This summer I have a lot of travel planned. Between conferences, vacations and family get-togethers, we are looking at dropping a good chunk of change this year on travel. I have a goal of visiting at least eight National Parks this year, so even though most of our stays are going to be in campgrounds, we will spend quite a few nights at hotels too.  Figure a night for every 2-3 days of camping or a night to crash while driving to a park.

Whenever we don’t need a fancy hotel, my favorite way to get one for cheap is Priceline, esp. the ”Name your own price” way.

Priceline hotel bidding disadvantages

Priceline is not for everyone. There are a few major negatives which makes it scary for a lot of people -

• You are choosing the type of hotel, not a specific hotel. For example, if you want a microwave in the room or if you want to stay at a particular Ritz-Carlton, you should not bid on Priceline.
• You can choose which part of the city you want to stay but can’t get more specific. If you want to stay right next to the stadium you want to attend the game at, bidding is not for you.
• No refunds. No cancellations. No change. Period. If you end up with a hotel that you hate, sorry, tough luck, you are not getting any refund. Your plan changes? Not their problem.

Why do I still like it? Because Priceline really does have some killer deals that you cannot find anywhere else – IF you know exactly what your plans are, IF you are not particular about the hotel you stay in as long as it is in the area you want and the star rating that you like and IF you don’t have any special needs (like an extra bed or a microwave in the room).

How to beat the bidding to get good deals?

Getting a good deal in Priceline is an art that can only be mastered via experience. Yes, I speak from some painful experiences during my initial trials with Priceline. I swore off the bidding war altogether. When I had to travel every week without getting reimbursed for my stay though, out of desperation, I gave it a second chance. This time I did a lot of research, hours and hours in fact. Slowly I got the hang of it and now I have a process in place that I go through step by step. Caution : it is time consuming so don’t enter the bidding if you are not willing to trade your time for money.

There are two crucial steps to get a winning bid on the hotel -

1. Before you bid, know how much to bid. This is the biggest mistake I made during my first trial with Priceline. If you don’t have this information, you will end up overpaying.
2. Know how to rebid. Priceline has this annoying policy of letting you bid only once every 24 hrs for a specific configuration of the bid. For example, San Diego, CA has 17 zones (areas within the city), each zone will have 1-5 star hotels. So if you want to stay at a 5 star hotel during the Memorial Day weekend in the downtown area, you can bid once today with a specific price. If you want to increase the price, you have to either change the zones, star rating or the dates. Most of the time you don’t want to change the dates, you might not want to stay in a 1 star hotel if you are used to 5 star stays and you might not want to stay far away from your destination either. As you can see, you are pretty much stuck,  unless, you use the strategies for free rebidding (which, I will explain in detail in part 2 of this post).

You can get an even better deal by using the information from Hotwire (again, I will explain how it is done).

How much to bid for hotels on Priceline?

Priceline works by being opaque, which means you don’t know the exact hotel you will get and by extension you don’t know how much to bid. While Priceline and the hotels available on Priceline don’t want us to know how much to bid, there are three independent sites that provide a wealth of information on winning bids making it easier to make an educated guess. Before that, we have to figure when to start bidding.

Know when to bid

Hotels provide unsold rooms to Priceline which sells them for a fraction of the published rate by not letting the bidder choose or know the hotel name. Hotels use their past inventory movement (corporate hotels know that Thanksgiving will be a slow weekend for them) and current major bookings (like a wedding) to put the hotels on sale on Priceline. Most group reservations are not finalized 90 days in advance, so starting to bid 3 months before your planned travel date will give you plenty of time to start low and increase the bid.

There is the issue that 90 days might be too early for you to commit. Given the no refund, no cancellation policy with Priceline you will have to come up with a good compromise between rates and your plans.

I have found 2 months to be the ideal time to start bidding, if the stay is more than 3-4 days. I start with a low ball rate and increase $2-$5 with every bid. If it is a short stay, I usually don’t waste my time and just start my bidding 2 days or even the day before my stay.

