Our Story

We are two married frugal hackers (Mr. and Mrs. FH) and we want to share our epic life journey with you.

We're young Canadians of Indian origin aged 30 and 27 (in 2017) living and working in San Francisco making $350k in annual income from our day jobs. Mr. FH is a Software Engineer at a hot tech startup, while Mrs. FH is an Accounting Manager, also at a startup. A lot of people in our positions, especially in San Francisco, spend most of their money on frivolous stuff, large houses, expensive furniture, fancy dinner dates, concerts, luxury travel, guided tours, etc. 

We don't do any of that.

In 2016, we bought a 3-bedroom 1300 sq. ft. apartment in San Francisco and that process got us looking at our finances very closely (thanks Chase mortgage for getting us to scrutinize our numbers so closely!). We have always been relatively frugal people, which helped us save the $200k needed for our down payment and closing costs in just 5 years of working. But after doing the math, we realized that by being deliberately frugal rather than accidentally frugal, we could attain the holy grail of personal finance in just 3-4 more years of working - financial independence!

We created this blog in 2017 to share our life and the various hacks we employ every day to improve our lives further. In essence, this blog is about 3 things: being smart, being frugal, and hacking the system. It's about reducing life to what truly matters to us:

• Eating well and being insanely healthy

• Mastering personal finance

• Practicing frugality in every walk of life, not just money

• Sleeping well

• Living a happy, fulfilling life with people that matter

This year, we are on track to saving 75% of our after-tax income. That's nearly $190k in raw savings, year-after-year. 75% is an insane rate of savings for most people, but with a few frugal hacks, you too can dramatically increase your savings rate, often up to 50%. Read this post to see how.

Why Financial Independence?

Why did we make financial independence our goal?

Because jobs suck. And most managers aren't that great. Forced 1:1's are the worst. Meetings can be pretty blah. You have to wake up and go to work everyday to the same place, at the same time, taking the same commute. It's so routine. It's too monotonous. That's no way to go about life! Time is our most precious resource, and yet, so many people squander it living unfulfilled lives completely enslaved by money, debt, and bad jobs.

Most humans only work to make money - what if you didn't have to make money anymore? What if money took care of itself? That is the crux of financial independence. You then have the freedom to do whatever you want with your time.

Assuming no windfalls, there's only one fool-proof way to break free of this stupid cycle.

Study hard in high school + college, work hard for 7-10 years, live frugally, save up (and invest) 25x of your annual living expenses, then quit your job and move somewhere cheaper. The money saved up will generate interest/dividend/rent money via stock market + real-estate investments, more than enough to cover your basic living expenses. You are now free to stop working and do as you please with your time!

I hope you'll join us in our adventure to becoming financial independent while at the same time hacking our lives to live the best we can. We want to stop going to 9-5 jobs, we want to eat well, sleep well, and exercise a ton. And we want to surround ourselves with amazing people. During our spare time, we want to be reading inspiring books and blogs full of worldly wisdom that teach us how to hack our lives even more. Life is too precious to be lived narrowly, linearly, or on someone else's terms -- so we're going to go make it our own!