Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE)

6 Years of Early Retirement: What I've Learned About Life, Money, and Happiness

6 Years of Early Retirement: What I’ve Learned About Life, Money, and Happiness

16 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Motivation, Panama, Spending, Travel and Vacation / /

Today is the anniversary of my last day of work six years ago. At the end of the workday on December 31, 2018, I became free in a sense. That was the day my early retirement began. If you’ve dreamed about early retirement for a while like I did leading up to this, there’s a little surprise in store that you might not know… It’s not going to be exactly the way you envisioned. That’s because when we daydream or […]

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Traveling the World: 121 Days, 9 Big Adventures, and 6 Cruises Throughout the Globe

Traveling the World: 121 Days, 9 Big Adventures, and 6 Cruises Throughout the Globe

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

Things certainly have escalated quickly at the Route to Retire household! We started with the plan to take a couple of vacations over the next year and suddenly we’re traveling the world for 121 days! We seem to have this problem – almost a sickness – where we get an idea and tend to go overboard with it. Instead of visiting the country of Panama for a month or two, we lived there for three years (so worth it!)! The

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The Funny Thing About Sequence of Returns Risk…

The Funny Thing About Sequence of Returns Risk…

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

If someone decides to retire and live off of their investment portfolio, an important detail called the sequence of returns risk can be one of the most critical components to comprehend. You might have an understanding or at least a notion of the 4% rule that helps give you some direction in retirement planning. The idea is that you likely can take out 4% from a given portfolio every year and never run out of money. There are several caveats

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Time Is Precious: Rekindling Relationships Is Now a #1 Priority

Time Is Precious: Rekindling Relationships Is Now a #1 Priority

11 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement / /

Around 14 years ago, one of my closest friends told me he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. I was shocked by the news but he didn’t seem any different and I knew he’d be just fine. After all, he was in his mid-thirties like I was and it was just a hurdle to overcome and life would be fine again. But then it wasn’t. As the months progressed, he got worse and worse and the chemotherapy and radiation didn’t

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Why a Part-Time Job Might Be the Next Chapter in My Early Retirement

Why a Part-Time Job Might Be the Next Chapter in My Early Retirement

42 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Blogging, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Motivation, Self-Employment, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

Life is interesting. And that’s a good thing. How boring would it be if every day on this planet was the same? For about a decade now, we’ve made some choices that have swung our days into some crazy adventures. There’s no doubt this took us out of the realm of monotony. Between retiring at the age of 43 at the end of 2018 and then moving to Panama for a few years starting in 2019, we got a lot

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Roth IRA Withdrawals for Early Retirees: Tracking What's Accessible Now

Roth IRA Withdrawals for Early Retirees: Tracking What’s Accessible Now

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

I retired at the age of 43 at the end of 2018 so I could spend more time with my family and choose how I want to spend each day. It’s been amazing so far and I’m looking forward to the years to come. Strangely, you need this thing called “money” to be able to pay for your expenses in life. They getcha coming and they getcha going, don’t they?! 😉 Fortunately, we were prepared for that and socked away

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Investment Risk: Rebalance Your Way to Peace of Mind

Investment Risk: Rebalance Your Way to Peace of Mind

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

Another day, another dollar… hopefully. Aside from some small hiccups along the way, the stock market has continued its way upward since 2009 after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. As an early retiree, I’m happy to see that happen as our portfolio easily continues to outpace our spending. When I retired at the end of 2018, our net worth was not quite $1.1 million. Currently, we’re floating at a little over $1.75 million even while it pays our living expenses No

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The Realities of Adventure: Are the Headaches Before and After Worth It?

The Realities of Adventure: Are the Headaches Before and After Worth It?

12 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Kids, Panama, Road Trip, Travel and Vacation / /

There’s no doubt we’re making the most out of our early retirement freedom. I left my career at the end of 2018 and we’ve done a lot of unique things since then, including: The point is that we’ve stepped out of our comfort zone to do some different things – some involving a fair amount of adventure. There are two on that list that really stand out though on the adventure list just because of the commitment, work involved in

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Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

9 Comments / Spending, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

Well, I’ve gone and done it again… I switched personal finance apps in my quest to find the right one for what I needed. I thought PocketGuard was the one, but it turns out I was wrong. I only used PocketGuard for about 6 months but it had some shortcomings that just didn’t work well for me… so I decided to bail on it. Fortunately, I think Quicken Simplifi will be the answer I have been looking for all this

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The Case for a Little "Fun Money" in the Stock Market - My $800 Bet That Turned into a Mind-Blowing $43,000!!

The Case for a Little “Fun Money” in the Stock Market – My $800 Bet That Turned into a Mind-Blowing $43,000!!

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

I admit it – I’m a boring guy when it comes to my investment portfolio. Over the years, low-cost broad-based index funds now make up over 77% of our investment portfolio. REITs and bond funds account for another 22%. So what’s the remaining 1+% invested in? Well, that’s our fun money in the stock market. And that number accounted for a lot more until recently when I cashed in on some gains. But why have fun money in an investment

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