Money

This past week I realized something.  I'm sort of obsessed with money.  Okay, so that really doesn't sound great... sounds like I'm sort of crazy person who is after as much money as possible... and that's not at ALL what I mean by it.

I realized though, that in addition to scrolling through the headlines on the huffington post, I'll also click over to the money tab.  I do this more than I click over to fashion, or culture, or world news... I'm obsessed.

There's so many portals to why this is...
1. I have been learning a lot about how to deal with money, budget, save, pay off debt, etc.
2. Ronald and I have paid of a lot of debt this past year, and it.is.so.freeing.  Seriously.  If you have debt, you don't really realize until it's gone how much it truly weighs on you!  Now don't get me wrong, we still have massive loads of debt to pay off [majority of people with some sort of university diploma do, right?].  And we're working on that, but the snowball debt payoff has been so great.
3. I want to live greener, and less reliant on consumer goods to make me happy.
4. I have crazy plans for the future, and we can't make that happen unless we are smart in our day to day life with our finances [trip to Germany, trip to hike a portion of the AT, trip to London, etc].
5. I own my own business, so I NEED to be smart about money.  Not only personally, but to make my business grow and thrive.
6. I'm passionate about helping others also find financial freedom.  Because it is possible to go through life without debt.  It's possible to not have a car payment [dude, we're so freakin close to this!], and it's possible to pay off your house in 15 years instead of 30.

In any case, I'm just learning all these things that we've been taught were normal in life that don't actually have to be normal!  And it's wicked.  Dave's phrase is live like no one else today so that you can live like no one else tomorrow... I'm on that bandwagon.

So that's all.  I'm obsessed with learning about money, and making it do what I want it to do.  Here's to being debt free in a few years!

-maike rinaye-