Somehow I was able to get invited back on the “What’s Up Next?” podcast… who’da thunk it?! You’d think after Doc G and Paul Thompson had me on their “What’s Up Next?” show the first time around, they would’ve learned their lesson. Not so much! To top it off, they invited my better half to be a part of it – maybe they were thinking that through the law of averages, Lisa could help bring me up a little more. […]
It’s time to share some life lessons I’ve gone through in my first year of early retirement. Exactly one year ago today, I was at the office on the last day I would ever work in my career again. It was New Year’s Eve, 2018 and it was the day before my retirement officially began at the sweet age of 43. My career in IT started back in 1999 and lasted almost 20 years. I started as an unexperienced Systems
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This return trip to Panama is well overdue. We had a blast, but we’re whupped and ready to get back home (we’re finally starting to get comfortable calling Panama “home”). We spent over a month in the U.S. enjoying time with friends and family. Then we took a roundtrip Caribbean cruise out of Miami. Who’da thunk that we’d be ready to go home after so much fun?! But we really are – it’s time to enjoy the holidays together and
Our Return Trip to Panama – How We Saved Thousands Read More »
Doing a Roth conversion can be the key to a successful FIRE (financial independence, retire early) strategy. That’s definitely the case for us. By doing some financial planning, this one move is allowing us to access money in our pre-tax retirement accounts with no penalty and the ability to pay little to no tax when it happens. Today, I’m going to take you through some more details on what a Roth conversion is and why it’s so valuable. I’ll also
The Roth Conversion Strategy Guide for Early Retirees Read More »
Yeah, getting turned down for a credit card isn’t a good feeling. It doesn’t matter that Lisa and I each have credit scores of over 800. It doesn’t matter that we have plenty of credit cards already and don’t really need another. We also have more of an unused credit line spanned across all our cards than we’ll never need. And then, of course, there’s that little piece of info that we’ve saved up enough money that we never have
One of the things we did before we headed to Panama was to change our state of domicile. If you’re not familiar with the term, your state of domicile refers to your principal place of residence. If you leave for a while, it’s what can be thought of as the place you would return to afterward. In other words, it might be considered your “home base” in the U.S. – your permanent place of residence. For snowbirds that head from
I recently came across a question in the FinCon Community Facebook Group relating to the FIRE movement (financial independence / retire early). It was asked by Jeff Rose, creator of the Good Financial Cents site. If you’re not a member of the FinCon Facebook group, you likely won’t be able to access this link. However, the question asked was “Who disagrees with the FIRE movement and why?” The post drew quite a number of comments that spanned all sorts of
Retirement expenses are a tough one to plan for in life. You can budget for what you think your expenses will be, but you really don’t know if they’ll be more or less. The biggest reason is that your life will likely be dramatically different at the time. This is probably even more on par the younger you are when you leave the workforce because you’re likely not going to be resting on your laurels. Not only would you be
Uh-Oh… Our Retirement Expenses Are Higher than Expected Read More »
Recently, my friend Lisa from the Mad Money Monster blog wrote about the “what ifs” on moving to a different country. It was appropriately titled The What Ifs of International Geoarbitrage And Early Retirement. There’s a lot of talk on the Internet, particularly in the personal finance community, about the idea of geoarbitrage. That’s the strategy of moving to another location, domestic or abroad, to take advantage of the lower cost of living and move ahead financially or possibly retire
Oh, the times they are a-changin’. I don’t think Bob Dylan was talking about the library in his early ’60s song, but boy oh boy, libraries are much different than they were when I was a kid. Of course, you have the obvious stuff like digital card catalogs and the ability to use the computers if you need Internet access. Heck, I even used them over the past year during those unusual times I needed to print something (I haven’t
The Biggest Secret the Library Offers to Enrich Your Life Read More »
