Life Archives - Making Sense Of Cents

4 Great Self Care Online Classes You Should Take (Plus Thousands of Other Classes to Up Your Game)

February 25, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 7 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

The following is a sponsored partnership with Skillshare. All opinions are 100% my own.

It's funny, when you're younger, I feel like you'll do anything to rush through school and not be learning all the time. I still vividly remember being in college and there being an older person in one of my classes. Everyone asked him “why are you taking this class if you're not trying to get a degree?”

No one could understand and we all thought he was crazy. He then replied that when you get older, that you will enjoy learning new things. I still remember that like it was yesterday, and now I completely understand it now. I am always wanting to learn new things now, and it's always a joy to do.

Recently, I learned about Skillshare and I am so excited to share it with you all. Skillshare is an online learning community for designers, photographers, marketers, entrepreneurs, really anyone! They have more than 18,000 classes in the broad categories of creative, business, technology, and lifestyle.

And, it's affordable. [Read more…]

Don’t Compare Your Beginning to Someone Else’s Middle

February 21, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 60 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Don't Compare Your Beginning to Someone Else's Middle

You know that feeling when you are starting on a new goal and you see someone else in a similar situation having much more success than you? Maybe it causes you to feel hopeless, defeated, or just overall depressed that you’re not on the same level.

In that moment, you are taking your beginning and comparing it to someone else’s middle.

This is something that many of us do, and when you're beginning a new goal, it can be easy to look at others and compare yourself to them.

People often do it to determine how well they are doing in life and base their personal value on that. However, that usually doesn’t lead to feeling too good about yourself. Plus, who actually wants to judge themselves in a negative way? While it can be good to spot your weaknesses to help you grow, feeling like you are inadequate, unsuccessful, unlucky, and more is the type of negativity that can cause you to lose sight of your goals, lead to depression, and more.

Comparison really is the thief of joy after all.

However, many of us are still falling into the negative mindset of comparing ourselves to others. [Read more…]

What Traveling Full-Time For 3 Years Has Taught Me

February 10, 2018 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 53 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

What Traveling Full-Time For 3 Years Has Taught Me Three years ago, we completely emptied our house, put it on the market, and drove to Colorado. We had been location independent for a couple of years at that point, and we had the travel itch. We were ready to explore, and little did we know that would be the start of our life traveling full-time.

It wasn't easy. I remember going out to eat with my close friends right before we moved. It was, literally, moments after we packed everything into a car, that I went out to eat with friends to say goodbye before continuing the drive to Colorado. I cried about selling our house and leaving my friends and family.

We found a “homebase” in Fruita, Colorado, and we used that as our jumping off point as we explored Colorado and nearby Utah.

We knew absolutely no one in the Fruita, Colorado area (or anywhere near it). We just picked it after a recent trip and liked the location, the small town feel, and all of the mountain biking, rock climbing, and hiking that it had to offer. [Read more…]

How To Reach Your 2018 Goals – Setting Goals for 2018

December 18, 2017 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 43 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Wow, can you believe that 2017 is almost over? This means that it's the time of year when people start thinking about their 2018 goals. It's only normal, a new year offers the possibility for a new you, right?

However, only about 8% of people actually achieve their resolutions each year. And, only 75% of those who set goals follow through with them after the first week of the year.

It’s crazy that 25% of people stopped working towards their goals after just the first week!

So today, I'm going to help you find ways stick to your 2018 goals and become successful with them in the new year. Let's make your 2018 goal list a reality!

Posts related to 2018 goal setting:

And, before you throw out the idea of goal setting and New Year’s resolutions, or judge people who are doing so, please keep this quote from Statistic Brain in mind: [Read more…]

Ask Me Anything

October 18, 2017 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 328 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I have always been a big fan of Reddit’s Ask Me Anything threads, and then recently, I saw that Steve published an Ask Me Anything on his blog. I don't know why it’s taken me so long to decide to do one of these. But, here it is, and I hope you think it’s going to be as fun as I do!

Ask Me Anything is literally that – you can ask me anything. If you’re struggling to figure out what to ask, here are a few of the topics you may want to know more about:

Personal finance
Blogging
My life
Travel
RVing
Being location independent
Business
Making extra money
How much candy I eat on a daily basis
My favorite TV show
Questions about my dogs

And so on, and so on.

Seriously, ask me anything in the comments below, and I will take the time to answer every single one. Of course, please nothing inappropriate or creepy. I'll let you be the judge of what is creepy, I guess, haha!

All right, go for it, ask away!

P.S. If you're looking to see all of the comments and questions, make sure to hit “Older Comments” or “Newer Comments” below. The comments break apart in pages once there are over 50 comments.

Thinking You Can’t Do Something And Making Excuses

September 15, 2017 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 3 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

A year from now you may wish you had started today. ~ Karen Lamb

Excuses are what holds a person back. I know this because I hear excuses nearly every single day, and I have made many of my own as well.

I've made excuses for why I couldn't leave my day job, why I can't stop eating junk food, why I'm too busy to do something, why I don't have the experience to do certain things, how it's unfair that some people have certain privileges, and so on.

See, after my father passed away when I was only 18, I felt especially vulnerable and made lots of excuses for things. It felt like everything was very unfair since the person I loved the most had passed away.

I made excuses to skip classes, for why I had no time to do anything, why I was upset, why I shouldn't look for ways to make extra money, and so on. I told myself that other people have help with everything and that I was all alone – and for some reason I thought it was okay to make these excuses since my dad had passed away.

This went on for several years. When things were good, I was happy. But, when things were bad, I would just blame it all on how my life was difficult and that I didn't have a parent to help me get through it.

Please head on over to FITnancials.com to read my guest post How To Take Control of Your Life and Stop Making Excuses.

Oh yeah, quick note: We are currently hosting Our Favorite Books and Kindle Giveaway. You can enter here.

Our 10-Day Sailing Charter Around The British Virgin Islands

August 14, 2017 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 80 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

We went on a 10 day sailing charter about the British Virgin Islands and it was AMAZING! This bareboat charter with Sunsail in the BVIs is something I definitely recommend doing. Because of RVing, we made a new friend around 1.5 years ago. Like us, he RVs full-time, but he used to live on a sailboat. After months of talking about it, we finally decided that we would go on a sailing trip together. Me and Wes knew that sailing would eventually be our next adventure, so this seemed like a fun vacation to help us decide if we would really enjoy it.

So, in June of 2017, we took a 10-day sailing charter in the British Virgin Islands with our RV friend and two other couples.

This ended up being one of the best trips I've ever taken. Plus, I was still able to earn a great income even though we were sailing and on vacation for the majority of the month as you can read in How I Made $121,861.28 In June While Sailing to Beautiful Islands.

We've been to the Virgin Islands numerous times, but we had never been to the British Virgin Islands, and this was our first sailing trip.

Actually, I had never even been on a sailboat before. [Read more…]

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