Today’s task:

Take responsibility for your actions and mistakes

Sometimes spontaneous decisions don’t always result in the way that you want to. Yes, the adventure might be there, but you might also be stuck with the financial consequences of your decision.

I received an email yesterday that was kind of a bummer. I thought that I could quickly get out of a lease I had signed for an apartment, and change course, but I guess not. That means I’m paying for both a place to stay here in Costa Rica as well as an apartment back in the States, which isn’t ideal. 

There’s many ways that I can look at this. Either from the glass half full perspective or half empty.

Today, I choose to look at the situation with the glass half full. 

If I hadn’t decided to extend my stay, I wouldn’t have met a taxi driver who connected me with an immigration lawyer, who this week clarified that I could indeed apply for the digital nomad visa here in Costa Rica and don’t have to wait until October!

If I hadn’t decided to stay, I would be trying to move my stuff in a blizzard. 

Instead, I’m continuing to stay active, enjoy the warmth, strategize about what my future looks like this year, and continue to set ambitious goals for myself financially and personally. 

A friendly reminder to myself – and to you readers out there – is to continue dreaming and imagining what that future could look like, despite any setbacks that you might face. And to recognize that you can’t always get out of a sticky situation. 

Instead of focusing on how much more money I’ll be spending this month, I’m going to focus on how much more I can generate this month.

A recap of the month of February’s finances, as I said that I would continue to share the numbers:

Consulting Income: Technically I didn’t have any funds come in during the month of February. But my payment at the end of January was for 5,083.76. I set aside 35% for taxes and savings and then paid myself $3000 out of that.

Expenses (both business + personal): $4,895

Savings: $175

Retirement: $0

Some notes about what made the month of February a bit of an outlier in terms of expenses and cash flow: I took 3K out of savings to purchase a new laptop. See Day 52’s post for more on this. I didn’t pay for rent, but I did pay for a storage unit and I splurged on an Airbnb for $95/night for a week, which basically ended up being my fee for ‘rent’ – $600.

Here is a screenshot of the summary of the different contracts that I worked on or managed in February. 

 What’s shocking about this is the amount of billable hours per week. I had been taking two days a week off to work on the farm in exchange for a place to live, but even then, realizing that I only had to work 13 hours a WEEK to get to 50% of my income goal…

I feel like I’ve still got a ways to go before I can start automating my contributions to my retirement account. I’ll admit I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t been contributing more to this. I feel like it’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality that I wish I could be in, but with such drastic fluctuations in my income from month-to-month, it’s not practical. 

My goal of where I’d like to be within the next 4 months:

• Income (combination Mezclada direct + consulting): 10K/mo.

Out of this:

• Savings: $500/mo.
• Retirement contribution: $800/mo.

I know that I’m going to have to be a bit more aggressive in my savings goals because I’ve got the following pending travel aspirations this year:

• Flight for my mom to visit my sister in Australia (10K) – 55th birthday gift
• Trip to Italy in August for a wedding (3K)
• Trip to India for yoga teacher training (?)
• Visa + moving fees associated with my transition to Costa Rica permanently (I’d love to have at least 1K set aside for this by September)

I recognize that while this was a 60 day challenge that I started on November 30th (which would have put us at the end on January 30th) and it’s now the beginning of March, I will say that I did set out to achieve what I had hoped, and more. 

The MORE piece is where I think that I grew the most. I think that at the beginning of the challenge, I was operating from such a place of scarcity, lack, and fear, that the opportunities I needed just weren’t going to come. 

It wasn’t until I took a big leap of faith and purchased a plane ticket abroad that I told myself “Yes you can, and you will!” that stuff started to shift in the right direction. 

Since then, doors have continued to open, and my trust muscle in myself has strengthened. I continue to seek out different work opportunities that will push me in the right direction, and take on projects that will help me build a new skill or learn something new, work with people that bring me joy. I also feel like my entire approach to living life and prioritizing my values as part of the way I spend my time on a daily basis is different from the way it was before. I consider this a huge point of personal growth.

While I still have a fair amount to work on in terms of evening out my cash flow and feeling like I have the financial freedom that I want, so many of my doubts of whether or not I can achieve those goals are gone. I know that whatever I want is possible, that the resources and people I need to meet are already out there, and that it’s all on its way. 

As I embark on B-School for the third time, I’m excited to think about how going through this course is also going to inspire and motivate me to keep moving forward creating some new offerings this year and connecting with people out there who share the same values. 

Hope that for those of you who have been following along, you also recognize how doable getting your finances in order is, and that given how many free resources are out there, there’s no excuses!