Knowing where you are

July 2008: Credit card debt $31,000. Before I could start repaying the student loan debt, with its rather modest 7.25% interest, I needed to tackle the $31,000 in personal debt I had. One of the toughest steps was actually determining how much debt I had, what my expenses were each month, and what my income...

Tips and Tricks to Paying Off Student Loans

I presented a short version of how I paid off my student loans at the Arizona State Bar today. Here it is:

Retirement Plans

I am currently losing money on my retirement accounts. Not because the portfolio itself is losing value on the market. No, I am losing money because of fees. Since I work as a contract employee and adjunct instructor, I have four different 401k accounts as well as a Roth IRA. Account 1, which is from...

What to do with all this stuff?

When I placed all my things on eBay for the auction, there were a lot of items I considered to be family heirlooms. My family also considered them to be heirlooms. I was the custodian for future generations, keeping these "priceless" items for the next generation. When my parents expressed dismay at the auction, I...

Retirement planning: Starting from scratch at 54

Currently, I have $2478 in various retirement accounts. Two factors have contributed to my having saved virtually nothing for retirement: an accelerated pay off of student loans (about $190,000 in 7 years) and temp jobs that either have no retirement or retirement contributions that start after the project ends. At 54 years old, assuming I keep...

Minimalism Monday: Lisa’s Big Auction

9 years ago, in April of 2007, I created an auction on eBay to sell all my belongings. The reasons why are detailed in my blog I wrote during the process: http://lisasbigauction.blogspot.com I feel overall positive about the anniversary, in that I have kept my possessions fewer than before. Still, I purged things I would like...

Silence

Today I spent 3 hours on my Boddhacitta practice. On my way back from yoga I passed a small group of religious protesters shouting the usual "God hates fags." On the way to yoga, I engaged in argument. I got agitated, took the insults personally, felt separate from them, and saw how the argument was...

Compounding

In 2008, when I was in the process of paying of my student loans I questioned the decision and the process. Paying $858/month when I was living in Silicon Valley, working at temporary jobs that could end at any time and having a high deductible health insurance plan, it seemed easier to pay the minimum...

Now what do I do?

Like anyone who achieves a goal, once I achieved my student loan payoff I felt like I lacked purpose. For the past 5, almost 6 years, I had been working 50+ hour weeks, two or three jobs at a time, to pay off the loans. Once that was done I was so used to working...

The importance of radical financial acceptance, part 1

In the spring of 2008 I found it very easy to refuse to accept where I was with finances. I kept thinking that I was better off in the past--when I was a homeowner and professor in Minnesota--than the present--renting a room, working temporary jobs as document review attorney in the San Francisco area. I would email...