Saving and Investing for a Gap Year & Early Retirement with Helen Lu aka @themoneyminimalist

When Helen Lu graduated from college, she started her dream job at a Big Four Consulting company, something she had spent her entire life working towards. But soon she realized she didn't want to follow that path and work in corporate for the rest of her life. It wasn't until Helen discovered the FI/RE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) movement and learned that retirement is not an age, it's whenever you can afford, that it finally clicked for her. She wanted to create a life for herself that would allow her to retire early and have several mini retirements along the way as opposed to feeling burnt out all the time. So Helen started blogging and created @themoneyminimalist with the goal of creating personal finance content for the people around her, especially first generation immigrants and college graduates. She has since been featured on CNBC, Bloomberg, in Fortune Magazine, and Business Insider. In the summer of 2021, Helen left the corporate world for a gap year to travel and work on a few passion projects of hers. On this episode, Helen and Thamina talk about steps you should take before taking a gap year, being a content creator, and what it means to separate your identity from your work early in life once you've been stripped away prestigious job titles.