2023

Why I Chose PocketGuard as the Best Mint Replacement for Me

Why I Chose PocketGuard as the Best Mint Replacement for Me

10 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Debt, Investments, Product and Service Reviews, Saving, Spending / /

If you haven’t heard, Intuit decided to shut down the Mint personal finance site/app on January 1, 2024. They made this announcement on October 31, 2024, giving users only about 2 months to decide what they were going to do. All I can do is shake my head at how disrespectful this is to their loyal customer base. UPDATE: I just I received an email from Intuit on 12/17/2023 stating that I can continue using Mint until March 23, 2024, […]

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AI Chatbots: My Sidekick for Getting Sh*t Done

AI Chatbots: My Sidekick for Getting Sh*t Done

12 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Education, Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews / /

Depending on how much you keep up with technology, you may or may not have a decent understanding of what AI chatbots are (AI being artificial intelligence). Heck, you may not have even heard the term before. But you may have heard of ChatGPT as it’s been in the news quite a bit over this past year. For a while, the phrase “artificial intelligence” usually had at least one mention of ChatGPT. I still enjoy reading about, learning, and experimenting

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The Ups and Downs of RV Life: 45 Days in Our Tiny Home

The Ups and Downs of RV Life: 45 Days in Our Tiny Home

20 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip / /

“Move out of your apartment and enjoy the RV life,” they said… “It’ll be fun!” Ok, that’s only sort of what happened. We enjoyed our past couple of monster road trips (2020 and 2022) so much that it became the catalyst for us letting our apartment lease lapse, putting our stuff in storage, buying an RV, and taking on the RV life. It was also one solution to dodging another Ohio Winter! I will say though that full-time RV life

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The Calyx Institute: Our Secret to Inexpensive, Unlimited, Unthrottled Internet on the Road

The Calyx Institute: Our Secret to Inexpensive, Unlimited, Unthrottled Internet on the Road

29 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews, Road Trip / /

Well, after almost a month of living in our new trailer at two local campgrounds to get the hang of things, we’re finally off and running. We’ve started our road trip around the country with an anticipation of finishing in early summer next year! I think we did a good job learning as much as we could beforehand because things have gone relatively smoothly thus far. Sure, there have been some minor things like me getting sprayed down from water

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It’s Amazing What Being Alone With Your Thoughts on a Walk Can Do for You

It’s Amazing What Being Alone With Your Thoughts on a Walk Can Do for You

15 Comments / Motivation, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip / /

I had no plans to go for a walk today. Lisa and Faith were gone and that’s usually when I focus on getting things done. Sometimes I’ll work on projects around home (which is the RV right now!) and other times I’ll work on a blog post for Route to Retire. For whatever reason, the idea of being alone usually means I’m going to work on something and get it checked off the list. But today was different. Today I

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Risk and Reward: Overcoming the Doubt Can Transform Your Life

Risk and Reward: Overcoming the Doubt Can Transform Your Life

8 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Self-Employment, Travel and Vacation / /

When I was younger, weighing the risk and reward in a decision was a lot easier. In your youth, you’ve got time on your side and most of the chances you take aren’t going to make or break you. If you’re in your younger years, remember that. Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks that can change your life for the better. As time marches on though, the choice between risk and reward can sometimes be a lot tougher. When

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Your Money, Your Choices: Why Personal Finance Is Deeply Personal

Your Money, Your Choices: Why Personal Finance Is Deeply Personal

12 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Investments, Saving, Spending, Taxes and Financial Planning, Travel and Vacation / /

Personal finance is such an interesting facet of life. It’s a part of every one of our lives whether we like it or not and most of us think we know what’s best for ourselves… and everyone else. But the reality is that while we can learn as much as we want about the subject, we really should only focus on what’s best for ourselves. Why is that? It’s because, funny enough, personal finance truly is personal. You might have

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RV Boondocking: Spending a Little Money on 3 Changes Now to Reap Huge Savings and Enjoy a Better Trip Later

RV Boondocking: Spending a Little Money on 3 Changes Now to Reap Huge Savings and Enjoy a Better Trip Later

4 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip, Spending / /

This past spring, Lisa and I bought an RV travel trailer – a 2022 Jayco Jay Flight SLX 7 184BS to be more exact. We’ve never owned an RV and we didn’t know much about them. All we knew was that our family of three had two incredible month-long road trips in our Honda Pilot in 2020 and in 2022. So why not try something bigger just because we can? That led us to planning a 9-month road trip, buying

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Mint Mobile Review: 1 Year Later – Does It Live Up to the Hype?

Mint Mobile Review: 1 Year Later – Does It Live Up to the Hype?

26 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Spending / /

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there’s no doubt you’ve seen the Mint Mobile commercials with Ryan Reynolds. The ads are a little quirky and fun and they promote the idea that the service is great while the prices are low. Hopefully, those commercials will continue since they can be entertaining. Mint Mobile was acquired by T-Mobile earlier this year netting Ryan Reynolds a nice $300 million paycheck but he agreed to stay on as a spokesperson. Mint seems

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Adventure Planning: I’ve Made This Mistake Twice

Adventure Planning: I’ve Made This Mistake Twice

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip / /

You might have noticed that I’ve been MIA on this blog for a few weeks now… that’s starting to become a little common lately. I’ve wanted to focus on all sorts of different things, like learning to code in Kotlin for Android and just trying to be in the “now” a little more. In the midst of things, we took a month-long trip back to Boquete, Panama from late June until late July. I tried to focus more on being

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