Current Status: Out of Office

Two weeks ago I left my job with a company I had worked at for 18 years! I had reached a point where enough was enough and it was time to move on. But the scary part is – I did it without another job lined up!

I find myself in an unusual and fortunate position to be able to try something completely new and sort of rewrite my story from this point forward. So I hope you will join me on this journey as I share my story as well as my experiences in the areas of food, travel and lifestyle! If you want to learn more about how I got here, keep reading…

This first post is not really titled accurately, as my journey actually began about 3 years ago when I first took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU) course along with some of my colleagues. Up to that point my financial management was about a 3 out of 10. I didn’t have a budget, I had some credit card debt, and I was spending my money pretty carelessly. So taking that course, and getting my finances in order, was the first, very important step, in getting me to where I’m at currently.

Once I had my money figured out I started saving and spending more wisely. At the time I was living in a 100 year old house that my ex-husband had selected for us and then left to me mid-remodel. But for the longest time I didn’t have enough money to make the repairs necessary to sell the house and move on. After FPU I had finally saved up enough money to have the whole front porch rebuilt, some inside finishing work completed, and also purchase a new furnace – allowing me to then sell the house for much more than I expected!

That house was my last bit of debt – so I started out 2018 completely debt-free.  I stashed all the profit from the home sale and continued saving. Then one day in May when I was chatting with one of my trusted advisors she asked me “how much money do you have saved? Couldn’t you just leave your job and try something new?”

This level of risk taking is completely foreign to me, but I started crunching the numbers and thought “hmmm, could I do this?” So then I created a more frugal budget and crunched the numbers at least a dozen more times thinking surely I must have miscalculated – was it really possible for me to just quit my job and be ok? And it was.

I find myself in an exciting and very blessed position right now – to have the resources (at least for a bit) to pursue exactly what it is I’ve dreamed of doing, which is share my experiences with food, travel and lifestyle with whomever will pay attention! I hope that you will follow me on my journey of living a happy, healthy and prosperous life – my journey of eudaimonia.