What Is This About?

Well, we’re finally here! 🙂

It’s been a while since I had the idea of starting a blog, but it got quickly buried pretty deep in a large and growing stack of priorities. The more technical reader, knowing that the stacks follow the “first in – last out” principle, will immediately understand that my idea remained untouched while fresh TODOs continued to come and go.

So how did I manage to start? Well… Last month I decided to make some changes in my life.

However, unlike the classic self-help inspirational success story where “some changes in life” lead to a more organized person who starts taking care of his health, diet, physique, relationships, and financial situation, the changes in my life were quite the opposite!

I decided to treat myself using auto-pilot dopamine motivated behavior and enjoying the instant gratification of fast-reward activities for a month. Needless to say, all my projects were put on hold and I carelessly overindulged into things such as consumerism, social media, gaming, junk food, sugar, pr0n, and watching top 10 videos, among the others. Good times! 🙂

October came and I quickly shifted my mind to its default state – discipline. I had no issues going back to deep work, avoiding processed sugar, eating healthy, working-out regularly, limiting internet consumption to one hour per day, etc. If I learned one thing about myself while being an unproductive consumer, that would be the importance of expressing my thoughts – how much I actually want to start this blog!

So, I quickly reorganized the stack of priorities into a set (know the difference :)) of post-it notes on my bedroom wardrobe, that now has a really close resemblance to a JIRA board, and put “Start a blog” in the “In progress” column. MonkFinance was born, but the domain was already registered, and that was the beginning of MonkWealth!

That was not the question from the title though, so let’s not make this all about me. Where were we? What is this about, right?

What is this about (again)?

At its core, MonkWealth is a FIRE blog where I… Wait, you’re not familiar with the term? Well, then it’s a great pleasure to introduce you to the life-changing concept of Financial Independence, usually followed by Retire Early and abbreviated to FIRE – which is my preferred way of referencing any / all of the above.

Don’t worry if you never encountered or accepted the idea of financial independence, because there is a lot to come and I will go deeeeeeeep into various relevant topics related to it. However, if you ended up here, on my first ever post, you’re most probably familiar with FIRE and only digging through the archives after having read some of the recent content.

Thanks! Did my writing style improve over time?

For God’s sake, what is this about?

At its core, MonkWealth is a FIRE blog where I will write about my approach to personal finance.

Apart from sharing my thoughts on financial independence and early retirement in general, I will also use this blog as a diary documenting my journey towards FIRE, as well as explaining my way of wealth accumulation (managing income), frugal living (managing spending) and asset allocation (managing savings). Writing about them will naturally cover subjects such as career, investing, budgeting, housing, saving, speculating, diversification, net worth, passive income streams, taxes, etc. so over time you’ll have an in-depth overview of my thoughts on all of those and many more.

It’s hard to be more specific at this point, so I’ll stick with buzzwords generalizations in this introductory post. If you’re new to FIRE, don’t feel overwhelmed – feel excited! There is a lot to be learned and I’d be more than happy if someone finds my knowledge helpful or beneficial!

That being said, I’m neither retired nor I have it all figured out! Not even half way there, unfortunately. At the time of writing this post, I’m at ~25% of my FIRE goal. This number, hopefully, is lower than the number you can see in the sidebar, which is my current level of FI. The good news is that I’m 26 years old, so I wouldn’t say it’s unrealistic to get to 100% in my early/mid thirties.

Finally, the reason I’m pursuing FIRE is because I believe that wealth is one of the most important things in life, if properly managed. And what are the others? Well, that’s the monk part. However, as I consider self-development as a more personal matter, I don’t expect to write full posts on it, but you may find me digressing, as in the beginning of this post, and present my opinionated thoughts on seemingly random subjects (such as physical and mental health, discipline, and productivity).

The answer is in the name!

I hope you enjoyed reading my first real post as I have enjoyed writing it. I would say that it’s a life-changing experience for me, because being somewhat obsessed, I can clearly see myself writing about FIRE and sharing my findings in the following years.

I like my blogging as I like my investments – long term.