About

Happy Spring from Istanbul! :)

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When visiting Europe, don't miss the continent's most populous city - Istanbul! This city is absolutely overflowing with beauty, history, culture, culinary delights, adorable street cats (and dogs), and all arou

Vibes on the Nile. Swipe left for Laura's and @ryebreadiscovers Libyan Reggae dance moves. Happy Friday everyone! 😉

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Once in your life, sail down the Nile on a traditional Egyptian felucca sailboat!

You spend your day relaxing on a large mat

Views Along the Nile - Once in your life, sail down the Nile on a traditional Egyptian felucca sailboat!

You spend your day relaxing on a large mattress, shielded by a sunroof, feeling the gentle warm air caress you, listening to the river lap again

Sailing Down the Nile - Once in your life, sail down the Nile on a traditional Egyptian felucca sailboat!

You spend your day relaxing on a large mattress, shielded by a sunroof, feeling the gentle warm air caress you, listening to the river lap agai

Hedgie had its first selfie taken today 🌞

Welcome to Sprouting Sense! We are Peter and Laura.

About a year after starting his first job out of college in 2012, Peter received a reminder to please enroll and start contributing to his employer-sponsored retirement account. This started him down a rabbit hole, asking the question: “What would it take to be able to retire - early?”

After a lot of thinking, learning, and financial modeling, we hatched a plan in late 2013 to achieve Financial Freedom by 2020. Then we did just that - and to our surprise far exceeded our original goals. Seven years later, we quit our jobs and started the next chapter of our life together. We are currently traveling the world, writing, exploring countries that we may want to call home in the future, and getting ready to have kids. You can follow our journey at @hedgie_travels on Instagram.

When we first developed our Financial Freedom plan in 2013, we had no idea there is a whole FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) community with similar dreams and stories out there! Their incredible blogs and YouTube channels again and again boosted our confidence and conviction that we were on the right path. Our Financial Freedom journey would have been so much more lonely and less fun without them. Thank you guys!

We started Sprouting Sense to add our own voice, inspire you, provide step-by-step guides, and to finally formalize the countless personal finance talks and one-on-one coaching chats that Peter has had with friends and colleagues over the years. We hope this site will help you achieve Financial Freedom and lead a life that is deeply meaningful to you personally!