Scene: Late May, Boston. A lone woman, sits on a couch at a laptop. The camera pans to show her clicking through different tabs – American Express, Navient, Vanguard – a series of bank, credit card, student loan, and brokerage websites. You then see her brows furrow and then her eyes get wide as she copies the last number into the excel spreadsheet and clicks “autosum.”

K: “SHIT. Holy fuck. Shit.”

Her words, and facial expressions convey the emotions of realizing this is her “punch in the face” moment.

K: “Darling, Beans is richer than we are,” she announces towards the kitchen, where her husband is working on preparing dinner.

End scene.

Bread and butter personal finance isn’t usually the center of melodramatic cinema, but maybe it should be. It doesn’t get more horrifying, funny, scary, real, and genuine than witnessing a financial reckoning and awakening.

I consider myself moderately to well financially educated. I’ve been reading a handful of financial bloggers for the past few years. I always leaned towards fiscal prudence, meaning I typically saved money. That plus my reading of Mr. Money Mustache, J.D. Roth-era Get Rich Slowly, and a few other bloggers surely meant that I was well on the path to my own comfortable early retirement. Right? Not quite.

I did a lot of reading and put a little into practice, but still didn’t stare my money in the face and develop a real plan, until now. I got GOALS people. Real goals. Money goals. That kinda equate and converge with life goals, but my grander life goals are a little more fuzzy. At least now I know, I want to be financially independent by 40. I’ve got just over 7 years to get there. Where do I stand now?

Net Worth June 2016:

Net worth: -$4432.30

FML.

Bean’s net worth: $6351.05

Whelp, I’ve got a little bit to go to be financially independent. We may be in the red now, but I still don’t see it as an impossible dream.

This blog will chart how I plan to turn -$4328 into financial independence in 7 years. I’ll lay down some money knowledge, some of my mistakes, and just how I navigate through prioritizing where the money goes. Hopefully you find this interesting, insightful, inspiring, and many other adjectives that don’t start with “i.”