Life in Early Retirement

Would You REALLY Work Out Once You’re Retired?

28 Comments / Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement / /

I hate to work out. When talking to gym-addicts, they love to tell me things, “oh, you’ll learn to enjoy it over time.”  I chuckle. I don’t think so.  I hate knowing that it’s time to go work out and I hate the actual workout. “Yeah, but you feel so much better once you’re done, right?” Um, no.  I’m glad it’s over, but no, I don’t feel better or refreshed at all. Look, I’m just keeping it real.  I do […]

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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 / /

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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Our Return Trip to Panama – How We Saved Thousands

14 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

This return trip to Panama is well overdue.  We had a blast, but we’re whupped and ready to get back home (we’re finally starting to get comfortable calling Panama “home”). We spent over a month in the U.S. enjoying time with friends and family.  Then we took a roundtrip Caribbean cruise out of Miami. Who’da thunk that we’d be ready to go home after so much fun?!  But we really are – it’s time to enjoy the holidays together and

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Uh-Oh… Our Retirement Expenses Are Higher than Expected

20 Comments / Spending, Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

Retirement expenses are a tough one to plan for in life. You can budget for what you think your expenses will be, but you really don’t know if they’ll be more or less.  The biggest reason is that your life will likely be dramatically different at the time. This is probably even more on par the younger you are when you leave the workforce because you’re likely not going to be resting on your laurels.  Not only would you be

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One of the Absolute Best Facets of Early Retirement

19 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Motivation / /

A lot of you have been following FIRE (financial independence, retire early) blogs as you continue down your own path toward financial freedom.  And the numbers to reach FI (financial independence) are important, but what about the early retirement side of things? Some of you will continue to work and just want FI to ensure a secure retirement.  If you love what you do, that’s the best scenario you can have.  Congratulations! But others of you want to get out

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10 Reasons Not to Live in Panama

10 Reasons Not to Live in Panama

52 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement / /

Life’s not all a bed of roses here in Boquete.  I thought today that I’d share some reasons not to live in Panama. So far, living here has been a wonderful experience for me and my family.  It definitely was an adjustment (and still is occasionally), but just being a part of a life that’s so different than we’re accustomed to is both interesting and amazing. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about The 7 Reasons I Love Living in

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The 7 Reasons I Love Living in Panama as an Expat

The 7 Reasons I Love Living in Panama as an Expat

19 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement / /

I’ve been living in Panama as an expat for a little over a month and a half now.  And what a truly awesome experience it’s been so far for me and my family. The first couple of weeks were like a vacation.  Most of our time was consumed with exploring and having fun.  We spent our days eating out, shopping (ok, mostly just browsing!), and doing fun activities like whale watching. Starting at the beginning of September, we began to

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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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We're Now Living in Panama... Finally!!

We’re Now Living in Panama… Finally!!

46 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

It feels like we’ve been planning this for years (because we have!), but it’s finally happened… we’re now living in Panama! I wasn’t going to post about this yet since we’ve been here less than a week, but I figured a lot of you want to know the details about this adventure. Although I started this site in 2015 intending to focus mostly on personal finance, I feel like I’ve become known more for our plans to retire early and

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Striving to Let Go and Be a Better Person

Striving to Let Go and Be a Better Person

14 Comments / Motivation, General Thoughts, Life in Early Retirement / /

Well, tomorrow is the big day… we’re finally flying out and moving to Panama!  And with that, I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about change and my plans to be a better person. That’s right – who woulda thunk I could be any more of a better person than I already am?!  Well, guess what – even people like little old me have a little breathing room to improve on in our lives!   Striving to

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