Life in Early Retirement Archives - Page 2 of 17

The Art of Aging Well: Navigating Friendship and Mortality

8 Comments / General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Motivation / Jim @ Route To Retire / March 26, 2024

Who woulda thunk it? I’m a little over a year from turning 50 and I couldn’t have imagined that I would be posting about aging well! I guess time flies when you’re having fun, right? And indeed, I have been having fun. Life truly is what you make of it and most of you know that we’ve done some unusual things that have opened up a new world that we never knew existed before… These things might not be the […]

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A Travel Nightmare: Free Airport Lounge Access to the Rescue!

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Life in Early Retirement, Spending / Jim @ Route To Retire / March 12, 2024

We had a travel fiasco last summer on our way back from a month-long stay in Boquete, Panama. One small element of bad weather caused a delay that turned everything into an overnight mess. Exhausted, both physically and mentally, we ended up finding some sort of redemption the next morning thanks to a free credit card perk we have… airport lounge access. If you’re not aware of how nice airport lounge access can be when traveling, you’re missing out. But

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Unveiling the Pros and Cons of ACA Healthcare in Early Retirement: Our Story

36 Comments / Insurance, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews / Jim @ Route To Retire / February 27, 2024

There are likely thousands of blogs and websites dedicated to pursuing financial independence and early retirement if desired (FIRE). These can be extremely beneficial for the motivation you’ll likely garner and for the potential of finding new ideas to streamline your approach. That said, there aren’t a ton of blogs from folks who have made it to the point of reaching early retirement. Figuring out the math and how to get there is one thing, but knowing what actually transpires

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Our RV Trip Was Quickly Becoming a Florida Flop… Until We Shifted Gears

20 Comments / Road Trip, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / February 13, 2024

“Head to Florida for the winter during your RV trip”, they said. “You can enjoy the sunshine and be like snowbirds! It’ll be wonderful!” Yeah, well, guess what – we disagree. Making Florida part of our RV trip was quickly becoming a source of frustration for all of us. And when you have three people in a small 22′ RV travel trailer, that frustration can easily become a nightmare. Lisa, Faith, and I were at that point and everyone was

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Our 9-Month RV Adventure: The 55+ Essential Items We Bought for the Road

8 Comments / Road Trip, Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews, Spending, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / January 16, 2024

It’s crazy to think that we’re already 4 months into our 9-month RV adventure around the country. We completed our first loop (of 3 planned) and went from Ohio to Texas and back. We’re now on loop 2 as we head toward the south for a couple of months and then make our way up the east coast when we smell spring getting near. Then we’ll be making a massive trip out west for loop 3 throughout the spring and

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Wellness, Wealth, and Wanderlust: Paving the Way for 2024

18 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Investments, Kids, Motivation, Road Trip, Spending, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / January 2, 2024

In the blink of an eye, 2023 has come and gone. Whether you had a great year or not, it’s time to decide if you’re going to make 2024 a better one! Our 2023 was something truly different and not anything I would have imagined. Our wanderlust took over and we ended up buying an RV, letting the lease lapse on our apartment, putting our stuff in storage, and set off to travel the country. We’ve been learning the RV

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AI Chatbots: My Sidekick for Getting Sh*t Done

12 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Education, Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews / Jim @ Route To Retire / December 5, 2023

Depending on how much you keep up with technology, you may or may not have a decent understanding of what AI chatbots are (AI being artificial intelligence). Heck, you may not have even heard the term before. But you may have heard of ChatGPT as it’s been in the news quite a bit over this past year. For a while, the phrase “artificial intelligence” usually had at least one mention of ChatGPT. I still enjoy reading about, learning, and experimenting

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The Ups and Downs of RV Life: 45 Days in Our Tiny Home

20 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip / Jim @ Route To Retire / November 21, 2023

“Move out of your apartment and enjoy the RV life,” they said… “It’ll be fun!” Ok, that’s only sort of what happened. We enjoyed our past couple of monster road trips (2020 and 2022) so much that it became the catalyst for us letting our apartment lease lapse, putting our stuff in storage, buying an RV, and taking on the RV life. It was also one solution to dodging another Ohio Winter! I will say though that full-time RV life

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The Calyx Institute: Our Secret to Inexpensive, Unlimited, Unthrottled Internet on the Road

29 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews, Road Trip / Jim @ Route To Retire / November 7, 2023

Well, after almost a month of living in our new trailer at two local campgrounds to get the hang of things, we’re finally off and running. We’ve started our road trip around the country with an anticipation of finishing in early summer next year! I think we did a good job learning as much as we could beforehand because things have gone relatively smoothly thus far. Sure, there have been some minor things like me getting sprayed down from water

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It’s Amazing What Being Alone With Your Thoughts on a Walk Can Do for You

15 Comments / Motivation, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip / Jim @ Route To Retire / October 24, 2023

I had no plans to go for a walk today. Lisa and Faith were gone and that’s usually when I focus on getting things done. Sometimes I’ll work on projects around home (which is the RV right now!) and other times I’ll work on a blog post for Route to Retire. For whatever reason, the idea of being alone usually means I’m going to work on something and get it checked off the list. But today was different. Today I

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