Jim @ Route To Retire

The Best Chrome Extensions for Online Shopping $$$

The Best Chrome Extensions for Online Shopping $$$

10 Comments / Spending, Product and Service Reviews, Saving / /

Last week, I dished out a post of over 6,800 words: Moving to Boquete or Visiting? The Ultimate List of Tips!! This week, I thought I’d keep things a little simpler and let you know about some of the best Google Chrome extensions for online shopping. It’s time to save some money, folks! With the holidays around the corner and the pandemic continuing to do its thing, shopping online should be even more widespread than ever this year. Sometimes I […]

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Moving to Boquete or Visiting? The Ultimate List of Tips!!

Moving to Boquete or Visiting? The Ultimate List of Tips!!

22 Comments / Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

When we decided to make moving to Boquete, Panama a reality a few years ago, I didn’t know too much about the intricacies here. I knew it would be a lot different but you just don’t know what you don’t know. Now that we’ve been here since the middle of 2019, I can tell you that we’ve learned a lot. There are still oddities that make us raise an eyebrow, but we have a much better hold on things nowadays.

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$1.3 Million Net Worth… Yet Scraping By Right Now

$1.3 Million Net Worth… Yet Scraping By Right Now

30 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Spending / /

Anytime you can throw the words “million net worth” into a discussion, the words “scraping by” shouldn’t follow. It just doesn’t fit the bill. Now before I continue, let me say that we’re fine, but we ran into an interesting financial problem that has messed us up this year. And, of course, my job is to share that with you so you can make sure you don’t run into a similar small dilemma. I’m always very forthcoming regarding our money

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Boquete, Panama – What’s It Like Today?

Boquete, Panama – What’s It Like Today?

28 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

When we left Boquete, Panama on a humanitarian flight at the beginning of summer, there were some borderline draconian measures in place here. The reaction to the pandemic here was to shut everything down to the extreme. Everyone was literally on a full-time lockdown. Women were only allowed out for two-hour periods on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays based on the last digit of your cédula or passport. The same went for men but they could only do Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and

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Our Trip to Panama – What to Expect As Borders Reopen

Our Trip to Panama – What to Expect As Borders Reopen

28 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

We made it! Our trip to Panama went well and we’re back at our condo in Boquete safe and sound and enjoying the beautiful weather again. It was only a couple of months ago that we thought we’d be unable to get back to Panama at all. But in an unexpected turn of events, Panama announced they were going to reopen Tocumen International Airport to tourists starting October 12, 2020. Although I wasn’t confident this would actually happen, we booked

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Getting an Antigen Test to Travel to Panama… Ugh!

Getting an Antigen Test to Travel to Panama… Ugh!

12 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

Yeah… ugh. What a mess things are. As you read this, we should be just hours away from flying back to Panama. The key to making this happen… finding a place to get an antigen test done. Oh, and we needed to take the test within 48 hours of our scheduled arrival time in Panama. And somehow we had to have the negative results in hand in that small window of time. That can still be a real hurdle and

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Free Nights – We’ve Had 5 at Hilton Hotels Recently

Free Nights – We’ve Had 5 at Hilton Hotels Recently

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Road Trip, Spending / /

Getting free stays at a hotel can be such a winning feeling. But free nights at various Hilton Hotels makes it even nicer! Our recent 40-day road trip took us through a lot of the country. On leg one and leg two of the trip, we didn’t really need a hotel to stay at. We spent time camping, staying with friends and family, and even had a few nights sleeping in the car (including once in a Cracker Barrel parking

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To Truly Reach for the Stars, Challenge Herd Mentality

To Truly Reach for the Stars, Challenge Herd Mentality

24 Comments / Motivation, General Thoughts, Kids / /

I had a little bit of a strange realization the other day. We tell our kids, friends, and other family members that we support their dreams. We tell them to reach for the stars and they can be or do anything they want to in life. But guess what – those are just some empty words. Even though we say to reach for the stars, those words can be meaningless due to our actions. We push our kids to chase

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Here's Why I'm Liking… RV Parky

Here’s Why I’m Liking… RV Parky

12 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Product and Service Reviews, Road Trip, Travel and Vacation / /

I recently started a new series called “Here’s Why I’m Liking…” to help showcase awesome products, services, and apps I come across. Today I’m going to tell you about a cool website/app I started using called RV Parky. For those of you following along, we recently completed a big ol’ road trip. When done, it ended up covering 5,863 miles over 40 days. It was a wonderful time and we’re blessed to be able to just pick up and go

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An Overnight at Cracker Barrel and 5,863 Miles Logged

An Overnight at Cracker Barrel and 5,863 Miles Logged

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

It’s hard to believe that our road trip is now over and we’re back in Ohio. It’s crazier to think that our first night of the last leg of our trip involved sleeping in a Cracker Barrel parking lot! We’ve been across a large part of this country on this journey and have had a ton of fun in the process. It’s been a good way to end the summer and have some fun while waiting and hoping we can

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