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Thoughts on reinvention, clarity, work, money, and the quiet decisions that shape a life. New essays each week as we explore what it means to build a life with intention.

7 Questions to Ask in Building Your Downshift or Retirement Budget
Financial Independence, Retirement Planning, FINE Framework Desert FI Financial Independence, Retirement Planning, FINE Framework Desert FI

7 Questions to Ask in Building Your Downshift or Retirement Budget

On a cave tubing trip in Belize, I heard our guide tell another guide in Spanish to watch for snakes. Nobody else caught it. That’s what good guides do. Here are seven questions I’m working through as I build my retirement budget, and the culebras I’ve found beneath the surface.

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Five Financial Decisions That Made My Downshift Possible
Financial Independence, Retirement Planning, FINE Framework Desert FI Financial Independence, Retirement Planning, FINE Framework Desert FI

Five Financial Decisions That Made My Downshift Possible

I was fourteen, shivering in a borrowed tent on the Appalachian Trail in a waterlogged cotton sleeping bag, too proud to ask my dad, a retired Marine, for the gear that was sitting in our basement. Thirty years later, here are the five financial decisions that made my downshift possible, and the lesson it took me a cold night on a mountain to learn.

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