Latest Posts
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.
A Special Welcome
If you just came from ESI Money, welcome. Desert FI exists for people at every stage of the FI journey, with a particular focus on what comes after the number. Not retirement as an escape, as a beginning.
The Financial Conversations Most People Avoid
My parents sat me down in their formal living room, coffee in china cups, Scotch shortbread on the plate, more uncomfortable than I had ever seen them. What they had to say was smaller than I feared, and far more revealing. It was the moment I understood that the financial conversations most people avoid are not just nice to have. They are often the difference between knowing what to do and being caught completely unprepared. This post is about finding the people who will walk that trail with you.
Taste It Before You Can Afford It
At twenty-six, we ate baguettes on the steps of Montmartre and dreamed of a life we could not yet afford. It turned out that was not a distraction from building toward that life. It was the foundation of it. Most people in the FI community know how to get there. Very few have been specific enough about what they are building toward. This post is about that question.
You Can Look Wealthy or Build Wealth. Pick One.
At sixteen I drove a $500 Gran Torino and revved the engine at stoplights hoping someone would notice. Nobody did. Most of us are still doing a version of this today. The car is nicer. The stakes are higher. And the cost is bigger than we realize.
The First Tastes of Freedom on the FI Journey
A bathroom fan with a loose bearing. A chart on the refrigerator. A heart racing at midnight over a spreadsheet. This is what building financial freedom actually sounds like from the inside. And what it feels like when it finally starts to arrive.
Six Things I Wish My 45-Year-Old Self Had Known
I went back to look at photos from June 2019. I was 45. My son was heading into high school. We had just spent 10 days in Alaska, helicopters over glaciers, sled dogs, ice calving off tidewater walls, and a bear-watching tour that produced zero bears and a family pun tradition that still runs. My wife and I stayed up past midnight somewhere in the Inside Passage, the sun refusing to set, talking about the life we were building.
I had a job I loved. A great team. I was present for the moments that mattered.
And still, looking back from 52, there are six things I wish I had known, not because I was failing, but because knowing them would have made a good season even better.