What’s It REALLY Like to Live in a Foreign Country?

23 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By / February 18, 2020

We’ve now been living in a foreign country for six months.  If you’re not familiar, we moved to Panama in August of 2019. We had visited the country in the summer of 2017 as a sort of recon mission along with my brother and sister-in-law.  Don’t worry, we had plenty of fun while there, but the real goal was to determine if we could see ourselves actually living there. The cities we scoped out included Nueva Gorgona, Coronado, El Valle …

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Is FIRE the Finish Line or Just the Beginning?

22 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Self-Employment / By / February 11, 2020

Looking back on my own path to financial independence, I treated the whole thing like a race in my mind.  Reaching the finish line was the utmost important goal. As I continued to make more money every year through raises, I saved more and more.  But the other side of the equation is cutting expenses… and cut expenses we did! In my mind, if it wasn’t a necessity, I really had to think about if it made sense to spend …

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Our First Visit to the Dentist in Panama Was… Different

29 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / By / February 3, 2020

Last week we made our first visit to the dentist in Panama.  I had been looking forward to it for a while now because I’m always intrigued just to see the differences from what I’m used to in the United States. I was told that going to the dentist here is a lot like being waterboarded.  Thankfully, I’d never experienced anything like that before but somehow that actually intrigued me more.  Curiosity killed the cat though, right? Even though we …

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Portfolio Rebalancing - Get Your Asset Allocation in Line

Portfolio Rebalancing: Get Your Asset Allocation in Line

8 Comments / Investments / By / February 3, 2020

I’ve never done a portfolio rebalancing on my resting investments.  As I’ve made money moves over the last few years to get prepared for early retirement, that’s helped me to rebalance accordingly at those times. However, this was my first shot at actively doing a portfolio rebalancing just because it was time. All the smart financial folks out there will tell you that rebalancing is an important part of maintaining your investments.  The problem is that those folks don’t usually …

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FI and Early Retirement… Could It All Come Crashing Down?

22 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Spending / By / January 21, 2020

I’m not going to lie – being FI (financially independent) is a truly awesome feeling.  To realize that you don’t need to work again if you don’t want to takes such a massive weight off of your shoulders. But if you take it to the next level and throw in early retirement, you’re now solely depending on whatever you’ve put in place to sustain that financial independence. That’s scary.  No, I mean, that’s really scary. If you continue to work, you …

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Guest Interview on Financially Alert

Guest Interview on Financially Alert

2 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Guest Posts / By / January 14, 2020

Michael Quan started his blog, Financially Alert, right about the same time as I started Route to Retire (early 2015). The big difference is that Michael was already financially independent when his blog came out.  He crushed it and retired from the corporate world at 36 in 2012… how cool is that?! I think we’ve followed each others’ journeys since our sites came out.  We finally had an opportunity to meet at the FinCon personal finance conference a couple of years …

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Would You REALLY Work Out Once You’re Retired?

28 Comments / Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement / By / January 7, 2020

I hate to work out. When talking to gym-addicts, they love to tell me things, “oh, you’ll learn to enjoy it over time.”  I chuckle. I don’t think so.  I hate knowing that it’s time to go work out and I hate the actual workout. “Yeah, but you feel so much better once you’re done, right?” Um, no.  I’m glad it’s over, but no, I don’t feel better or refreshed at all. Look, I’m just keeping it real.  I do …

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Make Your Money Work for You Instead of Vice Versa

12 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving / By / January 4, 2020

I think I first heard the mantra of “make your money work for you” when I was a kid.  I’d also guess that it was my grandfather who preached it.  He was able to retire in his mid-40’s before the term FIRE (financial independence / retire early) was even coined. But it took me years to really understand what that meant.  And even once I thought I got it, I still assumed it was just some pipe dream that only …

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What's Up Next? - Geoarbitrage Podcast

Somehow I Got Asked Back on “What’s Up Next?”

2 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Panama, Podcasts and Other Appearances / By / January 4, 2020

Somehow I was able to get invited back on the “What’s Up Next?” podcast… who’da thunk it?! You’d think after Doc G and Paul Thompson had me on their “What’s Up Next?” show the first time around, they would’ve learned their lesson.  Not so much! To top it off, they invited my better half to be a part of it – maybe they were thinking that through the law of averages, Lisa could help bring me up a little more. …

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5 Life Lessons from Our First Year of Early Retirement

14 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement / By / December 27, 2019

It’s time to share some life lessons I’ve gone through in my first year of early retirement. Exactly one year ago today, I was at the office on the last day I would ever work in my career again.  It was New Year’s Eve, 2018 and it was the day before my retirement officially began at the sweet age of 43. My career in IT started back in 1999 and lasted almost 20 years.  I started as an unexperienced Systems …

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