July 2025

Why I Got the Chase Sapphire Reserve… Even With Its $795 Fee

6 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Saving, Spending, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / July 11, 2025

Long-time readers know that we’ve been playing the credit cards travel rewards game for several years now. The more we learn how to play the game more efficiently, the further the rewards have taken us. Without a doubt, credit card travel rewards have easily saved us tens of thousands of dollars on travel and helped us vacation in some amazing places. Regardless, we’re still pretty judicious about which cards we apply for. Just because a bonus is good, if it […]

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Our Alaska Cruise Was Incredible… But One Thing Left Me Cold

10 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement / Jim @ Route To Retire / July 10, 2025

Haha, one of the AI tools helped me generate that title about our Alaska Cruise, and I chuckled when I saw it, so I went with it! 🙂 Anyway, it’s been a long time, friends! I haven’t written a post for a couple of months now. I said I was going to scale back and, boy, did I! I’ve been super busy with a bunch of things (travel included), so it was nice not putting pressure on myself, feeling obligated

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Hi, I'm Jim - I'm just a regular guy who figured out the path to financial freedom and early retirement for myself and my family.

I retired from my corporate job at the end of 2018 at the age of 43. We then moved to the country of Panama in the summer of 2019 for a new adventure where we lived until 2022. Yup, you heard that right... the country of Panama!

We're back in the U.S. now and, after traveling the country in an RV for 8 months, we sold the RV, found a new place to live, and continue traveling often.

I'm hoping you'll join me on our journey as I talk about what I've learned so far and as we figure out ways to optimize our strategy. I like to talk a lot of about travel as well, including sharing tips that I've found helpful. Plus, I'll throw in some thoughts about how I'm striving to become a better person (physically, mentally, and spiritually).

If you're new to the site, be sure to check out my story.