Jim @ Route To Retire

Will You Be Part of the 1% to Be Financially Independent by 50?

27 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

If you’re not familiar with Paula Pant from Afford Anything, you should take the time to check out her site… especially her podcasts, which are fantastic. I’m usually a little behind on my podcast rotation, but I just listened to another good one recently that fascinated me.  Clark Howard was her guest in #47: How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy. I’ve always enjoyed Clark Howard – I’m not sure if it’s how down-to-earth he is for a guy who reached financial […]

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$1 Million Net Worth... Now What?

$1 Million Net Worth… Now What?

62 Comments / General Thoughts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Motivation / /

Yup, you read that correctly… we now have a net worth of just over $1 million. I logged into Quicken today, updated all my accounts, and was excited to see this: Holy schnikes, a million dollar net worth!  It seems so surreal to think that we’ve reached such a big milestone. I’m really proud of how far we’ve come in our journey to financial independence. By keeping our expenses low, saving and investing as much as we can, and creating additional

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You’re the Average of the Five People You Spend Most of Your Time With

You’re the Average of the Five People You Spend Most of Your Time With

18 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

Jim Rohn, businessman and motivator, once said, “You’re the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.” It’s something that actually makes a lot of sense since those are the people who influence you the most.  It also might make you a little uncomfortable if your friends aren’t the most motivated people. Most likely, you enjoy your time with your friends (they are your friends after all!) and wouldn’t want to think that they might be holding you back in some way.

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Four 401(k) Mistakes That Can Crush Your Retirement Savings

Four 401(k) Mistakes That Can Crush Your Retirement Savings

12 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

401(k) mistakes have the potential to easily ruin your retirement savings.  If you have the opportunity to contribute to a 401(k) plan at work, hopefully, you’re taking advantage of it. But even if you do, most of us just hand over our money and don’t think any more of it.  That’s a problem – potentially a big problem and one that can cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars if you’re not careful. The good news is that these 401(k) mistakes are

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I Had to Fire an Employee Today

I Had to Fire an Employee Today

19 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts / /

I had to fire an employee today. I’ve let a number of people go over the years and it’s never something anyone enjoys… not me as the manager and certainly not the employee. But, it had to be done.  His performance was definitely sub-par and it was affecting relationships with customers and hurting morale with good employees. Here’s the thing, though – it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that it went as good as it could go.  It doesn’t matter that he knew

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Identity Theft – Are You Protected?

6 Comments / Consumer Protection, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

A good friend of mine at work recently said he’s struggling on his month of trying not to spend money on non-essentials.  He said he’s already had to spend $250 on a plumber and $200 to renew his identity theft protection for the year. Ok, well that makes sense— wait, WHAT?! $200 for identity theft protection?!!  Holy mackerel!!! First of all, I’ve always wanted to work the phrase “holy mackerel” into a post, so mission accomplished. Since that’s out of

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Why Do We Buy Crap??

20 Comments / Spending, Debt, Estate Planning, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

Sometimes I can’t help but shake my head that we as a society feel compelled to buy crap just because we feel we “need” it. There are millions of people here in the U.S. that, although not by choice, manage to live on $2 a day.  But when it comes to the middle class, even with increasing salaries, most families buy and buy and still feel like they need more stuff. Why? Why do people love to waste their hard-earned

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Get Paid to Get Laid Off - How to Engineer Your Layoff

Get Paid to Get Laid Off – How to Engineer Your Layoff

11 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

If you’ve been working long enough, you’ve probably been a part of or know of a company that has needed to layoff some of its employees at one point or another. It’s never a pretty situation for anyone – obviously, the employee doesn’t like ’em, but most managers and bosses hate having to go through this ordeal as well. In Sam Dogen’s book, “How to Engineer Your Layoff,” he talks about how to take a grim situation like a layoff and actually

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Should You Buy Disability Insurance?

8 Comments / Insurance, Estate Planning, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

When I used to think about disability insurance, it used to be a “yeah, yeah…” subject for me.  In fact, if you asked me a year ago if I should buy disability insurance, I would have told you that I was already covered. Here’s the problem… I’m really not. I’ll talk about the “why not” part shortly, but first, let’s dig into what disability insurance is all about…   What is disability insurance? Disability insurance is intended to help cover you in

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Panama Vacation Booked... Check!!

Panama Vacation Booked… Check!!

26 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Panama / /

Well, we’re making it happen… we just finished booking our Panama vacation. I’ve heard all kinds of good things about the country for retirees and it’s really piqued my interest… enough so that we’ve been digging into the idea for quite a while now. We’ve learned quite a bit more about the country since I wrote my post “Is Panama the Right Place to Retire?“ a year and a half ago. We’ve been reading everything we can find out about the country

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