Know how much to bid

At this point you should have your dates set, decided on the minimum star rating of the hotel and nailed the area of your visit down to the neighborhood. Armed with this information, you have to make use of 3 sites to come up with bidding strategies -

1. Biddingfortravel.com
2. Betterbidding.com
3. Biddingtraveler.com

The first two are forums contributed by fellow bidders.  The sites are organized by State/City. People who have bid for a specific city/star rating/date share that information in the forums. Sometimes the information given is minimal – “I won Grand Hyatt Denver for $100/night, 6/12 – 6/14″. Other times, people share the entire bidding history – “Time of stay 7/2 – 7/5, bid 4 star $90 rejected, bid 3.5 star $95 rejected, won $100 Marriott San Diego Downtown”.

If your stay looks like this : Visiting San Diego, May 25, 2012 – May 27, 2012. Want to stay near SeaWorld and San Diego Zoo in at least a 3 star hotel, these are the steps you will go through to get the bidding price -

1. Map the SeaWorld and San Diego Zoo to Priceline zones. In this case, it will be Zone #3 and #7. 
2. Check out what hotels are normally available in your star rating in the chosen zone. For example, Betterbidding lists all the hotels and their star rating in specific neighborhood in their hotel list. And the Biddingfortravel San Diego hotel list provides similar information. Check both of them to avoid any surprises. Priceline classifies all “resorts” as 5 star places and several hotels that you might categorize as 3 stars might be rated 3.5 or higher. 
3. Go to Biddingfortravel.com and Betterbidding.com, look up winning bids in San Diego.
4. Narrow it down to dates that are close to yours.
5. Compile the numbers and come up with minimum and maximum bidding rates -

If you see a lot of winning bids from the same hotel, chances are that the hotel has a lot of unsold inventory. If you bid close to the winning rate, there is a high probability that you might get the same hotel. Looking at all the winning bids will give you an idea of what hotels you might get.

Now armed with this knowledge start your bid with a low ball offer if you have a lot of time, or start a little lower than the lowest winning bid based on the zone if you are tight for time.

Priceline tries to be “helpful” and offers its own suggestions on how much you should bid. Ignore this number and use the numbers you got from the two sites.

There is a new site which I have used only once, biddingtraveler.com. It uses information contributed by users as well, but the value of this site lies in the fact that they compile the information and provide you with a bidding strategy based on zones and your travel dates.  If that is not enough, Bidding Traveler has an autobid feature (which I did not use) that promises to automatically do the work for you if you enter a minimum and a maximum amount you are willing to bid. That would save a lot of time and get you a sweet deal!

If your bid is rejected and you want to retry for the same zone/star combination, you have to wait for 24 hrs, unless you use the free rebidding strategy which I’ll share in part 2 of this post.

“Would you like to join me for lunch?” – I asked Charlotte on Christmas eve last year, while she stood at a light with her young son, holding a sign asking for spare cash. I was terrified to ask that question. I was even more terrified when she said “Yes”.

I am an introvert; I don’t go up to strangers and start a conversation. I most certainly have never struck up a conversation with a homeless person before.

I love the Christmas season. I spend as much time outside as possible, taking in holiday decorations and the colorful displays at the mall. This past Christmas though, my husband was out of the country and I was spending the holidays alone, feeling blue.  Thinking a change of scenery would help I went out for lunch. It was then that I met Charlotte at an intersection near my house.

I don’t usually give money to panhandlers. I have always preferred to donate directly to a charity that helps the homeless instead of giving money to individual people.  This time was different though. Charlotte was not alone, she had her  mentally challenged son with her.

Mentally challenged kids hold a special place in my life and my heart. The sign she was holding said they were hungry. I could not stomach having a filling meal knowing that cute kid was hungry.

Throwing caution to the wind, for the first time in my life, I approached someone when my logical mind was begging and screaming at me not to.

We went to the closest restaurant – Denny’s. I didn’t ask her about how she ended up there. We just talked about the weather and very general stuff. Inspite of me avoiding any personal questions, I did learn quite a bit about her. She was a grocery store clerk  and was married to a construction worker. They had a house and were living well. After she had her son, she quit her job as he needed constant attention and sending him to a day care for special kids was cost prohibitive.

