Blogging Archives - Route to Retire

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 / Jim @ Route To Retire / January 24, 2023

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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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 / Jim @ Route To Retire / December 27, 2022

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

I Need a Mental Break

30 Comments / Health and Fitness, Blogging, General Thoughts, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / July 12, 2022

I’m exhausted and I need a mental break. There’s this weird dynamic in the blogging (and social media) world where the more you’re out doing “stuff”, the more it looks like you’re out living the dream. I’ve never really cared much about all that but I do put my life out there for everyone (both good and bad). And this year, we’ve been insanely busy doing more stuff than I could have ever imagined. Most of you know that we’ve

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Renting an Apartment With No W2 Income as a Retiree

14 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Blogging, Real Estate / Jim @ Route To Retire / June 14, 2022

Not having a W2 income was one of the things that made me a little uneasy when planning for early retirement. Would renting an apartment or getting a mortgage for a place be a massive headache? My concern stands that when you need to open a new line of credit or fill out a rental application, one of the expected questions for you to answer is “what’s your annual income?” For the most part, we’re living off our portfolio income.

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Psst… Can You Do Me a Quick Favor?

8 Comments / Blogging / Jim @ Route To Retire / January 6, 2022

Hello, Route to Retire reader! I hope you’ve been enjoying the content on this blog that I’ve been sharing for almost 7 years now. I want to ask you for a small favor though… As some of you know, I’ve been working with Ezoic on my site and I love the partnership that we have. They’ve helped to speed up this website and make it more efficient. They’ve also helped me increase the amount of ad income the site generates.

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The 10 Most Popular Posts of 2021… That Aren’t Fritz’s

6 Comments / Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Kids, Panama, Real Estate / Jim @ Route To Retire / December 28, 2021

I was trying to decide what to write for this week’s post. Then I ran across my friend Fritz’s recent post, The 10 Most Popular Posts of 2021. That seemed like the perfect way to end the year… so I stole his idea! Ok, I didn’t really steal it. I reached out to Fritz to see if he’d be ok with me writing a post of my own like his… and he was just fine with the idea. See? We

Switching to Ezoic Increased My Ad Income by 628%!

16 Comments / Self-Employment, Blogging, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Product and Service Reviews / Jim @ Route To Retire / August 3, 2021

I switched the ads on my website from Google AdSense to Ezoic a few months ago and I have to say that I’m astounded by the results! Seeing an increase in ad revenue of over 7x what I was making before is pretty crazy. Let’s start with this though – I’m not a big-time blogger. If you think this site was the catalyst for us to reach early retirement… yeah, not so much. The money we’re talking about is still

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What I Did During My First Week Off in 6 Years!

12 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Panama / Jim @ Route To Retire / June 22, 2021

It took a lot for me to not write a blog post last week. After not missing a single week for over 6 years, it’s just became ingrained into my weekly routine. So my first week off gave me a little bit of a strange feeling. I generally write the following week’s post sometime later in the week. However, I don’t usually get it completely done in one sitting. I might start a post on Thursday and work on it

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Giving Myself Permission To Breathe

43 Comments / Blogging, General Thoughts / Jim @ Route To Retire / June 8, 2021

After over 6 years of consistent blogging, it’s time to give myself some permission to breathe. Before I continue, know that I’m not done blogging – far from it. Writing on Route to Retire is something I still thoroughly enjoy doing and will continue to do for as long as that’s the case. However, it’s still something that takes a lot of time each week to do. And unfortunately, time is a finite resource for each and every one of

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5 Years as a Blogger – Is It Time for a Change?

63 Comments / Blogging, Life in Early Retirement / Jim @ Route To Retire / May 5, 2020

This week marks five years for me as a blogger. For some that’s nothing – just ask J.D. Roth, Jim Wang, and ESI Money who are just a few personal finance bloggers who have been around for ages… and they’re all fantastic! For others though, five years might seem like a lifetime. I’ve heard statistics that most blogs fail within 6 months or that 95-99% of blogs fail each year. I’m not going to link to any of these articles,

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