Sincerely Angie

#ThrowbackThursday: Love and the Last Rose Petal

Sincerely Angie1 Comment

Post originally written June 2023.

The beauty in flowers run deep.

The beauty in love runs deeper.

They bud, sprout, bloom then wither away.

Love begins, learns, grows, thrives and sometimes fades away.

Most roses are cut from their natural habitat and placed or grown in a nursery to be selected and given to someone special.

Most loves will catch you off guard and sweep you off your feet by someone who is willing to give you to someone who can take really good care of you until the right one comes along.

Whoever receives the roses, knows that the time they have together will be short.

Some loves know that they are only here for a short while.

Yet, they still give it food, fresh water and clip the stems to prolong their life.

So they still fall in love, operate in love and enjoy this love for as long as they can.

The once closed rose starts to open and bloom beautifully, although it’s fate is imminent.

Love makes you glow and grow differently. Although you can’t help who you fall in love with and some times that love isn’t meant to last forever.

As time passes, leaves and petals start to wither and fall away from the stem.

The growing pains of love start to chip away at what was once so beautiful.

There’s still beauty in the rose despite what it has sacrificed.

The beauty in love are the lessons learned.

The recipient of the selfless rose has been blessed by its beauty.

Love is still beautiful despite the using and abusing that sometimes goes with it.

The rose fell apart slowly and lasted as long as it could.

Lovers try to stick it out but at some point, a separation is inevitable.

The rose is down to the last rose petal.

Love has its last straw. The pain is too much to bear.

The caretaker decides to repay the rose by propagating it and creating a whole new rose bush from the stems of the roses that sacrificed their life for the pleasure of the caretaker.

Even though this one love ended, the beautiful thing about love is that you love, learn and love again. Each time more beautiful than the last.

When I thought of the title “The last Rose Petal”, Teyana Taylor was set to do a tour by the same name and I was listening to a sermon/motivational video on YouTube. The premise of the video was about letting go. So in a roundabout way, this post is a metaphor for letting go and starting over. What you once thought may have been the end, was blessed by a new beginning. Everything you have gone through was only preparation for a bigger and better version of you. Embrace the journey. Your hurt, pain and sacrifice will be the blessing you needed to get you to your heart’s desire. Although deep down inside we know that some things won’t last long, we put time, maybe even too much time, and energy into them. I believe it’s in our nature to try to prolong the inevitable. Our efforts won’t go unnoticed. It speaks to our character and tenacity. It shows that although this thing was only in your life for a season, you took care of it to the best of your ability. – Just My Thoughts

NBA Angie (Never Broke Again Angie)

Sincerely Angie2 Comments

Vow to Never be Broke Again

Do you have a “broke” number? If you’re not familiar with what a broke number is, it’s basically a number that you get down to in your finances, where you start to consider yourself broke. It’s a number that should scare you. I also talk about this in a recent podcast episode here.

I found out in 2014 that my broke number was $10,000. In 2011, I left a job that I had been on for 7 years and started a new one 4 months later in 2012. During the 4 months I wasn’t working, I was living off of my savings. The new job paid me significantly less than my previous job, so I was still using my savings to supplement the deficit. After 2 years of living off of my savings, I was approaching a number in my savings account that scared the ish out of me. Before reaching that number, I knew that’s where I was stopping. Because as I was approaching it, I would get nervous thinking about it. That’s when I started to make changes. I downsized as much as possible and I was able to maintain my broke number without touching the savings account for a few years.

Slowly but surely and in very small steps, I started to add money to increase my savings. You can see the growth in my blog posts in the budget tab. I went from saving $2, $5, $15+ dollars at a time, to saving $200, $500, $1,500+ at a time. I went from praying to be able to save $10,000 to saving $10,000 in almost two years, then to saving that in less than one year.

Vowing to never get that close to only having $10,000 in my savings, to being able to save $10,000 in less than a year, only came from the feeling of not having that security. I learned a few things during a span of 5 years that helped me to grow. Since then, my “broke” number has changed and that change came in 2018. That means it took me about 7 years or more to learn my finances, grow my finances and to get comfortable with a much larger “broke number”.

Here’s what I did:

  • I started paying the full 10% of my tithes.
  • I wrote down everything and really learned who I was financially.
  • I elevated each time I reached a goal.
  • I took a deep dive into my finances and learned them inside out.
  • I set many goals, big and small.
  • I pushed myself and always strived for a bigger goal.
  • I sacrificed and had to practice discipline.
  • I took advantage of any thing free, points and programs that rewarded me with free money. (Rakuten, surveys, loyalty programs, receipt programs, etc.)
  • I counted every penny and knew where every penny was supposed to be.

If you’re reading this, it’s my hope that this post inspires change if you need it or motivation. This post is not to brag or boast. We all have a journey, and it took me nearly 10 years to get to this place. I vowed to never get close to my broke number again, and if life did happen and I got close to it, I know exactly how to recover it all again. NBA Angie!!! Happy budgeting!

Sincerely,

Angie

Nouns of the Week

Sincerely AngieLeave a comment

In honor of “Love Day”, here are a few nouns that I’m loving. My current favorite person(s), place and thing.

Person(s)

Toya and Yannie

I met them a little over 20 years ago and my life hasn’t been the same since. Last October, I mentioned to them that I hadn’t truly celebrated turning 40 and they said, say less! Yannie and I flew to Georgia and Toya had an amazing weekend planned for us. I truly celebrated turning forty six months after my actual birthday. I love them too much! We’ve traveled together, partied together and shared our hearts with one another. We are family now so they are stuck with me for life!

Place

Me with a Zulu group that performed a proposal reenactment, in South Africa.

South Africa. I visited Jamaica in 2015 and I had always labeled it as my favorite trip. South Africa 2025 has entered the chat. This trip came out of no where for me. I got a message November 14th, 2024 asking if I wanted to go. I said yes but I was in the midst of traveling and as soon as I got back home and settled, I checked-in about 10 days later to see if the spot was still available. It was nothing but God that saw fit for me to be included. A month and a half later, I was on a 17 hour flight to South Africa. There are no words to describe the feeling but Africa honestly felt like home. It wasn’t any one person, place or thing that made me feel this. It was just the aura, spirit or ambiance of Africa.

Thing

I saw Nina Pool on TIkTok do a dooperoonie for this shower oil. I had never seen or heard of it before so I was going to dupe it. I few days later while in Africa, I saw the L’Occitane store in the mall. I remembered the name from the video but I didn’t stop in the store because I was headed somewhere else. I go into another store (a department type of store) and I see this bottle, it was one of three different bottle sizes and there wasn’t a price on it. I found a sales agent and asked for the price and purchased it. I never even smelled it. Once I got back home, I recorded a video to showcase what I purchased in Africa (video here) and I smelled it and was blown away. I showered with it and I’m pretty sure I will never not use this stuff. It will be a part of my shower routine for ever. Even at the price point it’s at (and y’all know I’m cheap.)

Sincerely,

Angie