April 2021 - Route to Retire

Giving the In-Laws the Grand Tour of Boquete, Panama!

21 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 27, 2021

Well, folks, I’m excited to say that our first visitors have come to stay with us. My in-laws arrived at Enrique Malek International Airport in David, Panama last Wednesday where we were waiting to pick them up and bring them back to Boquete. Traveling internationally isn’t the easiest thing to do so I had put together a guide to help them make the trip to Panama a little less hassle-bound. I stripped out all the details specific to them (reservation […]

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I’m Now a 401(k) Millionaire – Can You Be One, Too?

36 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 20, 2021

So here’s something unexpected… I just became a 401(k) millionaire last week. As an early retiree, I had rolled over my 401(k) into a traditional IRA in March 2019. So on a technicality, I’m really a rollover IRA millionaire, but it’s still my 401(k) account sitting there with nothing new added to it since January 2019. I had even pulled a little over $60,000 out of the account in December 2019. That was part of the Roth IRA conversion ladder

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Investment Portfolio Changes I’m Making!

43 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Taxes and Financial Planning / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 13, 2021

It’s time to make some changes to my investment portfolio! I wrote a post last month called We Have a Lot of Cash in Hand Now… Too Much! that discussed how too much of our portfolio is sitting in cash. Apparently, that’s not uncommon right now as I received a lot of feedback in the comments and replies back from my mailing list (which I recommend you sign up for on the sidebar!). So I decided to write a post

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How and Why To Open a Custodial Roth IRA at Vanguard

74 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Kids / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 6, 2021

I recently wrote a post called Teaching Kids About Money – Valuable Lessons Instilled. As I was in the process of writing it, I got motivated to open a custodial Roth IRA for my daughter, Faith. If you’re new to this blog, Faith is 10 years old (11 in a few months). When you hear that, you might be thinking, “What the @#$% does a 10-year-old need with a retirement account?” or “Um, Jim, don’t you need to have earned

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Stacking Benjamins Show Appearance – Retiring Abroad

4 Comments / Podcasts and Other Appearances, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 2, 2021

I was very excited to be asked to appear on a special episode of the Stacking Benjamins Show recently. There aren’t many podcasts that I still listen to anymore, but I love listening to Joe, Paula, and Len on this show. It just seems like they’re having a lot of fun but with some good info presented along the way. In case you’re wondering, the other podcasts I still regularly listen to are: Afford Anything with Paula Pant ChooseFI with

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