Welcome!

Wel­come to my blog! If you are a mil­len­ni­al who hates the rat race, this is the place to be!

I start­ed this to doc­u­ment my jour­ney to Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence. My goal is to help guide my fel­low mil­len­ni­als (that’s right, all you youn­gins out there. Yes, you.) along sim­i­lar paths to finan­cial free­dom. Mil­len­ni­als are a group of peo­ple born any­where from rough­ly the ear­ly eight­ies to the 2000’s. Basi­cal­ly, at the time of writ­ing, any­one who can dri­ve up to 30 some odd year olds.

A lot of the finan­cial blogs out there are ded­i­cat­ed to old­er peo­ple who are set in their lives and want to make changes. My blog is not for them. I’m writ­ing to the young kids in col­lege, just grad­u­at­ed and the young pro­fes­sion­als. If you’re old­er and read­ing, FANTASTIC. You’ll prob­a­bly stroke your chin and say, hmmm that’s an inter­est­ing way of look­ing at that issue, or you’ll shake your head and say, wow this gen­er­a­tion is fucked if this is news to her. Being younger has pros and cons. The best part about being young is we haven’t had as many time to make so many bad mis­takes. We’re the finan­cial equiv­a­lent of a clean slate. One con is just a sim­ple lack of expe­ri­ence. There are a lot of life lessons to be learned in the adult world, and I’m hop­ing that we can grow and learn together!

I sup­pose I should intro­duce myself a bit bet­ter. I’m Gwen. I’m 25, locat­ed in the Mid­west, and some­what hap­pi­ly employed in the IT sec­tor. From an ear­ly age, I’ve always had an obses­sion with mon­ey. When I was younger, I was obsessed with obtain­ing more of it so I could have more things, name­ly can­dy from the gas sta­tion and replace­ment fees for lost library cards. Seri­ous­ly, I don’t know what it was about those slip­pery lit­tle bug­gers, but I must’ve lost at least a dozen cards. Same goes for house keys.

For­tu­nate­ly for my present and future self, I haven’t lost that obses­sion, but I have set new sights: Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence, Ear­ly Retire­ment, Fuck You mon­ey, what­ev­er you want to call it, I want it. I interned at a For­tune 500 com­pa­ny the sum­mer before my last semes­ter in col­lege and dis­cov­ered work­ing 8+ hours a day kin­da sucked ass. Like, a lot. It seemed like I was con­stant­ly doing only one of 3 activ­i­ties: sleep­ing, eat­ing, or work­ing. Where was all the free time I had in col­lege? Even week­ends did­n’t feel like enough. Some­thing had to give, because the thought of work­ing in an office until I’m 65 makes me want to shoot myself in the face.

Enter FI.

By work­ing my tail off, sav­ing as much as I can and hav­ing a pas­sive income stream from some rentals, I’d like accu­mu­late enough to retire by the time I’m 35 in 2025. Then I can do what­ev­er I want! Trav­el the world for cheap, cre­ate fab­ric works of art, or even just have both par­ents around for any future kids I might have.

So, wel­come to FIRE‑y Mil­len­ni­als! Bet­ter buck­le up because it’s going to be a wild ride!