🌈🥰🙌 Happy 2025, friends!! 🙌🥰🌈

My previous content will not be returning—I’m a new person, older, wiser, a little bit harder, and I’m currently taking a break from writing fiction. I became exhausted from trying to get my books out there, and I’ve come to terms with it’s just not my time. Writing is a part of my soul, it’s in my blood and my bones, and I will return to that part of my life in the future. So, if you’re following my books, you know I have books partially written, and I’ll be back!

If you’re a millennial like Byron and me, or younger, you know how our generations have been hit hard by the current economy and joblessness. We’re dealing with growing inflation, and even with master’s degrees (like we both have), there aren’t enough “good jobs” due to an over-flooded market that directly resulted from guaranteed student loans. Millennials are the first generation to experience high student loan payments with mediocre jobs or no available jobs in their fields, resulting in starting over and changing career paths while still paying student loans on a now-useless degree, less housing at higher prices, more stress, and less fertility, and that’s if we even want kids! And the generations underneath us are facing worse and worse circumstances with each new wave born. People don’t settle down in their twenties with good jobs, kids, and a nice house like our parents did before us—”making it” doesn’t exist until at least your thirties unless you’re blessed enough to be born into a family business or you win the “good job” lottery, and that’s if you “make it” at all. What this also means is: how are we expected to save for retirement in these conditions? According to the generations before us, we are supposed to start our 401ks in our twenties to have enough money by the time we’re 65, but we can barely put food in our mouths or keep roofs over our heads. And this little tidbit of “advice” is coming from generations who have access to pensions, better 401k matches, AND social security benefits. Millennials and younger are facing the very real and terrifying possibility we might not retire. At least in America—I don’t know how it works in other countries. Alas, this is not a socio-economic or political manifesto, so this is where I’m going to leave it.

Consumer to Investor

I’m tired of buying shit. I’m tired of ads. I’m tired of subscriptions without physically owning something. I’m tired.

My gift to myself after not being blessed with a miracle child is a library—we wouldn’t have the money or the room in our house otherwise. I’ve gotten to the point now I have plenty of books to be happy for a very long time, and our money needs to go elsewhere, as well. We have our mortgage for our fixer-upper that requires more money for upgrades and repairs (my library isn’t even built yet, so my books are on the floor!). One of our cars died last summer, so we have a car payment. Food, insurance, heat, etc. etc. etc.! It’s expensive to be a person! So, long story short, I’m using the local library more (Libby is, hands down, one of the best inventions ever), watching daily Kindle deals to see if anything from my wish list pops up, reading what I own, and unless it’s a book that’s continuing a series I already own, or it’s an author I watch and collect copies of all their works, I’m not buying it. I’m buying less clothes, jewelry, and whatever else my money disappears into thin air for. It adds up fast! In terms of subscriptions, the only one we have is the yearly-billed Amazon Prime due to living in the country. Amazon Prime saves us a lot of time and gas, and the free ebooks and movies/tv shows are a nice bonus. Byron is also spending less on hobbies, and we’re spending less on food out and alcohol, and with the money we’re freeing up together, we’re starting to invest in the stock market.

Wherever Byron has worked, he’s always had the option to invest in a 401k, and he’s also been lucky enough to have a company match. I, however, have never had either of those blessings, and I’m 32! I finally! love my job, which I just started this past spring, and plan on retiring from it, so as it stands, I will never have access to a 401k. This means I need an alternative to save for retirement, and not only that, but 401ks are “safe”. We are young enough and have no kids, so we can be riskier. You also get to a point where you’re like: Okay. We both like our jobs. But we’d like more money, and we’re not going to get that money from the work we’re in. When that happens, all that’s left is investing!

We’re not day traders—that’s a little too close to fancy gambling for us, and we do not have the time with our day jobs to get that involved. We’re focusing on long-term stock investments where we can set it and forget it, and also make more money than simply saving for retirement. What we’re interested in is chasing the “next best thing”, so we’re focusing on tech. Right now, this means AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, and eventually we’ll be getting into index funds, which are safer, but more expensive than individual stocks, and will diversify our portfolio more.

NVIDIA is the current tech stock market darling, so we focused solely on that with our December budget as we’re learning. With a tight budget and being new to the process, we thought starting with one company was the best way to carefully begin our journey. We’re now interested in Cerence, as well, after they released their new partnership with NVIDIA. Tomorrow, we’ll be spending our January budget on more NVIDIA and some Cerence with the leftover amount, since Cerence is much less expensive than NVIDIA. I also put together a tech watchlist on our E-Trade account that includes Palantir, which is on our soon-to-purchase wish list, and Broadcom, among other current popular tech companies. We’re very interested in ChatGPT (OpenAI), but that’s not publicly traded. However!! Microsoft owns almost half of OpenAI, so when we have more money, we’ll be investing in Microsoft, too. Their stock is much more expensive than NVIDIA’s, so that will have to wait. NVIDIA has also invested in OpenAI, so even without owning shares of Microsoft yet or investing in index funds, we’re still on the right track. It’s absolutely fascinating learning how these companies interconnect as you move along with your research for your own portfolio. Byron and I don’t trust other people, so we aren’t using a financial advisor (and we don’t want to pay them when our budget is so tight). E-Trade is our new best friend.

I’ll be sharing our monthly stock picks and what we’re learning along the way as investment newbs, and the occasional opinion piece because it’s my website, so why not? 😋 I get frustrated with articles and websites that are like, “buy your subscription now to get our stock picks” or “buy a monthly subscription to see this business tech article”. Nuh-uh, honey. What happened to just ads carrying the revenue for your website? 🙄 I’m sick of every goddamn little thing being monetized. Not here! I’m no gatekeeper. If you’re interested in our journey from consumer to investor, and especially if you want to join us in our journey, stay tuned!

To joy and divine abundance for all—there’s plenty of wealth to go around! 🍻