Jim @ Route To Retire

The Art of Self-Improvement: My Journey to Living a Healthier Lifestyle

The Art of Self-Improvement: My Journey to Living a Healthier Lifestyle

18 Comments / Health and Fitness, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Motivation / By /

Living a healthier lifestyle is something I think almost all of us want to make happen. Whether it’s exercising more, eating better, or aiming for better mental health, we all know that living a healthier lifestyle helps put us on track for a longer and happier life. But… @#$% happens. And by that, I mean life tends to get in the way. Things like lack of time or energy, stress at work, or even social pressure tend to make us …

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A Wake-Up Call: Our Annual Expenses in Retirement for the Past 4 Years

A Wake-Up Call: Our Annual Expenses in Retirement for the Past 4 Years

14 Comments / Spending, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement / By /

In my post a couple of weeks ago, A Month-Long Panama Trip for 3 for an Unbeatable Price of Less than $1,500!, a reader named Ian asked in the comments what our expenses in retirement have been – both in the U.S. and while we lived in Panama. It was a good comment because he hit the nail on the head. I sometimes give a ballpark on what our bucket strategy is allowing us to spend each year… but I …

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Masterfully Crafted: How ChatGPT Wrote a Compelling Article on the Power of Saving and Investing

Masterfully Crafted: How ChatGPT Wrote a Compelling Article on the Power of Saving and Investing

23 Comments / Blogging, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Investments, Product and Service Reviews, Saving / By /

I’m both excited and scared about the concept of Artificial intelligence (AI) including ChatGPT, which is currently all over the technology news. The technical and engineering side of my brain is fascinated by the whole idea. The potential of artificial intelligence growing up and being able to make our lives easier in different aspects is incredible. We have 3 of those Google Nest Minis in our apartment (we got 1 for free and paid $1 each for the other 2). …

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A Month-Long Panama Trip for 3 for an Unbeatable Price of Less than $1,500!

A Month-Long Panama Trip for 3 for an Unbeatable Price of Less than $1,500!

23 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement, Spending, Travel and Vacation / By /

I’ve been excited to talk about this for a while now, but I wanted to hold back until we were sure it was going to happen. Well, it’s now official… We’re heading back to Boquete for a month-long Panama trip! After just shy of 3 years of living in Boquete, Panama, we moved back to the U.S. last spring. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there but it was time to come back. A lot of folks continue to ask us …

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Squeezing Out Higher Returns – 5 Minutes of Work for Short-Term Gains

Squeezing Out Higher Returns – 5 Minutes of Work for Short-Term Gains

24 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving / By /

Being aware of opportunity can be extremely valuable in building your nest egg. This doesn’t mean veering from the path – sticking to your investment plan is highly important to growth. You put the money in (broad-based index funds for this guy) and then just leave it alone to do its thing… with some regular rebalancing once or twice a year. But what about taking advantage of higher returns for the short term? As early retirees, we get our annual …

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We Got the Chase United Explorer Card… Again. Boom! Easy Free Travel!

We Got the Chase United Explorer Card… Again. Boom! Easy Free Travel!

6 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Product and Service Reviews, Spending / By /

We just applied for (and got) the Chase United Explorer credit card. This time around it’s in Lisa’s name (my wife). What’s funny is that I really don’t think this is the best travel rewards card out there for a lot of people. There are so many choices and some others can actually be a better bang for the buck depending on your needs. For some reason though, we’ve come back to this card more than any other. I believe …

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The 10 Most Popular Posts of 2022

The 10 Most Popular Posts of 2022

4 Comments / Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Kids, Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Panama, Spending, Travel and Vacation / By /

Last year, I wrote a wrap-up post with the 10 most popular posts of the year. It was an idea I borrowed from my friend Fritz over at The Retirement Manifesto (with his permission, of course). I liked that idea so much that I’m running with it again this year. And guess what – Fritz did it again as well and beat me to the punch! If you’re interested (and you should be!), you can check out his post appropriately …

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ETFs vs Mutual Funds… Why I'm All-In on ETFs

ETFs vs Mutual Funds… Why I’m All-In on ETFs

10 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / By /

In my last post, Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio, I broke down our entire portfolio. This included every holding and the values of each (rounded slightly just for security). This turned out to be a pretty popular post and generated a little bit of fun discussion – both in the comments and through email several email conversations I had with readers. One fair comment was about why I choose to buy the Vanguard ETF VTI instead of the …

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Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

49 Comments / Investments, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving, Spending / By /

Ah, how time flies! In February 2019, I wrote a post called The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments that detailed our investment portfolio at the time. As you’d expect, it broke down all our assets and liabilities and gave a good snapshot of our financial picture. This was just a couple of months after I had retired from the corporate world so it gave us a pretty good baseline to start our retirement. But holy schnikes – …

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Entitled Kid Syndrome… Our 4-Part Preventative Strategy Entitled Kid Syndrome…

Entitled Kid Syndrome… Our 4-Part Preventative Strategy

18 Comments / Kids, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Saving, Spending / By /

“Wow, that’s one entitled kid for sure!” Words you don’t ever want to hear about your child. We’re blessed to have saved enough money to be able to enjoy early retirement. As a millionaire family that doesn’t live extravagantly, a lot of the money stress tends to subside (though not completely). It’s been wonderful to be able to spend my days with my wife and daughter. In fact, being able to be a bigger part of my daughter’s life while …

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