From Rome, Italy: How To Backwards Budget

No matter how many more cities I visit in my life, I don't think one will ever replace Rome as my favorite and the most beautiful.

For as down on Madrid as I was in the last post (sorry to go all negative on you!), I'm that excited—and positive—about Rome.

There's so much life here, especially in the Trastevere neighborhood. An energy that makes you smile the second you step outside that I have yet to see replicated anywhere.

Then there's the food and drink.

Stay tuned for some of the best food and city street porn of this series, which, interestingly, includes our first “bad” meal of the trip at a place set to expand into another city with its own special vibrancy—New York, New York.

Here’s a review of what we’re doing here and what we’ve done—

1. Assessment of your situation

2. Acknowledgement of your situation

3. Acceptance of your situation

4. Theorizing your situation

5. Strategizing your situation

   ---

6. Work Less Now So You Can Work Less Longer

7. Living Evenly Across The Lifespan

8. Organize Money And Work Around Life, Not The Other Way Around

   ---

9. Pots Of Money For Spending And Cash Security

10. Finding The Floor On Your Cost Of Living

    ---

This is post #11 of 20 for the month of February.

Today’s Never Retire checklist item—how to backwards budget. We’ll give it a full treatment in March, when I write 20 posts in 31 days, meticulously detailing each of the 20 checklist items we have been compiling this month.

Backwards budgeting flows freely from our two previous checklist items—pots of money and finding the floor on your cost of living.

I’ll save details on backwards budgeting for post #11 in March.

More importantly, the way one idea—or checklist item—precedes and leads into another, indicates a comprehensive strategy. There’s reason and logic, links between, and a concrete path to doing the things we discuss in this newsletter. It’s not one-off, lifestyle hack type stuff you so often see in the financial and popular media on personal finance.

Just as you can group checklist items #1 to #5 together, then do likewise with #6 to #8, you can do the same with #9, #10, and today’s #11.

And that’s just what I’ll do come March. I'll tie it all together.

---

But first—

We got one of the last taxis out of Rome’s Fiumicino airport on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Our driver maintained 140 kilometers per hour on the freeway leading into Rome’s core, even on the curves. A ride well worth the 60 euro price tag. Los Angeles prices welcome us to Rome!

After dropping off our bags in our apartment, stop #1