Geoarbitrage

Boquete, Panama Places to Live… We Found a Rental!

34 Comments / Panama, Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Real Estate / /

Looking at places to live in Panama is kind of an adventure.  There are a lot of nuances you need to be aware of or you could end up very unhappy. For instance, if you don’t know to ask, you could get a place that has what they lovingly refer to as “suicide showers” here.  And by that, they mean that it doesn’t have hot water! A lot of the local Panamanians here are used to that and that’s just […]

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Guest Appearance on the ChooseFI Podcast

Guest Appearance on the ChooseFI Podcast

4 Comments / Podcasts and Other Appearances, Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Saving / /

I’ve been wanting to be a part of the ChooseFI podcast shortly after it began.  Jonathan and Brad launched the show at the end of 2016 and quickly took the FIRE community by storm! It’s a fantastic podcast helping to discuss the path to financial independence.  They bring on various guests to examine different aspects and strategies of reaching FI. What’s really great though is that they also focus quite a bit on enjoying the journey along the way.  I

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Using Google Voice to Stay in Touch While Living Abroad

Using Google Voice to Stay in Touch While Living Abroad

105 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

Ever heard of Google Voice?  If not, know that this could be one of the best ways of staying in touch with family and friends while you’re living abroad. One of the small concerns we had was how to keep communication simple with everyone while we’re living in Panama.  When we get there, we’re going to get Panamanian cell service for our phones. The problem is that gives us a Panamanian phone number.  So if we call anyone in the

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The Minutiae of Moving to Another Country

The Minutiae of Moving to Another Country

32 Comments / Panama, Geoarbitrage, Travel and Vacation / /

Minutiae.  It’s such a funny word. It makes me chuckle just saying it, so I thought it would be perfect for what I want to talk about today. We’re learning pretty quickly that when you want to move to another country, you can’t just pick up and leave.  There’s a lot of minutiae that will need to be ironed out in the planning. See, wasn’t that was fun to read that word again?  Minutiae. Anyway, I thought I’d take some

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My First FIRE Presentation on Geoarbitrage

10 Comments / Podcasts and Other Appearances, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

Yup, you read that right… I did a FIRE presentation regarding geoarbitrage and our plans to move to Panama. Deanna (aka Ms. Fiology) asked me to do a talk for the ChooseFI local group in Northeast Ohio.  I’m a reasonably outgoing guy, but public speaking is a whole different ball game. I had never done a presentation like this before, but I decided why not push my comfort level and give it a shot?  So I agreed. Although my stipulation was

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Why Less Is More and Bigger Isn’t Better

Why Less Is More and Bigger Isn’t Better

12 Comments / Saving, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Spending / /

I’ll leave the “bigger is better” jokes up to you guys.  But, if you’ve been around the personal finance blogosphere long enough, you’re bound to hear things like that or “less is more” or some other variations of the phrase. To me that just seemed obvious – sure, if you want to cut your costs, eliminate your cable or drive a used car and **poof** you’ve saved a few bucks.  Frugality at its best. However, I’ve learned that spending less

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Expat Health Insurance – Our Plans for Panama

27 Comments / Insurance, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

Expat health insurance – the one piece of retirement unique to those living in another country. One of the biggest struggles for folks wanting to pull the trigger on early retirement in the U.S. tends to revolve around healthcare.  Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that one except to say to plan for the worse.  You have to build the unknown into your FIRE number because it can be the one wildcard that can throw off anyone’s plans. That sucks,

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Selling a House... It's the Reason I'll Never Buy Another

Selling a House… It’s the Reason I’ll Never Buy Another

36 Comments / Real Estate, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage / /

Selling a house.  Selling our house.  It sounded easy enough and we needed to consider doing that as part of our plan to move to Panama next summer. We thought about keeping it and renting it out, but after discussing the options with our financial advisor, it actually made more sense to sell it.  We have a lot of equity in it and we’ll need that money to cover our first five years during our Roth IRA conversion ladder. That said,

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Strategies We’re Using in Our Early Retirement Planning

14 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Investments, Panama, Self-Employment / /

Early retirement planning.  You’d think the closer we get to our FIRE date, the simpler things would become. I mean really – I’m leaving my job in just a few months so as I continue to train my replacement, my workload should start to diminish over time.  Plus, we’re downsizing to an apartment soon (if we could ever sell our house!). What else could there be, Jim?  How much early retirement planning do you really need?  Didn’t you already get these

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Considerations for Planning to Retire Abroad

Considerations for Planning to Retire Abroad

17 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

With our recent announcement of us moving up our early retirement date to the end of 2018, the pressure’s now on.  We’re now planning to retire abroad to Panama in the summer of 2019. The news was exciting for us to share, but now reality’s setting in.  Although a year seems like a lot of time, there’s really a lot that needs to be done. It would be one thing if we were just moving to another country for a

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