ABOUT

     Photo by susancurrydesign


Hello!  My name is Chester and I am a 40-year-old health care professional. We are a family of 4 and one dog living in Southern California.  We now have a high income and are doing everything we can to financially thrive.

Our mission
We are on a mission to relentlessly improve every aspect of our finances and lives. We are constantly reading and learning how to apply different financial techniques to our life.  Our goal is to reach financial freedom as fast as possible, before I turn 45.  Financial freedom is the point where our investments and passive income cover all of our living expenses and working for money becomes completely optional.

We're mainly focusing on 3 things: earning more, spending less, and investing the difference.

When it comes to our finances, there is constant room for improvement.  We used to live a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and have now gotten off the hamster wheel.  We've decided that we are done being mindless consumers, and now try to make conscious purchases only.

I love my career, but I'm not sure that I want to work full time forever.  Reaching financial freedom gives us the option to do whatever we want with our lives.  We will no longer be dependent on a regular paycheck.

Our mission is to relentlessly save, invest, and have fun doing it.  While we are planning for tomorrow, we are definitely trying to live for today.  Striving for financial freedom doesn’t mean that we need to be cheap misers.  We’ve learned to be much more intentional with our financial decisions.  This allows us to save 50% of our income and invest most of our savings.     

Being able to travel the world is important to us and we love to travel hack.  I love learning about credit cards deals and sharing the information.  We have earned and redeemed over 1 million credit card miles and points.  In our free time, we love to travel.  We go on quick weekend getaways and longer international trips using our credit card points and miles.  We haven’t paid full fare for a flight since 2012!  We’ve even been lucky enough to travel on Cathay Pacific First Class as a couple and Singapore Airlines Business Class as a family.  The more we can save on travel, the more we can invest in our future.  

Let me share with you how to optimize your savings, spending, and investments.  Let me teach you how to earn and redeem credit card rewards for free cash back, airline flights, and hotel stays.  When it comes to giving advice or suggestions, I don’t recommend any products that I would not personally use. 

My favorite resources
There are plenty of resources out there to help us on our journey towards financial freedom.  We track all of our spending with Mint and ClearCheckbook.  We track all of our investments with Personal Capital.

When I need motivation on how to live a frugal and purposeful life, I go to the Mr. Money Mustache blog.  I get my motivation through the psychology and research provided by James Clear.  When I need to learn more about travel hacking, I visit the Doctor of Credit and the Reddit churning subreddit.  When I need to stay financially motivated, I listen to the ChooseFi podcast.  For everything about investing, I go to the Bogleheads message form where I learn everything I need to know about managing our investment portfolio. 

Interviews
Over the past few years, I've given a few interviews with other personal finance bloggers.  

I was interviewed by Andy Hill from Marriage Kids Money here.  
I was interviewed by Nathan Clarke from Millionaire Dojo here

Join us on our journey!
I truly thank you all for your support and motivation to share my insights and progress with you.  I’ve been writing here since January 2012.  Blogging keeps me accountable and helps me track our financial progress.  Let’s relentlessly improve our finances together.  

As of July 2021, I have decided to retire this blog.  We’ve reached our immediate financial goals and will continue to fully save and invest towards our financial freedom.  Thank you for joining us on this journey!

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