by Hola, mi gente! It’s been a while. Longer than I meant it to be, honestly.
If you’ve been reading here for any stretch of time, you know CrucialWealth was never just a numbers blog. It was always about the life the numbers were supposed to buy back—more time, more presence, and more say over how our days actually go. Somewhere along the way, living that part out took priority over writing about it. I’m not sorry about that, but I did miss this.
Although writing for the blog has gone silent for a while, writing itself hasn’t…
The short version: we built a house, and we moved in.
If you followed along with the monthly Home Building Journey updates last year, you know this wasn’t a quick renovation or a builder-grade spec home. We were the owner-builders on five acres in North Port—every decision, every subcontractor, and every “Wait, how much does that cost?” moment was ours to carry, start to finish. It was one of the most demanding things we’ve ever taken on, financially and otherwise, and it swallowed a lot of the bandwidth that used to go into this blog and, quite frankly, everything else in our lives. And in the end, it was all totally worth it.
We moved in at the end of March. Yes, you heard right—after all those updates and lack of updates, hehehe; all those spreadsheets; and all those photos of framing and concrete, we’re actually living in it. Still finding where things go in our closets, half of which still need to be custom-built by yours truly. Still catching ourselves listening for the birds and the occasional wild animal we never heard in the old house. But home, for real, finally.
The longer version is in the book.
I’m so excited to make this announcement! While the house was going up, so was something else. A book that tells the fuller story of how we got here—not just the construction, but the years of decisions before it that made building this place possible in the first place. It’s called Everything Worth Saving, and if CrucialWealth has ever felt like a series of snapshots—a spending report here and a market update there—the book is the throughline connecting all of them. Where we actually are right now, and how we got here.
I’m not ready to say more than that yet. But it’s close, and I wanted this blog, and you, to know before anywhere else does.
What happens now
I’m coming back to writing here regularly. Some of it will be new—I’ve got a backlog of half-finished posts I’m finally sitting down to close out, including a couple on health insurance and cash management as early retirees that I started ages ago and never published (sorry, I know some of you asked). Some of it will circle back to the house now that it’s finished, since a lot of you asked questions during the build that deserve real answers. And some of it will connect directly to the book once it’s out.
If you’re still here after the quiet stretch—thank you. That matters more than I probably say enough about.
More soon.
