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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

3 Years with Fiery Millennials

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3 years.

3 years ago this happened.

Screen Shot 2018 03 13 at 6.29.03 AM
Actu­al screen­shot from Face­book 3 years ago

3 years of late nights, frus­tra­tions, inter­act­ing with awe­some peo­ple, and writ­ing count­less arti­cles. Ok, it’s actu­al­ly 180 arti­cles. I counted.

Fiery Mil­len­ni­als turns 3 today! It’s been quite the jour­ney and I would­n’t trade it for any­thing in the world. Although I could be tempt­ed by a Tesla.…

In hon­or of 3 years of me spilling my thoughts on the key­board, I thought I’d do some­thing a bit out of the norm here and let you, my won­der­ful read­ers, steer the con­ver­sa­tion today. I’ve been ask­ing for feed­back and ques­tions the past few weeks in prepa­ra­tion. Thank you to every­one that reached out with feed­back (still look­ing for that as well — gwen at fierymil­len­ni­als dot com)! I sin­cere­ly appre­ci­ate it and have been work­ing on incor­po­rat­ing that feed­back into future posts.

Before we get to the ques­tions, I have a few fun pic­tures and stats for you since I know a lot of peo­ple like to see how things are going behind the scenes.

Views

year views
I am beyond thrilled I’ve already matched my sec­ond year of traf­fic only 3 months into the year. I think it would be incred­i­bly amaz­ing if I could say the same about 2017 next year! Last year I was at 50% of the pre­vi­ous year’s traf­fic which means this blog has picked up speed in a big way. I am so grateful!

Total views for the life of the blog clock in at rough­ly 352,039. I say rough­ly because that num­ber only goes up! I feel pret­ty great with that num­ber when I com­pare it to my pre­vi­ous stats. I know one blog­ger who’s already had that num­ber of views this year. I’m not going to let that get me down though. I’m only com­par­ing myself to myself! Com­par­i­son is the theft of joy, after all.

Demographics

Just over 50% of my read­ers are under the age of 34. I’m not sur­prised to see so many youn­gins here, after all.…. that’s who my mes­sage res­onates the most! I am sur­prised to see a sol­id amount is made up of peo­ple old­er than 34 (which is not very old. you’re young at heart!). I real­ly appre­ci­ate hav­ing old­er read­ers as well, as some of the advice and com­ments offered have changed the course of my life dras­ti­cal­ly. Y’all rock!

Of lit­tle sur­prise to me was the phys­i­cal loca­tion of my read­ers. The vast major­i­ty of read­ers are from (drum­roll, please) the US, Cana­da, and the U.K. That makes per­fect sense as native Eng­lish speak­ers will have the eas­i­est time under­stand­ing the blog, and a greater chance of being able to emu­late what I’m doing (tax laws, sim­i­lar mar­kets, etc). Round­ing out the top 5 were Aus­tralia and Germany.

Wher­ev­er you are.….. THANK YOU FOR READING! MUCH LOVE!

Now.….. onto the questions!

Q&A with Gwen

Why do you pay the util­i­ties on the house rather than the renters?

I pay most of the util­i­ties on the house. How­ev­er, my ten­ants do pay their own elec­tric and gas bills. I cov­er the water, sew­er, trash, and main house elec­tric bills, as those aren’t metered and there­fore I can’t real­ly charge them for their own usage. One day I would love to split the water up! But it’s not a pri­or­i­ty right now.

How did you meet your boyfriend?

erik and iThis is my favorite sto­ry! We actu­al­ly met here, through our blogs. My boyfriend is a fel­low FI blog­ger and pod­cast­er. If you want to learn more about our sto­ry, check out the pod­cast we record­ed about it. It just came out today so it’s hot off the press 😉

How has the jour­ney been since the being of the blog to where you are now?

Long, ardu­ous, won­der­ful, frus­trat­ing, amaz­ing… I could go on. I’ve put a great deal of work into this blog and have reaped so much. I’ve met amaz­ing peo­ple, trav­eled to some incred­i­ble places, and have learned many lessons.

I would not be who I am today with­out this blog and the oppor­tu­ni­ties that have stemmed from it.

What’s next in your plan after you relocate?

Work! I will be work­ing on set­ting up a com­plete­ly new way of life, one of an entre­pre­neur and artist. I want to spend my days mak­ing mon­ey for myself and cre­at­ing stained glass masterpieces.

Are you hit­ting pause on FIRE?I’m not hit­ting pause, just shift­ing my focus. Instead of focus­ing on accu­mu­lat­ing a stash of mon­ey for ear­ly retire­ment, I’ll be focus­ing on cre­at­ing a stream of pas­sive income. And some not so pas­sive income for good mea­sure (for now).

What do you plan to do now that you are retiring?

