10 Questions with The Roamer from The Traveling Wallet

Today is the 63rd edition of our guest post series called 10 Questions. It also will be one of the last. Everything must come to an end and 10 Questions will say ‘”Good bye!” near the end of 2016. If you’ve already sent me your answers or told me that you’re going to be doing so, don’t worry; I’m still going to publish you.

We first met The Roamer when she came to our neck of the woods to visit family. She brought her family, and we had a lovely dinner together. That’s one of the biggest perks of the FI blogging community – you meet so many people with whom you have an instant connection!

The Roamer, as you may be able to tell, loves to travel. She’s an Industrial Engineer who focused on eliminating inefficiencies in her job, which carried over to her home and finances. She talks minimalism, parenting, travel and finance at her web-home, travelingwallet.com. Roamer, take it away!

Tell me about your blog and why it’s great?
This question is so funny. This would better be known as an elevator pitch. Or a sales pitch. Apparently I need to work on mine because this question leaves me feeling like a deer-stuck- in-headlight. Do people really start blogs to be great?!

I guess when I started mine; I did have grandiose ideas of conquering the world. Okay not really, but I did want to be useful. Someday, I hope I can reach the Latino community and be an example of awesomeness. Right now my blog is great for me because it’s a challenge that is forcing me to continue growing. It’s great because it serves as a marker with which I can track my progress. It’s the story about a Latina mom who wants to make sure her kids step outside of the U.S. and see the big world. A mom who wants her kids to learn about the advantages of saving. A mom who doesn’t want her kids to get caught up in the more, more, faster, faster, and now, NOW! Mentality of the times. With such a tall order my blog is about a mom who just plain doesn’t want to lose her marbles while figuring it all out. Like Mr. 1500 said on this post: I write for myself.

The Blog has changed since its inception. More and more I find myself leaning to figuring out how to make my dream of taking my family outside of the country come to fruition. You might be thinking what’s so hard about that. Just buy the plane tickets. But I’m not talking about a week long jaunt. No, I am talking about living outside of the country for at least a month and ideally more like a year. But that requires a lot of financial planning so I plan to document that on the blog as well. Whatever our journey in life the blog is meant to track how we did it and why and hopefully answer any questions people might have.

What goals do you have for your blog, short and long term?
Not only is the blog a tool that is helping me grow, at some point I’d like to crack this whole working from home thing. So I would like to earn an income through it.

Whether it’s directly or indirectly. Part of meeting my goal to help my kids become world citizens requires more flexibility in time and earnings. Creating a location independent job sounds very appealing. So far I have been able to run with it for 2 years and I’m still learning. That’s a long term and short term goal.

What post are you most proud of and why?
I think the posts I’m most proud of also where the hardest to write. Usually because they are really touching on some belief I have. Big Savings & Happiness, Can you have both? fits the bill because it talks about how I believe most people sabotage themselves when it comes to big saving and how they can try to remedy it. I also ruffle my feather when I talk about expectations for weddings, the rings and marriage in my post Wedding or Marriage?

Do you enjoy writing?
Honestly, I enjoy writing a lot less than speaking. I feel like I should be a speaker instead. But I think writing is good practice. I think it will help me get better at telling my stories. My problem is, I will go through and compose stories/ posts in my head as I walk or drive. When I finally get to paper I can’t always jot my ideas down with the same flow I had when I thought of them. It’s pretty frustrating!

1500 Days is about early retirement. Do you have early retirement dreams? At what age do you think you will retire?
I do indeed have Early Retirement dreams. Oh man, do I have early retirement dreams. Ever since I stumbled onto FIRE I have been scheming calculating how to get there as quickly as possible. Currently, the Goal is to retire at 40. But last year we kicked butt with our savings so it might be sooner. Anyone who is curious can peak at our net worth update to see how far along we are.

But I’ll be honest the thought of 10+ years just isn’t working for me. Truth be told, 10 years from now our son Jr will be finishing up high school. High School I say! I don’t want to miss my kid’s childhood. So I think I’d like to sprinkle in some mini retirements in the process. This will use up any extra time we bought with the extra savings, and put us back to 40. The first was supposed to be in 2017 but since I’m taking a year off now we’ll see what happens. I just need to convince Mr. Roamer that gap years aren’t a death sentence. Since, I’d prefer mini retirement as a family. If all goes as planned October 2026 we will be giving our schedules a makeover.

If blogging isn’t your full time gig, what is?
Right now, I’m a stay at home mom who types stuff online once in a while. But I was an engineer in an aerospace tooling company. Before the layoff I worked the dreaded 2nd shift. It was a grueling schedule but the work was very interesting and cool. Lean Manufacturing is one of those things I think should be taught to all kids in high school, along with personal finance. I really love the fact that I was introduced to it. It makes so much sense and I have applied many principles even at home. Part of my job description was instructing employees, training and teaching was by far my favorite part. But I am definitely ready for a change so who know where I’ll be after this stint of being a stay at home mom. If you want a quick intro to a lean tool check out my post 5S: Continuously improving your living space, it was even featured on Rockstar Finance.

When you are 90 and look back on your life, what do you hope you have accomplished?
I’m about to get all heavy here. You have been warned. It is my experience that parent’s like to measure themselves and their personal success by that of their kids, that’s why so many people now a day’s sign up their kids to do all these activities. It’s not uncommon to see parents pushing their kids to be the best! To win, now seems to supersede learning.