Her husband started distancing himself from her when they had the kid. After the economy went South, he lost his job, cheated on her and left them. She lost her home at that time. She had been living on and off in a shelter, but according to her shelters are not a good place for a family, esp. with a special needs kid. She couldn’t work with him in tow. She mentioned that she couldn’t get food stamps because she lived in the wrong zip code. She had applied for housing assistance but had been on the waiting list for a couple of months at the time I met her.

I always wondered why the homeless stay homeless. In my mind if I became homeless today, I would find a shelter and apply for Government assistance. From reading online, I see that there are plenty of resources to get back people on track – unemployment, disability, SNAP/food stamps, Section 8 housing, retraining for new employment opportunities, free appliances, free basic health insurance, etc.

After I spoke to her I did some research and found out that she should not have been denied food stamps for being in the “wrong zip code”. I couldn’t find her at the same place after that day. I hope that was because she got approved for her housing and is now re-starting her new life together with her awesome son.

I was ashamed to write this post because I was wrong on so many levels.

I am ashamed that I judged people on the streets. I never thought twice when I was told most of them are drug addicts who don’t want to work. Are there lazy, drug addicts who want easy money? Absolutely, but there are people who truly want to do the best for their families and are just going through a rough patch. They don’t deserve my judgement.  A clear mind and an education give me a leg up in finding information to better myself. More than anything I don’t have any dependents who require extensive assistance that might prevent me from taking a job or going back to school.

I am ashamed to admit that I was scared to approach her. I have seen too many crime dramas I guess.

I am ashamed to admit that I was selfish to think that I had it the worst. At that time, I was in the middle of a health crisis and was feeling sorry for myself.  I had a lot of why-me moments during the holidays. In reality, I have it great. Yes, I am not as great as I could be, but I have the means to fix it.  There is always someone who has it worse than what I have. So I should count my blessings rather than dwelling on my woes.

Does my encounter with Charlotte mean I will start giving money to panhandlers in future? No, but I did get a very good life lesson on not judging people  before having an iota of information about them.

It also hammered into me the fact that I have a responsibility. I have been planning to volunteer for so long but one thing or the other always comes up. If I am honest with myself these are mere excuses. Yes, I do donate to charities but until I volunteer and get to know the people being helped personally, I will never fully understand the problems they face. I would very much like to do that.

I have a few questions for you, dear reader -

• Do you give to panhandlers?
• I have many people plug charitable donation or volunteering to others.  They however, don’t do either and explain it away saying, “I will donate or volunteer once I reach _______ goal for my life.”  Over time the goal keeps changing and they still don’t donate or volunteer.  Why do you think that is?

Last Sunday evening, I was all pumped for the first week of being in complete control of my day.  Over the weekend I had compiled a list of topics for the next 3 months, had my color coded to-do list done and had all the books I wanted to read arranged on my reading shelf.

I imagined how my work day was going to be -

1. Get up at 6 in the morning
2. Pray, exercise and eat breakfast
3. Cook a healthy lunch
4. Start working at 9
5. Research and write for 3 hours
6. Have lunch at 12
7. Work on freelancing tasks from 1-3
8. Write for another 3 hours
9. Go for a walk
10. Come back, take a shower, plan the next day, shut off the computer, read a book and write until I slept.

Sounded perfect to me. If I had this much time to write, I could drastically improve my writing. Great plan!

