Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE)

Master the Art of Anticipation: How Travel Planning Can Double Your Vacation Fun!

Master the Art of Anticipation: How Travel Planning Can Double Your Vacation Fun!

It’s hard not to enjoy a good vacation… a chance to get away from the “same old” just for a little while. Traveling can be an opportunity to visit places you’ve never been, see new sites, meet interesting people, and maybe even try some different foods! Whether traveling just a short distance away, flying to another country, or cruising around the world, just the idea of travel gets the vacation-goer chomping at the bit. And that’s what’s so interesting – […]

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There Shouldn't Be Boredom in Retirement or You're Doing It Wrong

There Shouldn’t Be Boredom in Retirement or You’re Doing It Wrong

I recently went out with some good friends of mine – one I’ve been friends with since high school and two since college. They’re great guys and it’s always fun when the stars align and the four of us can get together. As always, we reminisced and laughed about all the hijinx and fun from the old days, talked about what’s currently been going on in each other’s lives, and delved into plans for the future. And of course, we

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The Art of Self-Improvement: My Journey to Living a Healthier Lifestyle

The Art of Self-Improvement: My Journey to Living a Healthier Lifestyle

Living a healthier lifestyle is something I think almost all of us want to make happen. Whether it’s exercising more, eating better, or aiming for better mental health, we all know that living a healthier lifestyle helps put us on track for a longer and happier life. But… @#$% happens. And by that, I mean life tends to get in the way. Things like lack of time or energy, stress at work, or even social pressure tend to make us

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A Wake-Up Call: Our Annual Expenses in Retirement for the Past 4 Years

A Wake-Up Call: Our Annual Expenses in Retirement for the Past 4 Years

In my post a couple of weeks ago, A Month-Long Panama Trip for 3 for an Unbeatable Price of Less than $1,500!, a reader named Ian asked in the comments what our expenses in retirement have been – both in the U.S. and while we lived in Panama. It was a good comment because he hit the nail on the head. I sometimes give a ballpark on what our bucket strategy is allowing us to spend each year… but I

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Squeezing Out Higher Returns – 5 Minutes of Work for Short-Term Gains

Squeezing Out Higher Returns – 5 Minutes of Work for Short-Term Gains

Being aware of opportunity can be extremely valuable in building your nest egg. This doesn’t mean veering from the path – sticking to your investment plan is highly important to growth. You put the money in (broad-based index funds for this guy) and then just leave it alone to do its thing… with some regular rebalancing once or twice a year. But what about taking advantage of higher returns for the short term? As early retirees, we get our annual

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The 10 Most Popular Posts of 2022

The 10 Most Popular Posts of 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

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ETFs vs Mutual Funds… Why I'm All-In on ETFs

ETFs vs Mutual Funds… Why I’m All-In on ETFs

In my last post, Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio, I broke down our entire portfolio. This included every holding and the values of each (rounded slightly just for security). This turned out to be a pretty popular post and generated a little bit of fun discussion – both in the comments and through email several email conversations I had with readers. One fair comment was about why I choose to buy the Vanguard ETF VTI instead of the

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Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

Ah, how time flies! In February 2019, I wrote a post called The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments that detailed our investment portfolio at the time. As you’d expect, it broke down all our assets and liabilities and gave a good snapshot of our financial picture. This was just a couple of months after I had retired from the corporate world so it gave us a pretty good baseline to start our retirement. But holy schnikes –

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Entitled Kid Syndrome… Our 4-Part Preventative Strategy Entitled Kid Syndrome…

Entitled Kid Syndrome… Our 4-Part Preventative Strategy

“Wow, that’s one entitled kid for sure!” Words you don’t ever want to hear about your child. We’re blessed to have saved enough money to be able to enjoy early retirement. As a millionaire family that doesn’t live extravagantly, a lot of the money stress tends to subside (though not completely). It’s been wonderful to be able to spend my days with my wife and daughter. In fact, being able to be a bigger part of my daughter’s life while

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Finding My Place Again in the U.S. – 3 Things I’m Worried About

Finding My Place Again in the U.S. – 3 Things I’m Worried About

We moved to Boquete, Panama back in 2019, just months after I had retired from work at the end of 2018. We had sold everything we owned and moved to a country that we had only visited one other time – a country where we knew no one and almost everyone speaks Spanish. You would think that this whirlwind would be one of the biggest hurdles in life to adjust to and figure out. Funny enough though, finding my place

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