Getting straight A’s is more important than how you got them. Where am I going with all this? Well, it’s to say that while when I’m 90 I hope to have raised amazing adults I know it’s not healthy to make so much of my identity dependent on someone else. My biggest purpose in life is working towards being the best person I want to be. Not losing my marbles at the craziness that is life. I think if I constantly do that, I will have raise kids or adults who strive towards similar values.

Honestly thinking that far ahead is just too abstract for me. Other then my 10-15 year retirement plan I think that past that point I just can’t really imagine. That will be such a turning point in my life I don’t know how I will change and how I will stay the same.

Of course I can list off the generic things like: traveled to every continent, and speak 5 different languages fluently but those seem like small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. Also is saying I hope I’ve danced in at least one flash mob petty? Though, I really love dancing and that is one of my life goals, in all seriousness I hope that I lived a life I choose.

I’ve had moments in the past when I am alone and I think, “How did I get here?” Maybe you’ve all felt it too… Where you feel like decisions are being made by everyone but you, that you’re living your life for everyone else. At 90 I hope I can look back and see that I didn’t just throw my hands up and let everyone else decided what my life should be. I hope to have the soundtrack of Drive by Incubus playing while I nod knowing, that the majority of my life was lived intentionally. That I forged my own path. And that while I made big plans for the future that I choose to be present and savor my life on the day to day basis.

What is the best money management or investment tool you have come across?
Excel! And some snappy formulas are how I manage our household finances. I have been seriously considering getting a personal capital account but my weird mind still hasn’t gotten over the discomfort of sharing all my financial logins in one location. So right now I use excel to track all our money matters. Whether it’s our yearly spend, our net worth or how much we are saving.

How do you handle people with different views on money, ie spendy people?
Not well, I want to change them. Hey! At least I’m being honest. Why do I want to change them? Well, I honestly believe most people don’t know what they don’t know. In most cases when it comes to money I’d be right. It’s not a secret after all that most people are financially illiterate. So I feel like I am shedding light to some of the mysteries around money. Specially, true when it comes to 401ks and IRAs. I just can’t believe the miss information. Lucky for you this flood of information is usually kept to my family so you don’t have to worry about my preaching. Well, unless you start reading my blog that is.

Something I do need to work on is my canned response for when I want to hang out with people but I don’t want to do the options that require lots of cash exchanges. So I guess you could say how I handle it is still in the tweaking stages. I don’t have a set response. How do you respond to friends who want to hang out but suggest things that require money, money and more money?

Did you grow up with money? How did your money situation growing up influence you?
My dad made plenty of money and by plenty I mean he worked a commission job and his yearly earnings ranged from $60K all the way up to $90K. That’s a healthy income even by today’s standards. Still we were sometimes a pay check to paycheck sort of family. So I grew up thinking we were poor and I would say it out loud. How has it influenced me? Well because my family hasn’t been the kind of people with a financial cushion, once I reach adult hood I knew I was on my own.

Not having someone who can come rescue you means you have to learn to swim quickly. I made financial mistakes but I also learned how to take care of myself and my money.

Did your parents teach you about money as a kid? How so?
I don’t think my parents really taught us about money. My dad I think did have the mentality that money was bad and that it would pull you away from learning. So we weren’t allowed to work until we graduated high school. They did teach us to save a little since they did open bank accounts for us while we were young. Also my mom would always take us to run errands so we learned about shopping for food and what a reasonable price was. So I guess they taught us a bit.

We notice a lot of frugal people are into board games – what is your favorite?
I don’t have a favorite board game because I’ll just play anything my son wants to. I’m more about board games being great because they are fun and bring people together to hang out. I don’t really concern myself with which one has the most strategy or best life lessons. Growing up though it was all about chess. And the majority of the time when we are in Michigan we are playing some sort of card game like euchre or wizard.

What is the best thing you’ve read lately?
The best thing I read lately was going through the archives of the Zero Waste Home. It is just mind blowing! When I was a lean engineer that was my job. Get rid of the waste. Reduce what can’t be eliminated, eliminate what can, and minimize the costs. It was so clear to me at work how all those things were related and while some of what I learned in my career did bleed into my home life the connection wasn’t made so clear until I read this blog from front to back. Reducing waste is efficient and saves you money. After learning and practicing the principles for Financial Independence and minimalism this seems like the next step and I am excited to implement as much as I can. I highly recommend it! Thought it might seem extreme if you still haven’t started to remove clutter from your life.

What do you do for exercise?
Our exercise routine is very sporadic. Usually we get all gungho serious while we prepare for a fun run. Which we do once a year. But we also do a lot of biking which even includes biking to school.  Mr. Roamer is not a fan of exercising for the sake of exercising. He prefers to play a sport. I also try to remember to do push ups when the kids are at the park. Yes, I am that random lady (who most likely is wearing jeans) trying to do pushups. 3 set of 10 I find kicks my butt so I aim for that. Mr. Roamer bikes daily to work now since our move and with only 30 days left in the school year (as of May) we are also trying to ride in to school daily.

Well thanks for having us over and don’t forget to ask questions in the comments below.

Thanks for stopping by, Roamer! Keep up with her over at Traveling Wallet or on Twitter.