But that is not what really happened. My day went like this -

1. Got up not-so-refreshed at 8.
2. Didn’t have time to cook so asked my husband to eat out.
3. Checked email.
4. Checked my Facebook, Twitter and my reader.
5. The time was 12. Tried to cook something quickly.
6. Decided to watch one episode of NCIS re-runs, just while I was having my lunch.
7. One more episode wouldn’t hurt right?
8. The time was 3. Looked at the to do list, freaked out seeing the list of tasks spanning 3 pages, promised to concentrate and write at least one introduction.
9. Even on a great day, I don’t get words pouring out of me, add in anxiety, all I had was a title, which now that I thought about it, didn’t even make sense. What was I thinking? Well, the day was a “wash”, I decided to at least get some admin work done.
10. Went back to email.
11. Someone asked for tech help in the forums. Answered that and while I was there checked other threads. Thought, “Oh I have not read this person’s blog in a week, let me see what they are up to”. Read the post and the comments. “That was an interesting comment, let me check the commentor’s blog. Ohh he just did a round up!” Down the rabbit hole I went…
12. The time was 2 in the morning!

As someone who spent pretty much 16-18 hrs in front of the computer, what did I get done? Nothing. How many of the tasks in my to do list got checked off? Nada. Zilch.

What just happened?

Why was I wasting my time when I was charged and dreaming about changing the world?

To figure this out I allowed myself to waste a day.

• I tracked every single site I visited and the time I spent on them. Tip : I used RescueTime plugin for Chrome to accomplish this.
• I went over each one of them to remind me of why I went there and what I accomplished.

What a goldmine of information!  Turned out I was more emotionally unstable than I thought.

• Email provided me with a feeling of self-importance, starting from the third day of my self-employment!
• Answering someone’s question in the forums satisfied my need to be needed. Their “thanks” gave me the instant gratification I needed.
• Constantly checking out the news/Twitter feeds gave me an illusion of not missing out and not being alone.

Now that I know what emotional needs I was fulfilling with my timesuckers, I came up with some alternate habits to give me the same satisfaction.

1. First, being aware of my distractions and the reason I am spending so much time on them itself was enough to steer me on the right track. As I have already thought about the “fake” euphoria of self-importance from getting a forward, it didn’t give me that feeling anymore.
2. I changed my location of work. Instead of working at home, I took my work to the library.
3. I set myself some rewards. If I successfully accomplish what I wanted to get done that day, I allowed myself to watch up to two episodes of my favorite shows.
4. Create a list of 3 most important things I want to accomplish that contributes the most to my goal.
5. Finally, have a NOT to do list. Nothing proved more effective than this.

Creating a NOT to do list to improve productivity

This lists consisted of my time suckers and tasks that didn’t contribute to my overall goal. Here is a sample of my NOT to-do list -

• Not take calls from unknown number. Tip :  I have set up Google Voice to transcribe all the voicemails and send it via email.
• Not check my email first thing in the morning. It spoils my plan for the day, I kept shifting my priorities as I heard back from different folks. Check off at least one planned prioritized task before checking email.
• Not check certain sites in the morning. I have a list of sites that I get easily sucked into and spend hours at a time. I installed apps to block the sites during my work hours. Tip : If you are using Firefox, leechblock is an excellent add-on to block site during specific times. For Chrome, StayFocusd or Nanny for Chrome works well.
• Not check social media sites at times other than when I have specifically set aside time for them.
• Not watch any TV in the morning. Sometimes I feel like taking a 10 minute break and when I go get myself some tea, I feel like watching one of my favorite episodes of NCIS. But the problem is I can’t stop, 10 minutes becomes one full episode, which leads to the next episode and before I know it, it would be evening.
• Not check accounting everyday. When I was bringing in more money, it used to be my motivator. Now, due to some recent events, even my freelancing income took a nose dive. It is easy to get suckered into looking at the empty income section in Mint and feeling self-pity or getting discouraged.

This has been working beautifully for me. Have I become a productivity queen? Nope. Far from it, but I feel great to have failed and started on the right track the first week instead of not getting anything done for months at a time.

Being mindful of my time lets me concentrate on accomplishing things that are important to shape my life the way I want it to be.

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau.

Here is an interesting infographics I came across showing what importance we give for our actual works vs everything else.

I seriously contemplated picking up a part time job when I was making a decision about quitting my job. I was not looking for any major pay, my only condition was – insurance.

If most of the self-employed folks went through the same thinking process, I can now confidently state that the major barrier to self-employment in the US is not self-doubt or fear or lack of inspiration, it is the preoccupation with how to get insurance! Last time I spent a day in the hospital, the bill was $73,000. I cannot imagine taking that risk.

