No judgement either way, but I am definitely a nature noticier (not a word but it should be). Which probably explains why I trip over things I shouldn’t trip on so much.

My husband (who shall from here on out be referred to by his name, Vin), recently started working in the office again three days a week which means we’ve been adjusting to a new morning schedule with our dogs.

To keep things fair, and so that I don’t lose my mind, on days when Vin works from home, he does the dog’s morning routine and I get to do my new favourite thing: wake up and go for a ~30 minute walk.

Walking used to be a daily routine for me before we got dogs and I honestly forgot how much I love it, both for the physical exercise and for the mental calm it gives my brain. In line with my quest for an Actually Offline Summer, it has been a nicer, more kind start to the day to feel the sun on my face while getting some steps in instead of what I used to do which is immediately open my phone and self-bombard with ~everything~.

This might stress some people out, but I don’t listen to anything when I walk. I don’t wear headphones, so no music or podcasts or audio books. I used to for the longest time, but I ended up finding it was just too much external input too early in the morning for me. It was around the time that I stopped listening to anything on my walks that I started to notice nature again.

I use the term “nature” loosely as I do live in central New Jersey in the middle of a town with a population of 13,000 people, in a county of 357,000 people. So “nature” is a relative term. But what nature we do have has been bringing me such abundant joy that I don’t actually care.

My little noticing ritual started simply: I would walk by a path and notice a rabbit, or I’d hear a bird call and try to follow it back to it’s source. Or I’d walk past a dewy bush and see a spider in it’s web. I hate spiders and even I love seeing them where they are supposed to be (outside and not in my house waiting to give me a heart attack).

I walk the same general route nearly every time I go for a walk so I’ve started to notice the patterns of some of the wildlife. I know where the rabbits are going to congregate. I know where the family of hawks has been building their nest. I started to notice the bloom and decay of plants. I know when the sprinklers are going to turn on so I can dodge them (that’s not nature, but it is still a crucial piece of noticing).

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You know that sense of pride you get when you FINALLY organize a tiny corner of your home? That warm, fuzzy feeling that is part sense of accomplishment but also contentment that you now have at least part of a space that you enjoy living in?

That’s where I’m at right now, after a weekend of furious decluttering and a strategic second hand furniture purchase.

The one bedroom, one bathroom apartment that my husband and I share with our two dogs has felt small basically since I moved in. When you’re both working from home full-time and then add in two dogs with all of their stuff, space fills up quick.

I am a big watcher of Apartment Therapy for this reason because surely if someone in Manhattan can cram their family into 500 square feet (or less), surely I can do the same in central New Jersey with some strategic/ingenious organizing hacks?

What I’ve realized over time is that most NYC apartments have what mine does not: quirkiness and charm. They have weird narrow walls you can mount shelving on, they have 10 foot ceilings with little nooks where you can store your suitcases and most importantly, most of them are not giant empty boxes.

That’s what my apartment is. It’s one giant living room/office/dining room box, with a bedroom box, a kitchen rectangle and a bathroom rectangle all thrown together.

I swear if my apartment had more walls or like.. division between the spaces, it would solve a lot of the angst I feel looking around the space, knowing it COULD be better, if I could just figure out HOW.

And by better I don’t mean better looking for sharing on social media. I just mean better flow and better for our daily lives.

But like I said at the top, I think I’ve cracked two tiny corners (not literally) in the apartment that are making me feel so much better about the space overall. And one couldn’t have happened without the other and vice versa so it has a nice symmetry to it that tickles my brain.

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Has this summer felt fast to you? It sure has to me. I’m trying not to feel summer scarcity nor am I trying to summer-maxx. I’m just trying, probably like you are, to be present, for the summer I’ve got left.

A month ago, I issued a challenge to myself (and you, or anyone in the Tiny Ambitions community who wanted to join): have an actually offline summer. This challenge was not a no-phone summer, but a guide to have spend more intentional time on and off our devices. I wanted to hand over fewer hours to the algorithm, so I had more summer hours that actually felt like mine.

And honestly? It’s been going so much better than I expected.

I set four rules for myself back in June. No phone for the first thirty minutes of the day. No scrolling in bed, no phone after 8pm. I also wanted to stop using social media as default entertainment so I had time to pick up an analog hobby. To my surprise, I’ve been easily sticking to all of them. As someone whose job requires up to eight hours a day on social media, these rules felt like a huge gauntlet at the time.

But I think I’ve just reached a breaking point mentally where I knew something had to change that these rules turned out to be exactly what I needed?

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Have you ever had that nagging feeling that what you’re being told about the world doesn’t line up with what you can see with your own eyes?

I have. Over the last two years, it’s only gotten louder. There’s a name for it: cognitive dissonance.

