One of the goals I’m most proud of this year was certifying as an Emergency Medical Responder. It was hard, it was challenging, and I learned a ridonkulous amount. Post-training, I feel vastly more confident in my ability to handle things going sideways. If you don’t know First Aid, I highly recommend making it a 2026 goal for yourself.
The Financial Independence portion of my COVID career advice post was surprisingly popular. I’ve received a lot of other questions about more easy rules for getting to FI and money advice.
The ironclad law of taking care of yourself financially is you must spend less than what you earn.
Whether salaries, assets, dividends, and interest - that is your upper ceiling (Credit is not earnings. It is simply a way to move future earnings into the present by incurring cost to consume things ie. interest rate charges.).
It’s New Year’s Resolution time. Yes, they don’t work for a lot of people, but that’s generally a problem with execution rather than intent. This is what worked for me in 2019 and the keystone habits and strategies that made the past year better.
Sure, I get it. New Year’s is just a date and you can pick any Day 0 date and start to change, but there is something a little easier about picking Jan 1 (or the day after Chinese New Year, as I’ve done some years to hack a slow January return to reality.).