Route to Retire ...the path to financial independence

Why is Financial Independence Such an Uphill Battle?

I spend a lot of my time every day focusing on my path to financial independence. I have a game plan that I feel even more confident about now that I got a second opinion. But that doesn’t stop me from looking for ways to expedite the process. I’m constantly educating myself by listening to podcasts relating to personal finance and real estate. And I’m reading every book I can get my hands on related to those topics as well as closely following a lot of blogs in the FI/RE community. But most importantly, I’m acting on the things I learn that I feel will help in my situation. In a nutshell though, I’ve learned that the path to reaching financial freedom is actually much

The Quest to Trim the Fat and Simplify Life

For most of us in a first-world country, it’s almost natural in an unsettling way for us to accumulate crap. Not only do we have junk we don’t need (although we think we do when we buy it), we also spend money needlessly on things we think will simplify our lives. The problem is that most of the time we buy something – be it a product or a service – with the intent of it making life easier or better, it has the opposite effect. A perfect example are computers. How many times have you wanted to throw yours out the window because you wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out how to do something on it that you could

My Experience with a Certified Financial Planner

Recently, I decided that I wanted a second opinion on my game plan. Although I’m pretty confident on how to make things work, I decided that this is important enough to warrant bringing in someone else to look everything over and give some unbiased input. So I recently hired a certified financial planner. I thought this would be a great opportunity to take you through the process from start to finish to give you a better idea if this is something that you might want to pursue for yourself. What is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP)? Anyone can say that they’re a financial planner or financial advisor. There’s not really a lot of governance on this term. However, to become a Certified

Protecting Yourself When Buying Rental Property

When I bought my first house back in 2003, I had plans to live there for a couple of years, fix it up, and then turn it into a rental property. The idea sounded simple enough, but I ran into a lot of headaches along the way. I knew location was important, but I didn’t know where I should be looking. I also didn’t know how to properly determine cash flow and ROI (return on investment). And I didn’t take into consideration that an older house would likely need more work done to it. To top it all off, I thought I was a better handyman than I actually am! 🙂 I got really lucky though. It took a lot more time and effort

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

I recently asked my 6-year old daughter “what do you want to be when you grow up?” She answered back that said she wants to buy duplexes. That’s my girl! Now, before you start chastising me for trying to force my daughter to be something she doesn’t want to when she grows up, let me explain. When I grow up… When I was young, I had my sights set on being an artist for Disney. I had a pretty good knack for drawing and that just seemed like a really cool place to work for a living. When I got to college, I continued heading down the path somewhat. I was a Studio Art major for the first couple of years of school, but then one day, while

It’s Not How Much You Make, It’s How Much You Keep

As I was going through college, I had my mind set on getting rich. I envisioned a good job that paid a ton of dough. After all, the more money you make, the richer you are, right? Fresh out of college though, I wasn’t building savings, I was chasing the money to have and to spend in the present day. And I did alright. While I was still in school, I was working at Walmart. I started out with it being a quick part-time job to working my way up to an assistant store manager. It paid pretty good for a college kid – in fact, it paid pretty good for a career in general. I was ahead of most of the

« Previous