Investments Archives - Route to Retire

Masterfully Crafted: How ChatGPT Wrote a Compelling Article on the Power of Saving and Investing

23 Comments / Blogging, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Investments, Product and Service Reviews, Saving / By Jim @ Route To Retire / January 24, 2023

I’m both excited and scared about the concept of Artificial intelligence (AI) including ChatGPT, which is currently all over the technology news. The technical and engineering side of my brain is fascinated by the whole idea. The potential of artificial intelligence growing up and being able to make our lives easier in different aspects is incredible. We have 3 of those Google Nest Minis in our apartment (we got 1 for free and paid $1 each for the other 2). …

Masterfully Crafted: How ChatGPT Wrote a Compelling Article on the Power of Saving and Investing Read More »

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

24 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving / By Jim @ Route To Retire / January 10, 2023

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 …

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

The 10 Most Popular Posts of 2022

4 Comments / Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Kids, Life in Early Retirement, Motivation, Panama, Spending, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / December 27, 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 …

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

10 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / By Jim @ Route To Retire / December 20, 2022

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 …

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

Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

49 Comments / Investments, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / December 6, 2022

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 – …

Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio Read More »

3 Ways a Financial Aggregator Can Help Save You Money

12 Comments / Spending, Consumer Protection, Debt, Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 18, 2022

A financial aggregator is sort of a broad term that generally refers to software or services that can pull all your financial data into one place. We’re talking about balances and transactions for your bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, loans, and more. You might already be familiar with some of the older players in the game like Quicken, which is still a huge competitor. I used Quicken from 1999 until 2019 (20 years!) until I switched to both Empower …

3 Ways a Financial Aggregator Can Help Save You Money Read More »

7 Cool Resources for Your Mind, Body, and Wallet

14 Comments / Motivation, General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Investments, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 4, 2022

I love reading articles that have something tangible to present. It doesn’t matter if it’s books, documentaries, software, or some kind of hack to improve your life that’s good for your mind, body, or wallet. Make me a better person! Sometimes folks ask me questions about how I accomplished something or why I do things in a particular way. The questions usually revolve around anything from finances to technology to health or anything else that might be on someone’s mind. …

7 Cool Resources for Your Mind, Body, and Wallet Read More »

Why Not One More? Transform Your Life!

12 Comments / Motivation, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Investments / By Jim @ Route To Retire / August 23, 2022

I realized something while working out recently – something important to understand. There’s one thing that keeps many of us from achieving extraordinary things in life. It’s the difference between average and exceptional – just two simple words… One more. Imagine lifting a set of dumbbells and you plan to do 12 in your set. When you get to 12, what’s stopping you from doing one more? It might not sound like much, but if you consistently raise the reps …

Why Not One More? Transform Your Life! Read More »

The Rent vs Buy Dilemma… Does It Matter?

28 Comments / Real Estate, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Life in Early Retirement, Saving / By Jim @ Route To Retire / April 5, 2022

One of the most debated topics in the personal finance space revolves around the question of rent vs buy. On one side of the fence, you have the folks marching to the beat of, “You’re throwing money away when you rent… when you buy, you have something to show for it down the line.” And on the other side of the fence are those that say, “Yeah, but renting can cost a lot less money with excess to be invested… …

The Rent vs Buy Dilemma… Does It Matter? Read More »

Is This Down Stock Market Problematic as an Early Retiree?

25 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Spending, Taxes and Financial Planning / By Jim @ Route To Retire / March 1, 2022

A down stock market? Is that true? Yeah, unless you haven’t been paying attention, the market’s been on a not-so-fun ride lately in the direction that most folks tend to fear. Most of last week was a stressful week for investors. By the end of the day Wednesday, 02/23/2022, all gains in the S&P 500 since 06/21/2021 had been completely erased. Thursday and Friday produced a pretty big uptick but not enough to compensate for the downward spiral the beginning …

Is This Down Stock Market Problematic as an Early Retiree? Read More »