light & dark

There are many things keeping you poor. I've talked about spending habits , but there is another thing specially prevalent in the today's society: betting on a windfall. A windfall  (n.) is defined as a large sum of money received. This could come in many forms: bonus pay, inheritance, or more commonly, lottery winnings. Windfalls are like checkpoints in life; they give you a chance to forget about bills and enjoy life, even for a moment. I remember my earliest windfall: my Christmas bonus check. It was a check on top of my salary, and for the month I received three times what I normally got. I was elated, and before I even got the chance to deposit the check, I was already dreaming up all the things I would buy with the money. A new phone? A new computer? Of course I'd be stopping by Starbucks and treating my family to expensive restaurants. A few weeks later, I was back keeping just above my maintaining balance and waiting for the next paycheck to arrive. What happened ...

I am baffled by how people react when I mention the idea of saving. It's always responded with resistance, as if the systems in place have been designed exclusively for people not to save. People will almost always say: "Yeah, I should save but..." I have bills to pay. I have too much debt. I can't afford to. Or some variation of those excuses. But what I've learned years ago, is that if you have money to spend, then you have money to save. Photo by Emil Kalibradov on Unsplash It was years ago, I was sitting outside my managers office with a folded letter on hand, anxious and second guessing my decision. It was a spontaneous decision, something which I made the night before; but I decided that I finally had enough. I have been working too much, taking in too much responsibility, and for sure wasn't getting paid enough. During that time I was neck deep in car loans, I had about €1,000 in my bank account which was about to get a lot smaller because rent was due...

I woke up with a sense of guilt. “I should be writing/reading/doing…” and all these things are in my notebook. Goals, objectives, to make me feel productive. But for some reason, motivation is absent, and all the momentum I built up in the past few days are just gone. The aftermath is excuses. “I have work in a few hours” or “I can always do things tomorrow” The fallout is, not failure surprisingly, but stagnation. I am the same person I was yesterday. And if I keep this up, tomorrow will be the same story. I started this blog again because I wanted to keep up with the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. That when we moved cities, I will work on the things that held me back from my dreams and be better. I have made progress for sure, but the creative goals are still unchecked. I wanted to learn the harmonica. It's an instrument I bought years ago and have only played once. I have 3 graphic novel ideas that I have yet to write or draw. I have a screenplay th...

I was talking to someone at work about housing, and we discussed if buying a house is worth it. In Finland, housing prices are all over the place but you can expect to pay up to €40,000 for a right of occupancy license or up to €100,000 for full ownership. And I'm talking about an apartment complex, not a house. Houses vary in prices, but factoring what you expect about housing, then the idea of  worth it  changes depending on those expectations. What is a house to you? What does it mean? Or represent? Image by M from Pixabay The discussion started with maintenance fees. If you buy an apartment for around €100k, why is the maintenance fee so high? I looked at the listing, it totaled to around €500 per month. I thought it was a good deal, invest 100k on an appreciating market and your housing expense is halved. He argued however, if he had 40k, he might as well just play the stock market and grow his money. He can just work extra shifts to pay for the extra €300 instead of sav...

Among the literature I’ve read over the years, one writer I keep coming back to is Epictetus . He’s one of the few Stoic voices I return to often — second only to Marcus Aurelius. And it’s all because of a question he asked — one I’ve sadly repeatedly failed to fulfill: “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best of yourself?” Image by Christian Bueltemann from Pixabay Because really, what are we waiting for? Why delay our own destiny? I catch myself making excuses all the time. I know I should be working out, but I’ll say I’m too tired. I should finish my coding project, but my colony in Oxygen Not Included just needs a few more cycles to become self-sufficient. Still, I try to take things one step at a time. One goal at a time. Right now, it’s growing my wealth. I used to save obsessively, but I learned that years of frugality mean little if inflation quietly eats away at my savings. So I started investing — and now I’m up 7%, on track to close the year ...

I had a very tense conversation with someone and it was very odd. He was disagreeing with me. Emotions were very tense, I was getting angry, I wasn't making my case because I was completely disarmed by conversing with someone who didn't just shut up when they didn't have the same opinion with me. “Don't be offended” I reminded myself. The entire interaction ended with us talking about other things, only for us to be at completely opposite ends of another topic moments later. And I reflected on this interaction, I came to realize how terrible the internet has ruined discourse. I would be on chat with my friends, only for topics to become divisive and then silence. The  seen  message pops up and everybody turn into ghosts. Nobody wanted to stir the pot, argue, make valid points and come out learning more going out of the conversation than when they came in. Now we walk on egg shells. We are careful of how we phrase our discussions, we try not to make anyone uncomfortable,...