As much as I’d love to pre­tend I’m retir­ing at the ripe old age of 27, I’m real­ly not. To me, that would mean I would be capa­ble of liv­ing off the stash and not hav­ing to work. I am not there yet. I have a decent chunk saved up, but that’s pret­ty much all tomor­row mon­ey. I still have to fig­ure out how to make it until then.

Do you think you’ll ever go back to W‑2 work again?

God, I hope not. I might just be burnt out right now, but I’m sick of office pol­i­tics and sti­fling cor­po­rate poli­cies. Right now, going back to W‑2 work is my worst case sce­nario. Not a bad worst case sce­nario to have!

Where do you find such cheap health insurance?

I pay about $50/month for health insur­ance right now. Unfor­tu­nate­ly that will change at the end of March 2018 when I quit. I am look­ing at pay­ing ~$250/mo for insur­ance off the exchange in Min­neso­ta for the rest of 2018. Not as good a price and nowhere near as good of cov­er­age, but that’s life.

What is one thing peo­ple can do right now to bring them clos­er to finan­cial independence?

I think this is my sec­ond favorite ques­tion in this ses­sion! I’d say the one thing peo­ple can do RIGHT NOW is to start track­ing your spend­ing. Yes, you can always earn more mon­ey, but if you don’t know where it’s going you’ll be doing the finan­cial equiv­a­lent of climb­ing a sand dune. It’s def­i­nite­ly doable, it will just take more effort.

I’m not say­ing you need to go all extreme with the track­ing and cut out every­thing you pos­si­bly can. That makes life mis­er­able. Track your expens­es, trim what is rea­son­able, save as much as you can, and make more mon­ey! Do that and you’ll be ahead of most your peers in no time.

Conclusion

Thank you to every­one that sub­mit­ted a ques­tion today! I had a ton of fun answer­ing the ques­tions. I have no idea what I’ll do for my 4th blo­giver­sary post, but I have 365 days to wor­ry about it. I think 2018 is going to be the biggest year here on Fiery Mil­len­ni­als yet! Buck­le up folks!

Thanks for read­ing! If you have more ques­tions, I’d be hap­py to answer them in the com­ments below 🙂

Reader Interactions

Comments

  5. Very cool, Gwen — big con­grats on three years and all the great things that have hap­pened since you took that first step with this site! Here’s to many more excit­ing, wild, and fun oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead for you!

    Reply

  6. Hap­py Blo­giver­sary, and best wish­es for a smooth tran­si­tion north with the upcom­ing move!

    You’ve inspired thou­sands of mil­len­ni­als (and hun­dreds of mil­lenials, prob­a­bly dozens of milen­ni­als, too). Look­ing for­ward to see­ing what you’ve in store here in year four.

    Cheers!
    ‑PoF

    Reply

  7. Con­grats on three years and the awe­some new adven­ture ahead!
    I won­der if you could get cheaper/better health insur­ance if you used the rest of that free col­lege tuition you have. Uni­ver­si­ties nor­mal­ly offer inex­pen­sive health insur­ance for stu­dents. Of course you’d have to take class­es, but you could have fun with it.

    Reply

  8. Con­grat­u­la­tions on 3 years! That is awe­some. I’m so excit­ed for this new sea­son for you. Leav­ing our jobs cre­at­ed so much space for new things to grow in our lives. Awe­some and unex­pect­ed things. 🙂 Hop­ing the same for you!

    Reply

  13. Con­grat­u­la­tions on 3 years Gwen!! That is a huge accom­plish­ment and I’m glad to fol­low along with your jour­ney. I can’t wait until you are final­ly in Min­neso­ta! When do you make the big move? We should all get togeth­er when you are final­ly set­tled in 🙂

    Reply

  15. Yay! Blo­giver­sary!! Con­grats on the mile­stone and those num­bers, impres­sive. Love the Q & A idea, and gen­er­al­ly think­ing out­side the box with blog posts. Keep up the good work!

    Reply

  16. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Gwen! I am so hap­py for you and look­ing for­ward to read­ing about the upcom­ing adventures.

    Reply

  17. Con­grat­u­la­tions on 3 years of blog­ging. This is very inspir­ing to new blog­gers! I love the Q&A idea by the way.

    Keep up the good work!

    Reply

  19. Over 34 here, and love your blog. Con­grat­u­la­tions on three years. Best of luck in the next phase of your FIRE jour­ney. You and the Mas­ter­mind will sure­ly do amaz­ing things. Cheers.

    Reply

  20. Hi Gwen,

    Cograts on your third year anniver­si­ty. I’m reach­ing 40 this year and from the oth­er part of the World.

    Always on look­out for new update in your blog.

    Keep it going with your retire­ment plan.

    Ben

    Reply

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