So before I quit, I made sure, really made sure that I will have insurance and that I won’t have to give up an arm and a leg to pay the premium.

One thing that complicated matters was my elite status as an “Individual with pre-existing condition”. So the most common way to find insurance via online insurance brokers like esurance.com or ehealthinsurance.com wasn’t cheap for me.

Here are the other avenues I compiled to find affordable health insurance.

Affordable health insurance for the self employed (with pre-existing condition)

COBRA : If I was already in an insurance I liked, I could have continued with the same insurance via COBRA coverage. Simply put COBRA offers an employee the benefit of staying in the same group insurance. The advantage is group insurance is cheaper than individual insurance most of the time and by law they have to cover any pre-existing condition. The disadvantage is while you were employed the employer pays part of the premium, with COBRA you get the insurance but pay the whole premium by yourself.

If you are healthy this might not be the cheapest option. Individual health insurance brokers might give better rates and if you don’t go to a doctor that much, you might even pay less than what you were paying as your part of the premium with a high deductible health plan and a HSA combination (more below).

Spouse’s insurance : If you have a partner who has health insurance and you can be added to that coverage that would be the cheapest option. My husband has a job that provides health benefits. His insurance was better than mine in the area we live, so I was already on his insurance. But I couldn’t be satisfied with that one option because if he changes jobs and the new insurance doesn’t have good coverage, what then? Or worse, what if he loses his job? That is why I put more effort into finding out more about COBRA benefits. I want his insurance even if he loses his job.

Spouse’s COBRA : I knew if my husband lost his job we can continue to keep his insurance by paying his part and his employer’s part of the premium. But what tripped me was the confusion about whether I can continue to keep his insurance if he changes his job or gets a new job after losing his job and the new job offers health insurance. If the new health insurance has good coverage we will of course take that one, but what if it doesn’t? Luckily, we don’t HAVE to take the new insurance until the COBRA runs out. And COBRA running out is a qualifying life event, so we have 18 months to keep the old insurance and then move to the new insurance.  As long as we don’t enroll in the new insurance, we are good with COBRA.

With COBRA I know we will be good for at least 18 months, but what if for some reason we have to go for individual insurance (have you figured out that I am paranoid yet?). Here are more options that give lower premium for decent coverage. The trick to getting more affordable health insurance with pre-existing condition is Group Insurance. Group insurance are advantageous for two reasons -

• Premiums are cheaper if you are in a group insurance vs individual.
• Group insurance usually takes in individuals with pre-existing conditions without sky-high premiums.

How to find Group insurance if you are self employed?

Check you Alma mater : I didn’t even realize we had this option until I read a letter from my school asking for a donation and highlighting all the awesome benefits we get. Most of those awesome benefits were useless to me except for the insurance. I looked it up and filed it away for future use.

Check your trade/special interest association : Whether you are an engineer or an artist there are associations for your specific field. As far as I know, many of them, as long as you are a good standing member will offer group insurance. Example : IEEE, ACM. If you are eligible for AARP, check a quote from their group insurance.

Join hands with other self-employed : If they offer insurance in your area, they really are a great option for freelancers. Check out the Freelance union. Another great resource is the National Association for the Self-employed (NASE).

Shoppers’ unite : I should probably write a post on why I love Costco, but here is another one – group insurance for members. Sams Club offers insurance as well. This might not be as cheap as the group insurance offered by an employer but definitely cheaper than individual policies.

Form a group of one (or two) : If you are self-employed sometimes going for a small business group insurance (which could be just you or hire your spouse and form a group of two) instead of individual insurance could be cheaper.

State high risk pool : Several states have a group for high risk pool which guarantees health insurance coverage but there is no restriction on how much the premium should be, so this could be the last option and probably the most expensive option. Check the National Association of State Comprehensible Health Insurance Plans (NASCHIP) to see if your state participates and what options are available.

