It’s Wednesday evening and here I am in your inbox on Hump-Day. Yipee. I just got back from a trip to see my family in NY, and I’m ready to be bold. While in NY, I went to see the 9/11 Memorial, which is beautifully painful (think about that one). In seeing the memorial and losing a friend over these last few weeks, I’ve been reminded that life is short. We cannot get back the time that we have on this earth, and I’m confronted with the question –

How do I live the life that I want?

A few things pop out for me - I want to spend time with my loved ones, make an impact, learn laugh a lot, enjoy new experiences, and have no regrets. Tell me about the life that you want?

In order for me to have this life, I must continue to have a wealth-mindset. I’ve talked about this earlier this year, but how does this play out in reality? Well, my recent trip to NY gives some insights into wealth-building activities.

Wealth-Building Mindset in Action

Have a plan. Before taking the trip to NY, my husband and I decided how much money we would spend on trips this year. Our NY trip fit into our travel plans, and thus decided to splurge a bit by staying in downtown Manhattan to be close to the action. Before we went on our trip, we allocated our trip money for the 5-day stay and utilized the same bank card for every transaction so that we knew how much money we spent. We compared rates on the Hotel Tonight app to hotels.com, and the hotels.com was actually far cheaper for some of the same hotels. We economized by staying at an apartment-style hotel with a full kitchen. For those who haven’t heard of AKA Hotels, it’s sweet. Since the NY location opened just 7 months ago, we got a room for $150/night – Yes!

Look for Sustainable Trends To Add Money to Your Pocket. Part of being a good investor is paying attention to your surroundings. While in NY, it was hard to miss the continued development of areas such as Park Slope and Battery Park. I’ve previously written about ways to evaluate a neighborhood for investment, but I was intrigued by a few trends – more concept food chains similar to Chipotle and the same construction companies outlined on the gates of redeveloped parceled land. I then asked myself what public companies are similar to the private ones and began to research which ones I might potentially make money on over the long-run.

Talk about wealth with the family. My family and I traded investment ideas on ways for us to build wealth. Sometimes it’s easy to default to our comfort topics of politics, culture, and food, but we found it refreshing to discuss how we can build wealth together. If you do not have a family structure to discuss these topics, consider a close friend group. Tell me what you’re talking to your family about on my blog.

BTW - Congrats to all you Tar-heels fans! Poorly played game, but surely a sweet outcome for the team.