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By the time we pulled into my mom’s driveway on Friday night, I had full blown Shingles. Technically I didn’t know for sure it was Shingles until I got a tentative diagnosis from a pharmacist at a Rexall in downtown Toronto that was then confirmed by a virtual doctor, but it was Shingles the whole time. My spidey senses (and my spine in the very literal sense) was tingling.

If you’re not familiar, Shingles is caused by the same virus as Chickenpox, lying dormant in your body until stress, illness, or exhaustion gives it an opening. And apparently mine took one look at the last year of my life and thought, sure, now’s a good time.

I want to be clear that this post isn’t really about Shingles. It’s about what Shingles is a symptom of.

I have spent the better part of a year white-knuckling my way through grief and debt payoff. I have written about all of that here pretty openly. What I haven’t written about is what happens when your body decides it’s done absorbing all of that quietly and decides it’s time for you to pay attention.

Turns out you can track every dollar of pet debt in a spreadsheet and still not be tracking the bill your nervous system has been running up in the background. Which is pretty rude tbh.

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I sat down to write this month’s update and the first thing I typed was “ugh, this feels so boring to talk about right now.” And then I deleted it, because that wasn’t actually true.

It’s not boring. It’s repetitive. Which is a different thing. Every month it’s the same shape: pay the same number, watch the same balance shrink by roughly the same amount, write the same kind of post about it. No plot twist. No dramatic reveal. Just me, paying $1,185, over and over, until I don’t have to anymore.

And that repetition led me somewhere I wasn’t expecting: I don’t actually know if I’m going to feel like celebrating when this debt is gone.

I think when most people picture the end of a debt payoff journey, there’s a moment - confetti, relief, maybe a nice dinner out to mark the occasion. Because paying off debt, any kind of debt, is hard. And making the decision to do it and then actually doing it is something that deserves to be celebrated.

I keep trying to picture that for myself and I just... can’t get there. Because the reason this debt exists in the first place is that Bacall got sick. We did everything we could for her, but she still died. Paying off every single last dollar of the $17,000 doesn’t change any of that. It won’t bring her back. It won’t make those three months between October and February hurt any less in hindsight. The debt will be gone, and she still will be too.

I don’t say this to be a bummer, or to fish for reassurance in the comments (though if you want to leave some, I won’t stop you). I think I say it because Imperfect Finance was never supposed to be a spreadsheet with feelings glued on as decoration. The whole point was always looking at the actual why behind the numbers - even when the why is sad math that doesn’t resolve into a clean ending.

So I don’t know if I’ll feel like celebrating. I think I’ll probably feel something more like relief, and maybe a little bit of grief all over again, because this debt has been one of the last tangible threads connecting me to those three months with her. Once it’s paid off, that thread is just... done. And endings, even ones you’ve been actively working toward, can still ache a little.

If you’ve already crossed your own debt-payoff finish line - did it feel like you thought it would? I’m genuinely asking, because right now I have no idea what to expect, and “no idea what to expect” is not usually where I like to live. Don’t worry, I’m working on it in therapy.

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The weather is weathering, the sun is staying out later and later and the fact that you’re one decision away from having a drink on a patio can only mean one thing: it’s finally summertime.

If you’re looking to make the most of the precious summer season (whether you’ve got a fancy European vacation planned or not), you’ve probably had a thought along the lines of,

I know I definitely have.

My body and my brain had been craving rest like I’m pregnant and am dying for some KFC. Part of that is grief, for sure. But the other part of it is I haven’t been taking good care of myself. Too much work and not enough rest (of all the different kinds of rest there are). And definitely WAY WAY WAY too much time on my phone.

For me, spending time on my phone in my non-work hours almost never leads to the outcome I want and almost always leads to me feeling worse (about my wardrobe, my skin, my home, you name it). And give that there are approximately only 2246 hours of summer - here’s how we’re going to make the most of them.

This isn’t a numbers post, but bear with me for a second - I think how we spend our time is just as tangled up in our wellbeing as how we spend our money, so it still feels like it belongs here.

I just got back from a long weekend in Tennessee with family, and somewhere between the second lightning bug sighting and a several-hours-too-long debate about the best regional barbecue style (I’m personally partial to both North and South Carolina styles), I had a small, slightly annoying realization: I had been about to take out my phone to “document” approximately four separate non-events purely out of habit, when the lightning bugs were doing a perfectly good job of being memorable all on their own.

I didn’t get great pictures of anything on that trip. I got a great weekend. I’m trying to remember that those two things are allowed to be different, and that one of them is usually more important than the other.

So here’s what I’m doing about it. Not a no-phone summer (I have a business to run and friends to text), but an actually-offline summer. A few rules, half borrowed from my shopping ban brain - rules with actual permission to break them sensibly tend to work better for me than vague intentions - and half new.

