Are you sick and tired of your current job? Did you find a new one? Did you perhaps reach financial independence and you’re finally able to retire? I switched jobs about 8 months ago, so I wanted to highlight some things I did to make sure I wasn’t leaving any unused benefits on the table.

My husband and I started our journey in the US in 2009 as university students. We were both on F-1 visas. Our goal at the time wasn’t necessarily to immigrate to the US. We wanted to attend university in the US, but if things didn’t work out, we could just move back to our home country, Suriname.

My husband and I lived on a strict monthly stipend in gradschool, in addition to his savings. It’s not an extravagant amount of money, and as you can see from my gradschool budget, we lived pretty frugally. I like finding ways to earn a few extra bucks here and there to reach our savings goals faster. Here, I’ll dive in a few ways we currently make extra money, and have made during gradschool.

I’ve been writing about our path to financial independence (FI) for a bit. In this post, I’ll explain what financial independence is, the different stages of FI, and which stage we’re at.

I had some lofty goals for 2022. We wanted to max our Roth IRA, save for a move, and pad our emergency fund. That was difficult to do on a single salary in Northern California. Here’s a breakdown of our financial goals last year and whether or not we met them.