Wandering Money Pig - A journey of early retirement and FIRE (financial independence retire early)

  Heart Lake, Adirondacks, upstate New York  When I was young and stupid, I blamed the world for my problems.  I thought the world owed me for making my life what it was.  Yes, I did have a tough childhood and yes, life wasn’t easy when I was growing up. I thought that somehow the world owed me for what I went through.  I had mentioned in one of my past blog posts that it wasn’t until I met my future wife that I started to change how I saw the world.  I learned gratitude for what I do have, and not live my life like it owed me something… That was when I understood the importance of taking personal responsibility .  For without it, we tend to blame everyone and everything around us.  This is a dangerous way to live one’s life, as it’s never our fault.  This way of thinking gets you exactly nothing in life.  When life gives you a lemon, you’ll just blame the world for giving you that lemon, rather than try to make something out of that lemon, like say a lemonade. In this post, I’d like

  Downtown Potsdam, NY Since our Pomeranian Toby’s passing in March, my wife and I have been making an effort to enjoy  cultural activities, such as visiting art museums, or attending classical music concerts, as well as enjoying nature.  Our first month long trip without having Toby was difficult, but we did the best we could to live our lives fully. We always liked going to museums when we were dating, and we’ve certainly visited our share of museums like everyone else.  We’ve visited the Smithsonian Museum, MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), Philadelphia Art Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, and etc. Our trip to the Adirondacks was an enlightening journey in more ways than one.  We loved the hikes to Mt. Jo, Mt. Arab, Silver Lake Bog Preserve, and we loved all those lakes in the Adirondacks.  We also loved how beautiful the mountains and the trees were, even during the month of April in the Adirondacks.   We also loved visit

  Portland Head Light, Maine  John F. Kennedy:  “Every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants.” As an immigrant from South Korea, I was born into a culture of never ending competition.  When I was still living in South Korea and attending grade school, my teachers demanded hard work, and excellence from all the students. Teachers expected students to constantly study and get good grades.  Students were expected to do after-school tutoring, private or otherwise.  Even when I was only 8-9 years old, my classmates, whose parents were well off, were all doing private tutoring. After immigrating to the United States in 1981, I noticed private tutoring and/or after-school academies were still in place for recently immigrated South Koreans.  Many of my friends who immigrated to the United States at about the same time I did, were also not immune to this trend, of taking private tutoring or going to after-school a