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It would be so much easier i…

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You can’t change your money or spending habits if you don’t know what those habits are in the first place. That would be like trying to get dressed in the dark - you might end up fully clothed but you’re probably not going to be wearing what you want.

As part of my debt repayment journey, I created my first budget. But I had no idea if the values inside that budget made any sense because I had no baseline to compare them to. But, after a month(ish) of tracking, I officially have some real data to look at, so let’s get into it.

I couldn’t have done any of this without Monarch do if you’ve been wanting to get a full-circle picture of your money, use my referral link to get 50% off your first year (meaning it only costs $50 to understand your money, which is crazy cheap in my opinion).

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Anyway, it’s June which means I just made my monthly debt payment to CareCredit. Like I shared here, I have to pay $1185 a month until October of this year if I don’t want to pay 32.99% in interest. And I cann…

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When we only celebrate the big wins, we’re robbing ourselves of the opportunity for joy and reflection of all the little moments we achieve every day.

A…

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And it’s taken me every part of the last two weeks since I wrote that post to actually do it.

Spoiler: I did manage to cobble together a budget. But it felt way harder than it probably was. So why was tha…

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I can’t believe that was eight years ago. Literally another lifetime ago.

Back in …

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$17,155.66 USD - that’s how much it cost for my cat’s cancer treatment.

I don’t know about you but I didn’t full understand how expensive veterinary medical care was until I was confronted with the bills of my cat’s (Bacall), cancer treatment. Regrettably, despite spending $17k on surgery and chemo (and another $7500 that my husband spent on the same), Bacall didn’t make it. She actually died three months ago today (a coincidence I didn’t realize until after I wrote this).

The point of this series isn’t sadness or negativity - but I do just want to state from the start that we were always operating on the best advice from our veterinary team in the best interest of Bacall. Had their advice been ethical euthanasia as soon as she became sick, we would have done that. This was never about keeping her alive for us, it was about doing what was right for her (but also, fuck cancer).

This series, Imperfect Finance, is going to be about digging myself out of pet debt, while interrogating all the financial decisions that have helped or hurt along the way.

I’ll be honest, nothing prepared me for how fast the bills would pile up. That $17k? That accumulated in just three months - from the middle of October 2025 to the end of January 2026.

Of all the financial content I’ve seen online over the years, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone talk about paying off pet debt (if you have, let me know in the comments, I’d love to read it). And I can understand why - it’s not a particularly happy topic to talk about.

When it comes to debt, I believe that we need to do away with all shame around all kinds of it - medical, educational, consumer, you name it.

We live in a society working against us in terms of consumption and financial support systems.

I’m not a bad person because I’m in $17k of pet debt. I was trying to do the right thing for a life more important to me than anything else in the world. But if I was in $17k of consumer debt, I also wouldn’t be a bad person. I’d be a person who got overwhelmed with everything society says I need to consume and buy to live a “good” life. Or at least one that looks good on Instagram.

Imperfect Finance I hope, will be the antidote to the all or nothing advice that exists in the personal finance corner of the Internet.

I’m paying off my debt every month (and I’m going to get into the specifics in a second), but because of that, my consumer debt situation has also become unsustainable.

Since Bacall died, I’ve made some less than ideal, some could say - imperfect- financial decisions. And I selfishly hope I can use this series to hold myself accountable so I can stop digging the hole I’ve gotten myself into even deeper.

While I wish I could say I’m going to live the most frugal lifestyle possible to pay off my debt as fast as possible - that’s not what this series is going to be about. In an ideal world, I would. But that’s not the world we live in. So please, consider Imperfect Finance a more realistic take on a debt payoff journey. This is not all or nothing. This is me, doing the best I can. One month at a time.

With all that being said, let’s get into the nitty-gritty numbers.

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This is the first year in my 33 on this earth that I’ve put up Christmas lights.

It made me so happy I cried.

This year is also the first time I’ve had a Christmas tree as an adult.

It’s tiny and ceramic and my fiancé and I painted it but it still counts.

We both cried when we put it on our TV stand and lit the tea light inside of it.

It’s a tiny, beautiful piece of Christmas tradition and we love it.

These two small things are actually part of something bigger: carving out a piece of Christmas tradition in our tiny little life.

And I couldn’t be happier.

This will be the second year in a row that I’ll be spending time with my fiancés family for Christmas.

There will be gifts (for my nephews), there will be chaos, there will be two little dogs and it will be perfect.

I don’t mean perfect in the Hallmark Christmas movie sense of the word.

I mean perfect in “perfectly what I need this year”.

It is equal parts bewildering and incredible that I get to have this little life for myself.

I get emotional just thinking about it.

Enjoying Christmas and letting myself revel in the spirit of the season is new for me.

Let’s dive into why that is and why this year (and hopefully many more in the future) are going to be different.

