My Thoughts: W-2 Employee (Patent Examiner) vs. 1099 Self-Employed (Realtor)

In terms of my career, I have a lot going through my mind these days. This post is just me putting my thoughts in writing. I work as a W-2 employee. I am a patent examiner at the USPTO. I’m coming up on 14 years in October. This job is completely work-from-home, pays decently, and … Read more

We Paid Off Our Mortgage And Hit Baby Step 7!

Last month, we decided to pay off our mortgage. It wasn’t an easy decision. By the way, no, that’s that’s not a picture of our house, silly! That’s just a stock photo. I wouldn’t put a picture of our house on the internet. I only put up all of our finances for the world to … Read more

2021 Year-End Financial Summary and Life Updates

crop unrecognizable financier using calculator on smartphone near dollar banknotes

Wow, we’re at the end of 2021 already! Here is my year-end financial summary. I’m doing these financial updates twice a year now (semiannually) to keep track of my progress. This is the year we finally became millionaires (read that post here). After over 5 years of hard work and tracking that goal, we eclipsed … Read more

November 2021: Update #5 on my 5 Minute Mile Goal

This is the 5th monthly update on my goal to run a 5 minute mile (see post here). I’ll keep track of my training and progress here. Training For the most part, I neglected my speed training this month. Instead, I ran a 50k and a half marathon. With the cold weather, the holiday season, and … Read more

Potomac Heritage Trail 50k Race Report (2021)

I ran a trail ultramarathon (50k) this past weekend. I ran this same one in 2019 and wrote a much more detailed race report then (2019 Race Report), so I’ll keep this one short. I got very lost in 2019 but only a little bit lost this time. Staying with a couple other runners helped … Read more

October 2021: Update #4 on my 5 Minute Mile Goal

This is the 4th monthly update on my goal to run a 5 minute mile (see post here). I’ll keep track of my training and progress here. Training For some reason, this was an extremely busy month. I’ve been able to get a bunch of easy 5 mile runs in, but I haven’t really done any … Read more