Jim @ Route To Retire

Finder Interviewed Me about the FIRE Movement!

Leave a Comment / Guest Posts, Podcasts and Other Appearances / /

I’m excited to share that I was just interviewed on Finder! If you’re not familiar, Finder.com runs the popular site that helps others make better life decisions.  Whether it’s finding a new credit card, buying a home, or getting health insurance. I was actually surprised to see how many different areas Finder provides help with.  They currently have over 50 categories with comparisons and guides.  On top of it, all the information is free, which we all know is my […]

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Only You Can Change Your Life… Seriously!

22 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Panama / /

Only you can change your life.  Only you can change you. I was jogging back from the gym the other day and it reminded me of something.  I absolutely hate going to the gym.  I’ve talked about it before, but I do – I hate it. So then why do I do it? Because I want to be a better me. That’s it.  That’s the only reason.  It would be so much easier to sit on the couch and drink

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Net Income on Our Duplex Last Year… Negative $7,400!!

18 Comments / Real Estate, Investments, Self-Employment, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

I might not be the smartest businessman, but I keep thinking that a negative net income in regards to your rental property for the year is not good. And just over $7,400 in the red makes it so much worse! Ouch, what the hell happened?! This duplex was supposed to be another stream of income that would help level out the bumps from rockiness in the stock market over the coming years.  Last year though, proved to be a particularly

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What’s It REALLY Like to Live in a Foreign Country?

30 Comments / Panama, Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

We’ve now been living in a foreign country for six months.  If you’re not familiar, we moved to Panama in August of 2019. We had visited the country in the summer of 2017 as a sort of recon mission along with my brother and sister-in-law.  Don’t worry, we had plenty of fun while there, but the real goal was to determine if we could see ourselves actually living there. The cities we scoped out included Nueva Gorgona, Coronado, El Valle

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Is FIRE the Finish Line or Just the Beginning?

22 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Self-Employment / /

Looking back on my own path to financial independence, I treated the whole thing like a race in my mind.  Reaching the finish line was the utmost important goal. As I continued to make more money every year through raises, I saved more and more.  But the other side of the equation is cutting expenses… and cut expenses we did! In my mind, if it wasn’t a necessity, I really had to think about if it made sense to spend

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Our First Visit to the Dentist in Panama Was… Different

33 Comments / Panama, Geoarbitrage, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement / /

Last week we made our first visit to the dentist in Panama.  I had been looking forward to it for a while now because I’m always intrigued just to see the differences from what I’m used to in the United States. I was told that going to the dentist here is a lot like being waterboarded.  Thankfully, I’d never experienced anything like that before but somehow that actually intrigued me more.  Curiosity killed the cat though, right? Even though we

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Portfolio Rebalancing - Get Your Asset Allocation in Line

Portfolio Rebalancing: Get Your Asset Allocation in Line

8 Comments / Investments / /

I’ve never done a portfolio rebalancing on my resting investments.  As I’ve made money moves over the last few years to get prepared for early retirement, that’s helped me to rebalance accordingly at those times. However, this was my first shot at actively doing a portfolio rebalancing just because it was time. All the smart financial folks out there will tell you that rebalancing is an important part of maintaining your investments.  The problem is that those folks don’t usually

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FI and Early Retirement… Could It All Come Crashing Down?

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

I’m not going to lie – being FI (financially independent) is a truly awesome feeling.  To realize that you don’t need to work again if you don’t want to takes such a massive weight off of your shoulders. But if you take it to the next level and throw in early retirement, you’re now solely depending on whatever you’ve put in place to sustain that financial independence. That’s scary.  No, I mean, that’s really scary. If you continue to work, you

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Guest Interview on Financially Alert

Guest Interview on Financially Alert

2 Comments / Guest Posts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

Michael Quan started his blog, Financially Alert, right about the same time as I started Route to Retire (early 2015). The big difference is that Michael was already financially independent when his blog came out.  He crushed it and retired from the corporate world at 36 in 2012… how cool is that?! I think we’ve followed each others’ journeys since our sites came out.  We finally had an opportunity to meet at the FinCon personal finance conference a couple of years

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Would You REALLY Work Out Once You’re Retired?

28 Comments / Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement / /

I hate to work out. When talking to gym-addicts, they love to tell me things, “oh, you’ll learn to enjoy it over time.”  I chuckle. I don’t think so.  I hate knowing that it’s time to go work out and I hate the actual workout. “Yeah, but you feel so much better once you’re done, right?” Um, no.  I’m glad it’s over, but no, I don’t feel better or refreshed at all. Look, I’m just keeping it real.  I do

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