Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE)

The Recession - The Ultimate Test for Early Retirees

The Recession – The Ultimate Test for Early Retirees

30 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments / By / March 24, 2020

Well boys and girls, like it or not, we’re soon to be in a recession – if we’re not there already. The COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic appears to be the black swan event that became the catalyst for the downfall of one heckuva long bull market. To try to contain the virus and flatten the curve, many businesses were ordered to shut down temporarily.  In many places, bars, wineries, breweries, and restaurants (sometimes with the exception of takeout or delivery) were forced …

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Only You Can Change Your Life… Seriously!

18 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Motivation, Panama / By / March 2, 2020

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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Is FIRE the Finish Line or Just the Beginning?

22 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Self-Employment / By / February 11, 2020

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

22 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Spending / By / January 21, 2020

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 / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Guest Posts / By / January 14, 2020

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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Make Your Money Work for You Instead of Vice Versa

12 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving / By / January 4, 2020

I think I first heard the mantra of “make your money work for you” when I was a kid.  I’d also guess that it was my grandfather who preached it.  He was able to retire in his mid-40’s before the term FIRE (financial independence / retire early) was even coined. But it took me years to really understand what that meant.  And even once I thought I got it, I still assumed it was just some pipe dream that only …

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5 Life Lessons from Our First Year of Early Retirement

14 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement / By / December 27, 2019

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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The Roth Conversion Strategy Guide for Early Retirees

The Roth Conversion Strategy Guide for Early Retirees

20 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Taxes and Financial Planning / By / December 18, 2019

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 …

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What the FIRE Movement Means to Me

What the FIRE Movement Means to Me

14 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Motivation / By / November 27, 2019

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 …

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The What-Ifs of Moving to a Different Country

16 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Panama / By / November 12, 2019

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 early. It …

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