Welcome to this week’s Dreamcatcher, where I share the things that inspired me in some way over the past week. This week’s lot covers achieving goals, traveling with intention, saving money on Amazon,
10 tips to achieve any goal – The Retirement Manifesto
Fritz is an animal, swimming outdoors once a week from March to mid-November. He set his swimming goal before the pool was even open and followed through with it past the time he thought he would. In this post, he shares some of the great memories he’s made thanks to The Goal, as well as insight into what made it so rewarding to achieve and what kept him motivated along the way. These are great tips that are transferrable to anything you’re looking to achieve. Really fun read from a really great guy. Just one more, Fritz! Just one more.
Why I set travel intentions vs. make travel plans – Cait Flanders
I’ve definitely been guilty of trying to “get the most” out of a vacation. Two things I love are lists and logistics. Give me a dream trip and a spreadsheet and by god I’m going to give you an itinerary with scheduled bathroom breaks. But Cait has a good point here: Your memories of travel shouldn’t be the traveling; they should be of the things you traveled there for. Maybe traveling is like jazz music — the magic is between the notes, in what is not played. Next time I travel, I’ll try to remember Cait’s advice to think about why I’m going there and set an intention, rather than plans.
Actual money saving software: Keepa – Fiscally Free
This is just in time for the holiday shopping season. Over at Fiscally Free they’ve got a review of a browser extension called Keepa that tracks Amazon pricing and shows you a graph of price fluctuations for every item. If you’re looking to buy an item, the Keepa graph can show you whether it’s a good deal historically, or whether there might be a pricing patter you can exploit for a better deal in the near future. That’s exactly what happened at Fiscally Free, and the savings was over $70! Sounds like a good app to me.
Minimalism, frugality, side hustles, and skipping college: the people of FinCon17 – Stacking Benjamins
In this episode, Joe Saul-Sehy grabs random people he’s never met from the FinCon floor to find out what their deal is. I met two of the guests in Felicity at Fetching Financial Freedom and Chris Durheim at Keep Thrifty while at FinCon (plus a bonus from Liz at Chief Mom Officer opening the show). It was cool to hear them talk about their stories, and they are definitely worth listening to. The one who blew me away was Dedra Shores. Man did she have a whole lot of good advice for people just starting out in business or taking a hobby to the next level. Good potpourri show!
Wow, You even put me in the Top Spot!! For that, I may just have to try to swim during my Thanksgiving break! I’ll keep you posted (hint, I DID bring my swimming stuff to the mountains from my City Apartment, so the option of “Just One More” is alive. Just don’t know if I can handle the ~50-degree water, it’s rapidly dropping below even MY limit!! Thanks for the shoutout!
Maybe you just need to lower your threshold for what counts as “swimming.” A 3-minute dip instead of a 45-minute hypothermia-inducing lap session?