Life in Korea, travels across Asia, and other stories and unsolicited advice from an ajumma.

A list I made for my frugality fatigue. I know in my head why we’re doing this and that there is no greater reward than early retirement, but my materialistic mind is prone to wander. Without regular dopamine hits from visiting instagrammable cafes and getting new kicks (and instagramming them), what else is there to…

Are your kids’ piano lessons enriching their childhood, or eating into what could be their future savings—or worse, your own retirement? Did you know that the typical household in my city (a Gyeonggi suburb of Seoul) spends 600 USD to 1000 USD a month per child on extracurricular activities? This is based on a highly…

Ajeossi (aka my husband) has been touting the concept of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) for the past few years. More recently, he proposed a super frugal January. Just for this month, he insisted. Just to see how little we can survive on. I agreed to the challenge. How hard can it be to be…

Note: I’m still working on populating old posts since migrating my blog to WordPress. The original Substack post with images can be found here. The popularity of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, the K-drama of the moment, had nothing to do with our one-day trip to Pohang this fall. In fact, we weren’t planning to venture out to…

Where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate and drank in the historic city of Gyeongju Note: I’m still working on populating old posts since migrating my blog to WordPress. The original Substack post with images can be found here. After returning to Korea this year, our goal was to visit and see…