Be warned! – This post is going to be filled with pocket philosophy, puns, clichés and bad punchlines from the ’80s! If you’re and ’80s kid like myself, you probably know Daniel LaRusso (Daniel-san) and Mr. Miyagi from the movie “The Karate Kid” (played by Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita). I used to love those…
What I learned from The Karate Kid
Do you make decisions with your head or your heart?
The last few weeks I’ve spent some time on one of my favorite activities; browsing for cars. The lease is up on my car by the end of this month, and even though I’ve proclaimed on several occasions that I was now going to bike to work, it’s just not very practical when you also…
5 (free) ways to keep in touch during a lockdown
Hello dear readers and followers of the Total Balance household! While we all try to practice safe “Social distancing” these days (to break the chain of infection from the dreaded Corona virus dubbed Covid-19), there are ways to remain social, without being close to one another! Thanks to the great invention of The Internet (and…
A tribute to TEoW
Behind every (great) man is a great woman (rolling her eyes)… This is a tribute to my (eye rolling) wife. Because she doesn’t get enough credit for her hard work every day, taking care of our family. I figured it was only appropriate to use the voice of my alter ego to thank her properly….
A lazy mans guide to budgeting
I know. It was bound to happen eventually, right? – “How to do x-y-z” is the most boring blog posts of them all. I do believe we even refer to them as “filler posts”. Something we use to fill the void between the good stuff, right? – But not this guy! I’m here to tell…
Why I rarely get on a scale
We’ve had a lot of “money talk” lately. I feel it’s time to dig into a little “personal wealth” as well, if you catch my drift!? Part of the journey to FIRE is also a spiritual journey, in where you (most of us) try to find your inner balance along the way. What makes you…
How to hack your charity donations
If you’ve ever walked down a busy shopping street, odds are that you at one point or another, have been solicited by one of those annoying street “sales-people”, who will try to convince you to support <insert worthy cause here>. When I was living in the city (in my 20’s) this happened to me quite…
Confessions of a Shopaholic
“Hi, I’m Nick and I’m a shopaholic”. OK that might be a little overly dramatic. I was never really a shopaholic. But like most of our society, I had bought into the fact that buying stuff = good! When you click that BUY-NOW button on Ebay, it instantly release a shot of dopamine in your…
Show me your budget (and I’ll tell you who you are)
Much like your clothes, your friends, your pet(s) and your means of transportation says something about who you are, so does your budget… When I talk to people about my FIRE project (it happens a lot, according to my wife), they often react as though I’ve just told them that they can’t have coffee again….
Lost & Found
So, last week I made a bold statement, and accused my wife of stealing my stones (No, not those! – But I like the way you think! 😛 )… It turned out that I still had them! They were tucked away in one of those moving boxes that you never get around to unpack (we…