I’m grateful for the newfound flexibility I have in my life. I’m piecing together different streams of income to make it all work — and it is working. I’m not making what I could be making if I had simply exited Active Duty and gone to fly for the airlines (yet), but this path is more rewarding. This prompt made me slow down and really think about that. For the past two months, I’ve been able to choose what I want to do — not because I was given an order or a letter from corporate, but because I chose it. I’m grateful for that. It’s allowed me to spend more time with my kids and work on improving myself in ways that just weren’t possible a few months ago.

Not a recent picture, but unbelievable setting: landing in Vegas around Sunset. The winds shifted and blew thick orange/black smoke from a nearby forest fire over the Vegas valley. It was ~7:00pm in the summer (ie:still day time.)

I’ll have to add that book to the list. Speaking of biographies, Edison by Edmund Morris is pretty great. Edison was quite the eccentric character and his life was more than just the lightbulb!

I promise I'm not copying @Mindy Jensen 😙 1. TRACK. Track your spending. You can't fix something without knowing the problem... 2. CUT. Cut the Fluff Use step 1 to find aspects to cut ($8 coffees and dumb subscriptions is a great place to start ((even though I write this while drinking an $8 cup of coffee)) 3. BUDGET. Create your brand new budget after you've cut the fluff. 4. YOU FIRST. Pay yourself first. Start paying off dumb debt debt first (credit cards, 10% car loans, etc) then contribute to your IRA, 401k, TSP, HSA, etc. 5. EARN. Make more money. See Mindy's step 4! Bonus: Don't keep up with the Jones'. We're all human, so we all inherently buy material items that others would think is wasteful. Find your material thing that you irrationally love, and splurge on only that. Do you like watches? Nice shoes? V8 cars using premium gas, flying 1st class, incredible vacations? Pick one.