Did you miss me? Did you wonder where I’d gone?
Yes, it has been a long 6 or so months since I last posted (my June financial update), and a lot has happened, but I don’t want to abandon my blog, and I’d really like to get back in to posting regularly. (Okay, I never really posted regularly, but I posted occasionally…)
So, before I just jump back in to posting about my goals and my struggles at becoming a better version of me, I figured I would do a quick life update… Continue reading
I started this blog about a year and a half ago as an anonymous blog. I purposely had things left vague… and didn’t really disclose too much about myself…
But that’s all about to change. Okay, not totally, but I’ve decided it is time for me to at least have a name (I’m sick of being an acronym – ARBM). And since I’m lazy, and don’t want to come up with a nickname for myself, or try to learn a new name, I decided that I would just use my own name. That’s right, I am becoming slightly less anonymous!
So, without further ado… Continue reading
This post was supposed to be published yesterday… but somehow I messed up… there goes my streak of Tuesday/Thursday posts… Oh well, it’s published now…
Last week I started writing about my financial upbringing and how I have been so lucky to grow up in the situation that I have. I ended that post nearing the end of my elementary school days.
Junior high school was when I started getting a bit more spendy, a bit more independent with my money, and a little less responsible with it. I would babysit, and instead of getting a pay cheque that had to go to a bank before I could use it, I would get cash… and cash could sit in your wallet and get spent… I’m sure I put some money in savings… but mostly I think I spent my money on special lunches in the cafeteria, or going to the food court in the shopping mall for lunch, or buying random cheap knickknacks during those lunch time walks to the mall.
I got my first credit card sometime in junior high school. It was technically not “mine” but attached to my mom’s card. But I wasn’t allowed to use it without permission (and being the super good kid that I was, I followed the rules). It was mostly so that I could go do my own clothes shopping with my friends and not have to drag my parents around with me.
I don’t know that I really fully understood credit cards back then, but having one got me familiar with the concept and that a credit card didn’t meant I could spend whenever I wanted…
Although I was spendy and slightly silly with my own money, my parents also made sure that I learned more responsibility around money in junior high too. Any time that I wanted to do something expensive, like a school band trip to Disneyland, the deal was that if I could fund-raise or pay for 1/3 of the expense (plus my spending money for on the trip), my parents would pay for the rest… It was a pretty sweet deal really, and it definitely was motivating to get me to sell my chocolate covered almonds, or whatever else was the fundraising trend that year…
I am extremely lucky. I know it. But sometimes I forget, or take it for granted… The Frugalwoods did a post about how they are privileged to have the opportunity to pursue financial independence. And while I am nowhere near their advanced level of frugality and proximity to financial independence, I did relate to a lot of what they were saying. I have often wondered how different my life would be now, if only one or two things had been different while I was growing up…
I have mentioned in other posts that before I started this blog, and before I started reading personal finance blogs, I had been going through life on auto pilot. That’s not to say that I wasn’t enjoying my life, but I would often just take the default path, with little intention or thought put in to it. Luckily for me, my upbringing was such that this didn’t lead me down the path of financial disaster. I somehow managed to end up in a pretty good state, with no student debt, no consumer debt, and a mortgage on my “forever” home as my only debt… so I thought I’d go through my past and examine how that happened…
I may have mentioned before my difficulty with change. I like things to stay the same.
My parents are moving out of my childhood home today. The home that they have been living in for 30+ years… While it technically wasn’t my first home, it is the only home that I remember…
Christine from Barefoot Budget has nominated me for an award, however, in the spirit of her somewhat unconventional nomination and post, I’m not actually going to nominate anyone else and pass it on… I’ll just quickly answer her questions.
Here are her questions:
That’s a tough one because I tend to go thru fazes of what I’m interested in… As I sit at my kitchen table this morning, drinking my tea and looking out at my backyard, I think gardening is my favourite right now. I love planting seeds and watching them grow and then seeing the produce come from them. There is so much satisfaction in being able to feed yourself with something you produced in your own garden.
Last week, Jillian over at “How to be Myself” nominated me for the Beautiful Blogger Award.
The rules are simple: link the blogger who nominated you; list seven random things about yourself; nominate seven creative, beautiful bloggers; notify the people that you nominate.
So, now to dig down in to the depths of my brain for seven random facts about me that I haven’t already put on my About Me page or in the posts for the Liebster Awards…
And now to nominate seven six creative, beautiful bloggers… I’m sorry if you’ve been nominated before, and if you don’t want to participate, that is totally cool too.
So thank you again for the nomination Jillian. If you haven’t been over to check out the post where she nominated me, you can go through this link.
I know I said I’d get this up a few days ago, but it’s been a busy work week… better late than never, right?
I did a post back in January when I was originally nominated for the Liebster Award by Gin Is My Comfort Food, but I have been fortunate enough to be nominated again! This time it comes from Barb & John at Decluttering the Stuff. Thank you for the nomination!
There have been a few variations on the Liebster Award that I’ve seen, but this time round, the rules (as copied from Decluttering the Stuff) are:
The Liebster Award is an online trophy given from one new blogger to another in which we have to complete tasks listed in the award rules. Here are the rules for the Liebster Award:
– Each nominee must have under 200 followers
– You must thank and link to the nominated blog
– You must answer the 10 questions asked of you and propose 10 new ones for your nominees
– You must nominate 10 blogs and tell them that they have been nominated
– You must write a post containing the questions
– You must include these rules in the post
I definitely don’t have 200 followers, so that’s a fit. I don’t know how to tell how many followers some blogs have though… And I’m also not sure if I’ll be able to come up with 10 questions and 10 new blogs to nominate… but I’ll get to that later…
First up, let’s answer some questions:
Those were hard questions… And I’m not sure I answered them very well… Sorry!
And now, I am supposed to make 10 questions… I may borrow some from previous Liebster award posts I’ve read…
Well, it’s not 10, but it’s the best I could come up with at this point… Now for my nominees…
There are so many blogs out there that I love and I’m sure more that I haven’t found yet, but I’ll leave the number there at 6. Please go take a look at these blogs, and if you want to answer the questions in the comments and share your blog with me, please do!
I’m not even sure how I first stumbled across her blog, but for a couple weeks now I have been following Gin Is My Comfort Food and really enjoying it. We seem to have a lot in common and have similar goals. And now she has been so nice as to nominate me for the Liebster Award.
There are many different variations on the Liebster Award, but the goal is always the same: to learn a bit more about the awarded blogger and to promote and share some of your favourite blogs.
You can read the post where I got nominated here. I followed the trail through the nominations and found a bunch of blogs that interest me, so it’s definitely fun and worth the journey.
And now it is my turn.
All-Round Better Me 