Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE)

The Huge Blind Spot in Empower's Asset Allocation

The Huge Blind Spot in Empower’s Asset Allocation

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

I love using the Empower dashboard to manage our investment portfolio. Not only is it worth its weight in gold, but the price of $0 is something worthwhile, too! They’re hoping you decide to use their investment services, but it’s not a requirement. I don’t use their services, but I have heard good things about them. So, if you want an easy way to aggregate all your financial life into one dashboard with amazing retirement and investment tools, sign up […]

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Leveraging AI Made Filing My Taxes Surprisingly Less Stressful

Leveraging AI Made Filing My Taxes Surprisingly Less Stressful

8 Comments / Taxes and Financial Planning, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments / /

I’ve got mixed feelings about the power of AI (artificial intelligence). Privacy can start blurring quickly and the bad guys will continue leveraging AI to be exponentially worse than before. But… AI is helping to do some amazing things. The one area that keeps me fascinated is the world of medicine. AI is helping to detect cancer better, provide better risk prevention, and improve surgical outcomes. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about cures for diseases that seemed like they

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An Exciting Net Worth Milestone and Some Other Ramblings

An Exciting Net Worth Milestone and Some Other Ramblings

14 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Investments, Road Trip, Travel and Vacation / /

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. I think I’m starting to get into a nice cadence that I’m enjoying a little more. I still really love writing for Route to Retire, but after 10 years, I decided earlier this year that it was time for a lighter rhythm. It didn’t make sense to keep holding myself to some self-imposed, arbitrary schedule, especially with all the other fun things I’ve been keeping myself busy with lately. So although

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The Self-Hosting Spark: How Ditching Google Reignited My Tech Obsession

The Self-Hosting Spark: How Ditching Google Reignited My Tech Obsession

13 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Motivation, Product and Service Reviews / /

I’ve been talking about a project that I’ve been working on for several months now, which has kept me pretty busy. It’s time I fill you in that it’s been all about self-hosting (I’ll explain that soon). What was not expected was how this project sparked a renewed interest in technology for me. The feeling of fun I’ve had with this stuff hasn’t been there since the early days of my IT career, which started back in 1999. Yeah, I’m

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The Surprising FAFSA/SAI and Roth IRA Conflict that Almost Sabotaged Our Financial Aid Plan

The Surprising FAFSA/SAI and Roth IRA Conflict that Almost Sabotaged Our Financial Aid Plan

24 Comments / Taxes and Financial Planning, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Kids / /

Updated: 08/27/25 We’re closing in on the end of my 7th year of early retirement. I was fortunate enough to run my last day on the hamster wheel on December 31, 2018. At the time, I had a plan and was confident it would work (though there’s always that tiny bit of self-doubt!). Fortunately, it’s worked better than we could have expected, thanks in part to retiring at a time when the stock market has continued to climb with only

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10 Years of Blogging… Time for a Lighter Rhythm

10 Years of Blogging… Time for a Lighter Rhythm

26 Comments / Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Life in Early Retirement / /

10 years ago, on May 6, 2015, I published my first blog post (Are You Ready to Retire Early?). At just over 800 words, it was definitely not as long-winded as I tend to be nowadays! 😂 It wasn’t much – just a sort of intro as I tried to figure out what I wanted my blogging life to be about. Route to Retire has changed a lot since then (hopefully for the better!) and it’s funny to read my

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We Paid $3,200 for an Incredible $25K Europe Trip… Here’s How We Did It

We Paid $3,200 for an Incredible $25K Europe Trip… Here’s How We Did It

16 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

I’ve been excited to tell you the details of our planned Europe trip for a while now. But I wanted to wait until we had the framework all planned out. We now have 38 nights of fun booked for this fall. This includes flights, lodging, cruises, and a first-class train ride. Now that everything’s in place, I did the math on what this would have cost if we had just booked everything through normal channels (Priceline, Booking.com, airline and cruise

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Hunting for the Great Deal vs Just Working a Little More

Hunting for the Great Deal vs Just Working a Little More

10 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Spending, Travel and Vacation / /

I love a great deal. I imagine most people are like that regardless of how much or how little money they have. There’s something satisfying about the whole idea of getting a bargain – almost as if you somehow won “the game” (whatever that game is). But in most cases, scoring a great deal (particularly online) involves some effort on your part. And sometimes getting that great deal can involve a lot of time and effort. Unfortunately, at times, putting

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2 Helpful Books That Are Great in Completely Different Ways

2 Helpful Books That Are Great in Completely Different Ways

Leave a Comment / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Product and Service Reviews / /

I’ve always loved reading ever since I was a kid. I actually had a relatively big toy box that I kept in my bedroom closet. It was obviously meant for storing lots of toys, but I filled it completely with nothing books instead. I read so many books all the time and loved it. Yeah, I’m a nerd, but who cares? Over time though, life got in the way. Once I got to high school and college, reading what I

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3 Powerful Keys to Living a Healthier, Wealthier, Happier Life

3 Powerful Keys to Living a Healthier, Wealthier, Happier Life

8 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Taxes and Financial Planning, Travel and Vacation / /

In 2018, we finally told our family and friends that we were moving to Boquete, Panama in 2019. That was a mixed bag of support and in some cases a big old dumpster fire. Obviously, there was some sadness that we were moving away to another country. But what was more interesting was that a lot of the feedback we got was about how dangerous it would be with drug cartels, human trafficking, and excessive violence. Here’s a little secret…

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