For those just joining us here, a decade ago, I wrote a Money Manifesto and I have been going through each declaration that 29 year old me confidently declared to see how valid they’ve wound up being.

Welp, this one will be a short update.

This one has been pretty easy. I mean, it would be sort of ridiculous for me to post my net worth and spending updates out in the digital world once a month for nearly a decade to then get squeamish about it with whoever I’m dating.

Though also, to be fair, in the last decade I have only been in two serious relationships with a fairly substantial gap of singledom or short flings making up the middle of the last decade.

I will say I find it easier to tell them I’m not in debt and that I don’t really struggle too much being very responsible with money than I do to tell that I am in a very secure financial situation. But honestly, that isn’t super hard either. I think conversations more about how very wild the fluctuations are in freelance work – as well as the necessary travel that sometimes comes with it – is more the conversation I am avoiding a bit right now.

Especially the travel part. The current boyfriend has not experienced what most of my life is actually like. He only knows a very stable and stationary PhD student Mel. He has recently gotten a dose of what I’m like when work is slower over the last few months while I’ve been sort of more careful with money than when work was busy.

I have noticed that I’m not anywhere near as cheap about things when I’m taking a second person into consideration than on my own, and that overall this has brought much happiness into my life. I am cautiously waiting to see if it all backfires on me.

However, the older I get, the less I find I’m interested in the idea of combining my finances with another person. I think my ideal approach would be transparency with our finances but responsibility for them individually? I have not yet had to cross a bridge of combining finances with anyone else yet, so this is all still very theoretical.

So this feels like a very short update and I’m sure 29 year old me was envisioning a very different romantic future when imagining a decade ahead than the one I actually trod. But I’m cool with it.

If you’d like to check out how the other declarations on my Money Manifesto are going roughly a decade in, you can find those posts here:

1. ) I will pay off all my debt. 
2. ) I will tithe 10%
3. ) I will save at least 15%
4. ) I will build up a $10,000 emergency fund.
5. ) I will max out my IRA every year.
6. ) I will put effort into learning how the stock market works better.
7. ) Then I’ll invest in it.
8. ) I’ll put effort into learning how REITS work.
9. ) And then I’ll invest in it. 
10. ) I will own a home and it will not be a McMansion. 
11. ) I will pay for cars up front, in cash.
12. ) I will write a book. About a little man named Jorge who lives in a jar in an antique shop. He has a mustache. 
13. ) I will keep on learning thrifty and frugal ways to live and then actually use them.
14. ) I will make good decisions about how to spend my money, but I also won’t sacrifice all of the now for later.
15. ) I will travel. A lot. All 7 continents someday.
16. ) I will learn to side hustle. Especially to pay for #15.
17. ) I will start a roller derby team.
18. ) So I will always have good health insurance. And any other reasonable insurance to keep from bankrupting myself because of an accident or act of god or a drunken lunatic driving a car into the living room of my house.