I never thought this day would come. No, seriously. Those of you who have known me for any meaningful length of time know that I was never eager to have kids. And yet here I sit, writing this post with a fresh human snoozing just a few feet away. A fresh human that we planned, despite my initial hesitation!

Her name is Penny and she was born earlier this week.

You won’t find any pictures of her in this post, though. Valerie and I have decided to leave the choice to Penny whether she would like to expose her life to the Internet, much to the chagrine of friends and family. They will just need to make the 30 minute drive up to our house to meet her in person! For now you’ll just have to make due with this hyper-realistic artist depiction.

What’s Next?

When Valerie and I first started dating people asked “When are you going to move in together?” When that happened they asked “When are you going to get married?” Then “When are you going to buy a house?” “Get a dog?” “Have a baby?”

Well before anyone asks when the next baby is coming, I’ll say right now that Penny won’t have any competition for our attention. We’ll be doing our part to pull the replacement rate closer to 1.

So the question you should really be asking is when will we be financially independent and able to retire early? That’s a great question.

I’m working on it 💸 😎 💸