article, and the willpower to set up auto-investments once and never touch your accounts again until retirement)

We actually could have been retired millennials a year or two earlier, if it weren’t for an expensive Fluffster, charitable donations, and helping out family.

We’re Not Fans of the Word Retirement

We prefer “financial freedom,” which to us means the freedom to pursue your interests without having to worry about money and basic survival. We will still proudly sit at the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) table at FinCon, though!

We’re Not All About The Benjamins, Baby

Money is a tool, a means to an end. We spend money where it counts (to us), and decline to spend in areas that don’t matter to us.

We Love Solving Problems

Most posts and tools on this site were made because:

1. We want to help our future selves, and anyone else who has the same problem. (Car shopping sucks. So much. When we do eventually have to buy a replacement car, now we can save hours of time by having a buying guide to refer to)
2. We were overwhelmed by choices and felt compelled to write everything down to make sense of it. (Is there anything more maddening than all the options for cell phone service? Especially when all you want is a cheap $4/mo smartphone plan)

If any of this struck a chord, follow our journey below, and/or connect with us on social media!

*There is no amount of money that will make us shill BlueHost, but we give honest reviews with some affiliate links to useful products and companies with souls. We also always research the competition and list pros/cons to each option. Our goal for monetizing this site is to cover costs. Above and beyond that, we’ve pledged to give >=50% of profits to charity.