...yeah, when I pull this off it'll be a great example of improbable mastery... my family has long joked that my brother will have to support my starry-eyed idealism when we're both grown up.

But I never want to be financially dependent on anyone else. I want to live simply - hey, having my own room and a bed (not a dorm loft or a futon) and a keyboard is an incredible luxury - and I want to always have the great sense of abundance I've enjoyed for the last 2 years (thank you, gap year savings! thank you, scholarships that made gap year savings possible!) and to be able to make decisions about my life based on critera other than "AAAH I need money now." And if I figure this out, I'll be able to help other people do it too.

I'm not in a bad position. I'm young (22) and trained well enough to be an apprentice in a skilled trade I enjoy (engineering... and associated fields like community facilitation); I have non-negative assets (no debt, some savings), the ability to write (which I am looking to work on more seriously) and manage (learning!)  and the whole darn world and my life ahead of me. I've also already started. I just have to remind myself to keep on going every so often.

This is another spiral learning thing for me; I've been trying to work this thread into Mel-as-a-person for years and years, and I think it may have finally gotten a scratch through the wax coating that has made anything money related roll off me like the proverbial duck's back relationship to H2O. (It still does. When I make progress on things that are unnatural to me, I do it verrrry slowly, with tons of backsliding along the way.)

How do you find a good financial coach?