What is Nebraska Saves About?

Wondering why you are here or how in the heck you even got to this site? Honestly, I'll be surprised if anyone ever reads this but let's dive into it anyway.

Wix told me "To boost the post’s SEO, include a keyword in the title". I don't know what that means but I am going to leave this to remind me to look it up sometime and to repeatedly remind me of my blogging ignorance.

The Background

I'll keep this part short. I'm 41 years old as of July 2022 and I have made a lot of financial mistakes in my life. Thankfully none of those mistakes were earth shattering sink holes from which I would never recover but they were mistakes all the same. I've made wise financial decisions too, but it is the mistakes that I keep thinking about.

Oh snap! It is a picture about investing and stuff!!

One week, not long ago, I found myself partaking in the middle-aged male time-honored tradition of going down a YouTube rabbit hole. Personal finance and retirement investing is an interest of mine so the algorithms kept me awash with videos from trendy influences explaining how I could "Get Better Returns", "Start a $100K/yr Side Hustle", "Save 90% of Your Income" and/or "How to Retire at Age 30". Some math equation unbeknownst to me thought I would be also interested in videos about living a simpler life, slowing down, removing physical and mental clutter and minimalism. By golly, that math equation was right and I was hooked.

A Hard Look in the Mirror

After several videos, I took a hard look in the mirror and thought about my life to that point. It was a figurative look in the mirror mind you. I didn't really just stand there in my bathroom and look at myself in the mirror for extended periods of time. That would just be weird. But I did start to think about why I always felt money was tight even though our family was saving a good amount of our income. I started to wonder why even though I had rooms of stuff and projects I never had time for, I was always looking to buy or start a new book, video game, hobby etc. etc. I had to ask why I felt our house was always so cluttered despite that fact that I had invested a small fortune in shelving units and storage totes to neatly stack and organize the oceans of random items that our family had collected over the years. I realized I had some work to do on my relationship with money and my relationship with stuff. Truth be told, I knew I had some work to do on my relationship with myself.

The Way Forward

I decided that I was going to initiate some changes and see how long I could stay committed. I pledged to myself that I would do the following:

1. Buy less stuff to save money and prevent clutter

2. Sell or donate stuff I don't use or don't need to reduce clutter, break my unhealthy relationship with stuff and maybe earn a little money

3. Slow my life down to make more time for my family and my health/interests

4. Boost my post's SEO by including a keyword in the title (I have a long way to go on this one)

Why the website? I think I felt it was a way to get my thoughts out of my head and make me write them down so I would have to think over and process them again. I also believe my thinking was that if I spent the money on the website, I would force myself to update it which would, in turn, help me hold myself accountable to my pledged goals. Time will tell and so will the entries on this website.

I hope to add to and update this website as much as possible with my wins and losses throughout this process. If you somehow stumbled upon this site and want to reach out to me, my email address is klint@nebraskasaves.com. You can't follow me on social media because I don't have any social media and I don't think that is ever going to change. See! I'm already making choices to help me towards goal #3 and I owe all of my success to this website!

Klint Holscher 20220818