Route to Retire ...the path to financial independence

Money Throughout My Life

Money. We all know its importance or you wouldn’t be reading this post. Whether you like it or not, it’s what the world runs on. You could opt out of playing the game and become a hobo, but there are very few of us that can live happily ever after in that position. You can’t let money rule your life, but it’s important to understand its role. Once you can control your capital instead of it controlling you, you’re one step closer to freedom. The old adage that “money can’t buy happiness” is only partially true. It can’t directly buy you a life of bliss, but it can buy you freedom – and that freedom can give you the opportunity

Selling a House… It’s the Reason I’ll Never Buy Another

Selling a house. Selling our house. It sounded easy enough and we needed to consider doing that as part of our plan to move to Panama next summer. We thought about keeping it and renting it out, but after discussing the options with our financial advisor, it actually made more sense to sell it. We have a lot of equity in it and we’ll need that money to cover our first five years during our Roth IRA conversion ladder. That said, we’re not moving to Panama until next summer so we can let our daughter finish out the school year. So why not wait and just sell the house in the spring? That was initially the plan, but with the real

FinCon… It’s Really All About the People

I’m writing this post on the airplane coming back from Orlando. I just got finished another great FinCon conference. Not only that, but I’m writing it while on the plane the old-school way – pen and paper. Sure, I’ve had to rewrite the whole thing to get it online because I bailed on bringing my laptop to the event. But I care about you guys so much that it’s worth the effort… you’re welcome. This is the second year I attended FinCon. Last year, I wrote a couple of posts recapping the event – My First 24 Hours with the J. Money Mohawk and My 6 Favorite Fincon17 Moments. This year, I decided I wouldn’t go into FinCon with a specific

Only You Can Change Your Circumstances

Some guys have all the luck. Things just seem to work out for some people and not for others. Such is life. After all, you can’t change your circumstances… can you? Hmm, that’s a question worth digging into – can you change your circumstances in life? I’ve always had this weird fascination about how cool it would be to take someone from the past (like from the 1700’s or 1800’s) and bring them to the present. Yeah, I’m a weirdo – deal with it. But, imagine their awe at some of the technology we have today. There’s so much we take for granted… computers really are an astounding feat. If we just look at smartphones as one facet of technology, it’s almost

Guest Post on ESI Money: How to Get Up the Nerve to Retire

Hey, regular readers – just thought I’d drop a quick note to let you know about a guest post that I recently did on getting the nerve to retire early. John at ESI Money reached out to me recently to let me know that a number of his readers had a concern. The problem they were having is that they were close to early retirement but have been unable to pull the trigger. Since he knew that I’m close to actually leaving my job for good in just a few months (woo-hoo!), he thought I’d be the right guy to write a post on the subject. Sounded like a great idea and a lot of fun, so I made it

Strategies We’re Using in Our Early Retirement Planning

Early retirement planning. You’d think the closer we get to our FIRE date, the simpler things would become. I mean really – I’m leaving my job in just a few months so as I continue to train my replacement, my workload should start to diminish over time. Plus, we’re downsizing to an apartment soon (if we could ever sell our house!). What else could there be, Jim? How much early retirement planning do you really need? Didn’t you already get these plans laid out months or years ago? I’ll tell you what – I read a lot of personal finance blogs with folks who’ve already left their jobs and it seems like the majority of what I read is: 1) Reach

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