Our Story

I once played a round in Cards Against Humanity that was a double fill-in-the-blanks:


Step 1. __________
Step 2. __________
Step 3. Prosper. 

The winning hand was:

Step 1. Giving it 100%._
Step 2. White Privilege. 
Step 3. Prosper.

I like to joke that this is pretty much our story because it acknowledges all the ways we have been blessed beyond our wildest expectations to find ourselves on this journey in the world.

I am forever grateful to our parents for giving us the tools, confidence, advocacy, and many other blessings we needed to get through college, instead of just writing a check for each semester. We both graduated with a mountain of optimism and student loan debt that gave us clear goals and mission as a young couple. We bought a small foreclosed house in North Minneapolis and were married the same year and so began our three year journey of debt elimination, home remodeling, and year of saving. I have heard that money is a common source of tension for relationships, but ours was strengthened by the shared financial goals that strongly shaped our first four years of marriage.

Even though we worked hard to find loopholes and made some out of the box decisions, when we reflected on the life we created after we had completed our debt and savings goals, we basically had a slightly tweaked version of the American Dream:

a nice house, cute pets, dual income, thinking-about-having-kids, heightened consumption, a lush green lawn and a solid dose of anxiety. Overall, it was pretty comfortable, but when I was offered a job on the other side of the globe, we saw it as an opportunity to answer for big questions without all the baggage of debt and routine.

We feel blessed to have this chance to make big changes and rewrite our path. This blog is an attempt at compiling reflections and reminders of the joys and growth of this process as we go along.



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