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Last week, I heard a quote on TikTok that really resonated with me. I made a quick video using the quote and posted it on my own social media. I didn’t really think anything of it. I just knew it had an impact on me and I wanted to share it.

Well, after getting a combined 257,000 views across Tiny Ambition Instagram and TikTok (and counting), it’s clear that it struck a cord with a lot of folks out there.

If you haven’t seen the video, here is the transcribed quote below. Fair warning - it’s going to make you feel things (some good, some bad, depending on your perspective).

In 100 years, so like 2123, we will all be buried with our families and friends, strangers will live in our homes that we worked so hard to build, and someone else will own everything we have today. Most of our possessions will be given away or thrown out and destroyed, including the car that we spent our fortune on and will probably be scrapped. Our descendants will hardly know who we are nor will they remember us. I mean, how many of us know who our grandfather’s father was? After we die, we will be remembered for a few more years, and then we’re just a portrait on someone’s wall. And a few decades later, our history, photos and deeds disappear into history’s oblivion. We won’t even be memories. If we pause one day to analyze these questions, perhaps we would understand how pointless it is for us to worry about 95% of the things that consume our minds daily. If we could only think about this, surely our approaches, our thoughts, would change and we would do things differently. Perhaps we would feel free to enjoy ourselves, and our lives that we’re living. Take these thoughts into the rest of your day this week, this year and remember the saying, “if it’s not gonna matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset by it.”

Ok, let’s take a second and just take a deep breath. I know that quote is a lot and it inspired A LOT of responses - some that I was expecting and some that I wasn’t.

If you asked me what I think of this quote I would say that it makes me feel comforted to know that my life is fleeting and ephemeral. That all I will need to concern myself with in the grand scheme of things is whether or not I led a life that was kind and full of love for others and left the planet with a minimal impact.

This is really based around my core belief (fostered during my time completing an anthropology degree), that humans as a species believe they are far more important individually than they really are. In terms of geological time, we are literally a blip in the history of earth. Less than a blip even. To be precise, our species, Homo Sapiens, has only been around for 0.007% of Earth’s entire history.

By no means do I think our lives our meaningless. I think our lives as humans on this planet can be incredibly meaningful. But I am under no illusion as to what is going to happen to me - and more importantly - my stuff, after I’m gone.

I also want to make it clear that our short time on this earth also does not mean that we should be go out and create chaos and pain. That’s actually the complete opposite of the philosophy at the heart of the quote in my opinion.

I want to break down the different responses I got on the video, because I think they can give us some incredible insights into what it means to be human and how we can live lives that have an impact while we’re here.

(Strap in, this is going to be a long one).

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It’s officially the best time of year: fall. Mornings are crisp, leaves are falling, and it’s the perfect temperature for drinking your coffee on the porch.

I love a summer dress or a cute pair of denim shorts as much as the next person, but fall fashion is where I thrive. Jumpsuits, sweaters, cardigans, and boots are my happy place.

If you’re like me and you have zero closet space - the majority of my clothes hang on a rack in my bedroom because the closet is too small to house both my clothes and my fiancé’s - this is probably the time of year you start packing up your summer essentials and start bringing out your fall staples.

The start of any new season is a great time to re-assess clothes you maybe haven’t thought about or worn in a few months. It’s honestly something I look forward to every year. Not only because it feels like I have an entirely new wardrobe to play with, but because re-organizing my clothes for maximum efficiency bring me great joy.

If that’s also you, keep reading on how to make the most of this time of year as we say goodbye to summer and hello to fall.

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I don’t know about you but when I’m done work for the day, I am mentally (and sometimes physically) exhausted. I’m not sure if this is because I’m a morning person, or because I work in a fast-paced environment where I am working pretty much every single minute from 9-5, but I cannot think of anything I want to do more after work than just relax.

Enter …

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It’s weird as an adult to say that birthdays are important to you. But they are to me. I’ve written about it a lot over the last ~decade~ that I’ve been blogging.

There are few times as an adult that you get to be celebrated, especially if you’re not going down the traditional route of getting married and having children. Our society tends to celebrate those milestones more than others. People also seem to believe that adults should grow out of celebrating their birthdays. Because apparently being grateful that you’re alive and celebrating with your loved ones is something that only silly children do?

On pretty much every birthday post I’ve ever written, there is the inevitable comment from someone who doesn’t like celebrating their birthday because it’s hard seeing themselves grow older. And I get that. Men are allowed to age in our society. Women aren’t. So it can be difficult to celebrate yourself as you age.

At the same time however, if you don’t get to celebrate your birthday, it’s because you’re no longer with us. And I’d rather celebrate getting wrinkly and old than not be able to celebrate at all.

I turned 33 over the weekend. Normally, I love birthdays. Especially my own (I am a Leo after all, I can’t help it). This year though, I really struggled to enjoy myself.

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