2018

Why I Want a Stock Market Crash This Close to FIRE

18 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

What kind of person actually wants a stock market crash just two months before retirement? This guy, that’s who! That might sound like a weird sentiment especially considering I’ve been worried about this exact thing over the past couple of years.  After all, a down market would kill my net worth at the same time I plan to start withdrawing my money. This discussion is specific to the mindset of getting closer to retirement.  If you’re in the accumulation phase of […]

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Money Throughout My Life

Money Throughout My Life

17 Comments / General Thoughts, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving / /

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

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Selling a House... It's the Reason I'll Never Buy Another

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

36 Comments / Real Estate, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage / /

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,

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FinCon… It’s Really All About the People

32 Comments / General Thoughts, Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

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

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Only You Can Change Your Circumstances

Only You Can Change Your Circumstances

10 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

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 –

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

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

2 Comments / Guest Posts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement / /

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

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Strategies We’re Using in Our Early Retirement Planning

14 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Investments, Panama, Self-Employment / /

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

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Why Is It So Uncomfortable to Say I’m Retiring Early?

38 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

The idea of retiring early is something that most folks in the personal finance and FIRE world understand.  When I tell people in the community that I’m retiring early at the age of 43, they say “good for you” and move on. Nevertheless, when friends or family ask me what we’re planning to do once we move to Panama (that is after they get past the idea that we’re moving to Panama!), it gets a little weird. Ok, it gets

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Travel Rewards - 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!

Travel Rewards – 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!

18 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

You ever see those offers from the credit card companies with the big juicy sign-up bonuses?  They might be offering 50,000 points or miles in travel rewards for spending maybe $3,000 in the first few months. If you’re like I used to be, you get those offers in the mail and just tear ’em up and pitch ’em.  Those jerks aren’t suckering me into their little trap of overspending my hard-earned money for a lousy plane ticket or hotel stay!

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The Hardest Part of the Path to FIRE is…

18 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts / /

The path to FIRE (financial independence / retire early) can be a long and sometimes arduous path.  Each of us runs into our own obstacles and stumbling blocks along the way. One piece of good news is that, unlike the early trail-blazers that went down this path, there’s now a wonderful community on the big old Internet.  If you look past the get-rich-quick garbage out there, you’ll find a lot of supportive and helpful folks who want you to succeed. Another

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