Work part time for benefits : I seriously considered this and this is still my fall back option if everything else fails. There are quite a few companies that offer health benefits to their part time employees (Example : Chase, Starbucks & UPS).

Government set up HealthCare.gov is a great site to start. They let me compare different options based on different scenarios and gave the pricing information as well. They also have an awesome “health insurance wiki” to explain all the terms such as copay, coinsurance, HMO, PPO, etc.

Affordable health insurance for self employed (healthy individuals)

Online insurance price comparison sites : There are several great sites to compare the price of insurance plans. Try them all. Esurance.com, ehealthinsurance.com or HealthInsurance.org are all good sites to check quotes. I also found HealthCare.gov very helpful.

Call the HMO : If you are in an area where HMOs are offered, call them directly. It might end up cheaper than the online sites as most of them are PPO.

If you are healthy, you can choose a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) along with a Health Savings Account (HSA) for you and your family. This will be one of the cheapest option. Most of the wellness checkups and preventive services will be covered, but up to a certain deductible (which you will choose, higher the deductible, lower the premium) you are responsible for the cost of the services, beyond that 100% of the bill will be picked up by the insurance. If you are going for a higher deductible, make sure to save the difference in the premium in the HSA or a separate account to spend if you do need the insurance.

Use a health insurance broker : Whether you are healthy or have pre-existing condition if you get a great referral for a health insurance broker, they might help you understand the insurance better and find a plan best suited for you. Ask around for a referral. This is where the local small business meet ups are golden.

Things to keep in mind when shopping for health insurance

• Most of the time, maternity is not covered in the general health insurance plan. So before going for the cheapest plan, even if you are very healthy now, consider you future plans.
• Before starting health insurance shopping, know your health care spending history. I can’t stress this enough. I am not just talking about the copay. My insurance sends me an explanation of benefits every time I get medical care. I can see how much the doctor billed, how much the negotiated rate is, how much my responsibility was and how much the insurance paid. I have an Excel spreadsheet with all the information categorized because I don’t want this online.  This way I know how much I can expect for what service. Believe me, it is eye opening. If you don’t mind having this information online, there are some Mint.com-live-services for health care spending : Cake Health and Simplee.
• Run a few what-if scenarios before picking the cheapest insurance plan. What if you get pregnant? What if you have to spend a night in the ER? Are ambulance services covered?
• Read ALL the information on what your responsibility is and how much copay/coinsurance is required for all the services you may require.

Well, that is my saga on finding health insurance options for me. I have not covered the lower income option here as I know we won’t be eligible for any of them. If your income is low, the Health Resources and Services Administration is a great place to start to find free or low fee health care.

1. How much are you spending for health insurance every month?
2. What is your source of health insurance (Your employer? Yourself? Any other group plan?)

I am writing this post before the “I’m quitting” post goes live. I will update this post with any questions that were asked in that post, but right now, this is where I stand.

If someone quit their job without having another one lined up, I will freak out for them. That is how I work. I am a planner, I have always been one. In fact, one of the major differences of opinion between my husband and me stems from the fact that I overplan. So why did I just quit?  The main reason is my health, but quitting does open a number of avenues that I wanted to pursue but just didn’t have time for before.  More on this in future posts.

As I mentioned, I’m a planner.  I trolled other blogs to see what questions were asked of people who quit their corporate jobs.  I then tried to answer them for myself.  I’m also putting it out here to share with you and get your feedback.

How will you survive?

Fortunately, my husband likes his job and has no plans of quitting anytime soon. So even though we just lost 40% of our household income we won’t have to starve. We can’t afford to take any expensive vacations or go out to eat as frequently as we used to, but I know our budget and we will work within whatever he brings in. Unless, he loses his job…

What if your husband loses his job?

I am a firm believer in Murphy. I get nightmares about expensive hospital bills and my husband losing his job (yes, I worry too much). We are not against working, so I could go back to work and both of us are qualified enough to still be in-demand for our skills. Even if that fails, we have emergency funds that will cover us for at least one year. This is including our two cars and charitable contributions. If worse comes to worst, we can go bare bones and stretch that even longer.

