inafi
Welcome to Minafi! Here you’ll find my tips, thoughts and personal stories around a common theme – building wealth. Read more about my story.
Exploring the intersection of minimalism, mindfulness and financial independence. Read more
When I first started investing, one of the most interesting things to me was the idea of dividends. Free money added back to my account, regardless of the price of the fund? That sounds amazing! If the fund doesn’t go up, at least I’ll still have money in my pocket. As I’ve grown to learn more about dividend funds (and more importantly taxes), my position on dividends has shifted and now I avoid them as much as possible. Continue Reading…
Earlier this year we planned a trip of a lifetime – a 2-week honeymoon in Southeast Asia visiting Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Outside of our house, car, and education, this was the most expensive thing we’ve ever purchased, with a total price tag of around $15,000. Our wedding itself was under $10k, which was in part to save money for this amazing trip.
You might be thinking “Southeast Asia is one of the cheapest places on earth, how the hell can you spend $15,000 in two weeks there?” – well, there’s an easy answer to that: Disney. For this trip, we decided to try something new and do an all-inclusive, guided vacation. You can check out the entirety of the trip on the Adventures by Disney site. They would handle everything from picking us up at the airport to dropping us off 2 weeks later. Aside from getting a Vietnam Visa and having a few passport photos taken ahead of time, we were in their hands for the entire trip.
Attempting to do this trip justice in a single post isn’t going to happen. Instead, I’m going to focus on why it could be worth the money for you (if you happen to have a spare $15k laying around).
I was lucky enough to grow up with computers from a very early age. My dad worked at a company with a Mac-heavy environment in the early 80s — the time before Microsoft was a household name when Apple (still) was the brightest star in the personal computer market (funny how things come back around). It’s hard to explain how critical this early exposure to computers shaped my confidence and understanding of them throughout the years.
I didn’t touch a smartphone until an iPhone 3G when I was 27. Before that, it was heavy tower computers and laptops all the time. This experience shaped my education, my job prospects and creative endeavors. Continue Reading…
At the end of every quarter, I share a snapshot of my current finances. This includes what I’m invested in, their values and the change over time. The goal in sharing this information is to show it’s possible to make money investing in super-simple ways without the need to watch the latest news. If you want to look back at past investment reports, you can view them all in one handy place.
My hope is that people realize how easy it is to invest and take control of their own investments. Whether that’s reading a book on the topic, taking my free investing course, or looking at what others are doing and learning from that. When I learned to invest it was a combination of all of these, and I always wished more people shared the nitty-gritty of their own decision making. I hope this helps to highlight what I’m investing in, why, and get feedback from people more experienced than myself about ways to improve.
I’ve recently joined the ranks of ChooseFI Podcast listeners, and have loved it so far. In episode 23 with ESI Money, they touch on a topic I’ve started to think more about lately — what would a day look without a job? (don’t worry coworkers, it was mostly because I’ve been sick recently and have had a lot of time). It’s easy to think this would just fall into place naturally – which is a possibility for sure – but I like to be more intentional with my planning. I tend to think without structure, my days would involve floating around from one thought to the next, desperately trying to grasp for important things to do that matched what I was in the mood for.
After staying home from work sick recently, I started to realize that just wouldn’t do it for me. I need more structure and goals in my days. Otherwise, I tend to do very little. With a few keystone habits to my day, I think that would be enough to supercharge my productivity and get momentum built up.
The “achiever” in me (my #3 strength from StrengthFinders by the way) needs to get something done. I love that feeling of accomplishment – even if it’s something no one sees but me. Something as mundane as organizing a closet, clearing away some old paperwork or watching a video that I learn something from gives me that hit of effectiveness. The idea of pulling back from that to just relax made me wonder – would I enjoy it long-term? Continue Reading…
Each quarter I lay out a bunch of goals I want to tackle. For this quarter, I'm aiming to get hea...
In Q2 I set very ambitious goals - explore Utah, be healthy, make money, draw more visitors to Mi...
I’ll be honest, I’d never heard the term ESPP or “employee stock purchase plan&...
Minafi.com was launched about a year ago, but like all stories, Minafi's starts in the middle. He...
What if I told you that you could sell your used car for $150,000? We recently sold our second ca...
If you want to achieve financial independence earlier in life, there's a lot to know! Budgeting, ...
If you received $1 million tomorrow, what would you do? How will taxes work? How much should you ...
What do you want your life to be? One way to understand that is to create a list of the 101 thing...
Every quarter I go over every expense I have and categorize it. This has led to a wealth of infor...
