Financial Panther

This was a very weak side hustle month for me, and indeed, perhaps the lowest-earning side hustle month I’ve ever had. I think a few things contributed to this. First, the weather in February wasn’t great. Since a lot of my side hustle income comes from food delivery and since I use a bike to get around, I don’t get a lot done when it’s really cold out. February tends to be the coldest month in Minnesota, so historically, February has always been … Read post

When you’ve been in the credit card game long enough, you start to notice that certain cards always seem to come back into your wallet. I’m not someone who focuses on spending categories too much – most of the time, I find my time is better served opening new cards to get signup bonuses. Since I’m focusing on signup bonuses, it means I’m opening a lot of new cards each year. And while the cards do change as different … Read post

Over the past several years, my portfolio has grown considerably through a combination of good returns plus regular savings and contributions. These days, I’m comfortably in the Coast FI stage of my financial independence journey, where my portfolio is large enough that it should grow enough to cover my expenses at traditional retirement age, even if I don’t save another penny again (note that while I am at Coast FI, … Read post

January was an unexpectedly strong side hustle month, mainly because Rover did so well for me in January. My side hustle income wasn’t very diversified though, with the vast majority of it coming from Rover, and a small amount coming from just four other sources. This is very different from prior months where things are split up more evenly and where I often have income coming from from ten or more different sources … Read post

The other day, I received an email from Marketforce that confused me. For some reason, all of the secret shops I had scheduled for the month had been canceled by Marketforce. To make matters worse, when I logged into my account, I discovered that I couldn’t view any available secret shops anymore. From the looks of it, Marketforce had terminated me … Read post

The financial independence movement changed my life, but funny enough, I don’t really consider financial independence an important part of my life these days. Maybe my life has changed too much now that I have two kids and a lot of expenses to deal with (mortgage, daycare, etc). In any event, the idea of financial independence is still there, but I’m not really living my life with … Read post