A Year of “Firsts”

Happy Holidays! 2019 is almost over, another decade gone by, and we’ve been thinking of all the “firsts” the Stealth Wealth Family had this year.

2019 brought the first post on this blog! Indeed, we’ve started off slowly, but we did manage to get featured in a few posts by some of our favorite financial bloggers. Here are some notable links to our features on blogs you should know about, if you don’t already:

• Can I Retire Yet (Best of the Web, September 2019)
• Physician on FIRE (Dawn’s guest post here about negotiating her sabbatical and other part time situations)
• The Physician Philosopher (Monthly Checkout, FinCon Edition)

As they say, slow and steady is what wins the race. We expect this to be a sustainable family project for all of us, on our own terms and own time, and we hope you’ll stay around for the adventure!

As a family unit, we all experienced two new travel locations this year: Alaska and The Caribbean. These two locales were about as vastly different as can be. The style of the two trips was quite different as well: a cruise vs. DIY slow travel with some work thrown in.

Aspen had the lion’s share of firsts this year. Her firsts might seem more “basic”, yet they’re just as profound when you’re only 4 years old:

• First haircut
• snorkeling
• rollerskating
• unicorn (horse) ride
• move away from friends
• ear infection

Her life has been a string of firsts; that’s what being a kid’s all about. It’s up to us grown-ups to be conscious of those firsts – whether it’s by lending compassion when the firsts are scary, or by just noticing and appreciating the experience of newness. We could all use a lesson in those things.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

– Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

What were your firsts this year?