Tanja Hester is the author of WORK OPTIONAL: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way. She's also a former many things: a former political consultant, public radio journalist, yoga and spin-teaching side hustler, civil servant, and even a former under-saver. Since retiring early at the age of 38 along with her husband Mark, she devotes all her time to fun and purpose: writing her award-winning financial independence blog (Our Next Life), recording her podcast (The Fairer Cents), and gathering women together to talk about financial independence at Cents Positive retreats. She also loves volunteering in her community, traveling the world, and skiing, hiking, biking, paddling, and climbing around her home in North Lake Tahoe, California. Basically: living her dream life. In this episode, Tanja gives us an investing 101 crash course, including what she calls a "sequence of saving" to help us determine where to allocate our money between debt repayment, emergency funds, retirement savings, and more. She talks about some of the specific things she did to help herself save more money, including the trick of hiding small amounts of her own money from herself to get the ball rolling on her savings. We talk about larger money topics as well—disability economics, women's financial empowerment, socially responsible investing, and more. As someone who has become increasing interested in and passionate about personal finance over the past few years, I feel like I walked away from this conversation with some great next steps to take, as well as topics to research and learn a bit more about. I hope the same is true for you! (more…)