What about health care?

This was the first thing that came to my mind, as I NEED health care and not just any health care, I need good health care. Right now, we pay a good portion of our income to get the best plan offered by my husband’s employer. But this factor being the most important requirement, I have thought through what will happen if we do lose his insurance.

In the last few weeks I have also researched all the insurance plan options we have outside of an employer-offered plan. I will write a separate post on that. Now that I am self-employed, there are several options. Unfortunately we can’t pick the high deductible plan which is the cheapest for obvious reasons. And the policies that accept people with pre-existing conditions are far and few, but they are there. In the end, I decided we will continue with my husband’s policy via COBRA as that will be cheaper for us.

We have a separate account in which I have been putting money to cover COBRA premiums for his insurance for at least one year. As I started contributing for this one only from this January it is still short of one year, but my last paycheck, my vacation pay and our tax refund are going to go into this account to give me some peace of mind.

What about retirement?

We have been diligent enough to take advantage of our retirement accounts in the last few years. And since this January, I have been putting 50% of my paycheck into my 401k. The reason being (1) I wanted to start living without my pay. (2) I wanted to save as much as I can while I was working, I was not sure if I will have much income to contribute anything for the rest of this year.

I have not retired. So I don’t plan on not making money for more than an year. I have to stay home for sometime to get better and I am going to use that time to grow my business. I have given myself two years to get to the same earning level as I was earning a week ago. If not, I will go back to work. Even if my business does make money, I do like my career, so I might go back anyway.

All this means, I will still have plenty of time to save for retirement. I am still going to save from my freelance income, but I am not counting on it.

What about down payment?

We don’t know where we want to settle down. We are not going to be thinking about buying a house just yet. We will continue saving for a down payment, though not as aggressively as we were.

Are you never going to work again?

I answered this in my retirement question, but want to make this very clear. No, I am not giving up on working in a corporate job again. I am just taking a break to do what I want to do. I have a deadline to accomplish that and if I cannot get it done, I have no problem going back.

Will you still be marketable when you decide to go back?

Yes and No. I will pretty much face the same problems as any stay at home parent will face. I have a valid reason but the competition is fierce. To compensate for the lack of working in a corporate environment, I plan on bringing in a lot of other skills.

• I will never lose touch with my field. I have researched and signed up for open source projects in my field. This should keep my skills sharp, offer me networking opportunities and will give something to highlight in my resume.
• I would have worked for myself. Whether I succeed or fail, they will offer me some unique experiences that another employee cannot bring.
• I will be a better manager. Try managing me, you will know how difficult I am! Handling all the tasks, coming up with new business ideas, brainstorming, giving them shape… I am excited and looking forward to that rewarding opportunity. I will make sure to highlight those as well.

What will you do now that you are jobless?

I don’t have a person I have to report to. Well, I do have my husband and my readers who I am relying on keeping me accountable and to not fall face forward, but I don’t have anyone who is getting paid to look over my job. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a job. I have plenty in fact.

• I have to come up with awesome ideas that no other blog offers.
• I have to write excellent posts that my readers cannot find anywhere else.
• I have to come up with new ways to present my ideas so that they are not boring.
• I have to have a better designed blog so that it is easy to navigate and find what readers are looking for.

All of this means, I have a lot to learn, practice and implement.

My other main job will be to volunteer. We have always given financial donations, but so far lacked in the donating time part. I don’t have any excuse for postponing that anymore. My life’s dream revolves around a certain cause and this is my chance to start my journey towards realizing my dream.

So no, I won’t be jobless.

Aren’t you scared?

Oh hell yes!! I am petrified. But I am also excited for the future that awaits me. I will be able to do all the things I never had time for before.  One thing that does calm my nerves is my family. My husband will support me no matter what. My parents and my sister will still love me even if I fail in all my new ventures. As long as I have that, I think I will be fine.

There are three things that I will be thinking about in the next year – my health, my blog and volunteering. If I become a better person physically and spiritually and make a difference in at least one person’s life, I will consider myself successful!