Life in Early Retirement

More Topless Photos for Your Enjoyment!

More Topless Photos for Your Enjoyment!

16 Comments / Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Motivation / /

Topless photos on a blog that tends to focus on Panama, personal finance, and life in early retirement?! Jim, what the @#$% are you thinking? You should be ashamed of yourself! I know, I know… but it needs to be done. You can close your eyes if you want, but it’s not going to stop it from it happening! It’s that time of the year when many folks have made a decision, a resolution if you will, to get in […]

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Being a Perpetual Tourist… the Pros and Cons

Being a Perpetual Tourist… the Pros and Cons

16 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

The term “perpetual tourist” was one I wasn’t familiar with until we got serious about the idea of moving to Panama several years ago. Sometimes you might also hear it by the name “perpetual traveler”, “permanent tourist”, “prior taxpayer”, or even just by the letters “PT.” A perpetual tourist is someone who isn’t a legal resident of the country they are living in. Be aware that this is completely different than an illegal immigrant. PTs still play by the tourism

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Reasons to Retire in Panama - My Interview on YouTube

Reasons to Retire in Panama – Modern Aging Interview

15 Comments / Podcasts and Other Appearances, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

Back in January 2020, I had an opportunity to be interviewed by the wonderful Risa Morimoto from Modern Aging. She wanted to get my take on our time here in Panama. What do we like and dislike? Why would someone want to retire in Panama? I met Risa during the shooting of our House Hunters International episode. She was the director and she’s just a great person all around. Risa’s got the personality and sense of humor you just can’t

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4 Lessons Learned After Two Years of Early Retirement

4 Lessons Learned After Two Years of Early Retirement

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

It’s crazy to realize that I retired at the age of 43 two years ago. December 31, 2018, was my last day of “working for the man” hopefully forever! Now it’s time to present some lessons learned during that time. In the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) community, you tend to read info from a lot of folks who are on the path to financial freedom but aren’t there yet. While that’s great and can present a lot of great

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Imagine No Internet at Home for 53 Days… Ugh.

18 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

Yeah, no need for us to imagine here… 53 whole days without internet at home. That’s almost two full months. Although we made a small mistake on our end that didn’t help, most of the cause of this falls on Panama just being Panama. And you don’t realize just how critical solid internet is at home until you need to go without it. It’s become such an essential part of our day-to-day lives… for better or for worse. We adjusted

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The FI Show Podcast Appearance – Geoarbitrage

The FI Show Podcast Appearance – Geoarbitrage

Leave a Comment / Podcasts and Other Appearances, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Spending / /

I first met Justin and Cody from The FI Show at a FinCon conference a couple of years ago. These might be two of the nicest guys I’ve ever meet. I believe that they were just starting their podcast at the time and they had asked me to be a guest at some point. I was game to do it but our paths didn’t really cross much for a while after that. Well, a few months ago, Justin and I

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A Christmas Story in Panama… Back in Lockdown!

A Christmas Story in Panama… Back in Lockdown!

16 Comments / Panama, Kids, Life in Early Retirement / /

Once upon a time, a pretty awesome family was living in Boquete, Panama. They were getting ready to start their second Christmas story in this beautiful country. And then the Ministry of Health announced another scheduled lockdown over the next two holiday weeks. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That pretty awesome family struggled with the mandate, let it spoil their holiday spirit, and became total Grinches for the rest of the year. The End. Oh, and

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Overthinking the Cost of a Gym Membership

Overthinking the Cost of a Gym Membership

16 Comments / Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Spending / /

In the personal finance community, you tend to hear overwhelming voices shouting about how the cost of a gym membership makes it such a waste of money. It’s not hard to see why. Most folks in the community are trying to optimize their spending and cut out the costs they don’t need. Larger expenses like giant houses, fancy cars, and eating out excessively are a few of the big ones that we all know can make it a lot harder

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Making Plans for the Future – Stay or Go?

Making Plans for the Future – Stay or Go?

35 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, General Thoughts, Geoarbitrage, Kids, Panama / /

Life is funny sometimes. We made plans for the future, retired early, sold everything we had, and then moved to Boquete, Panama in 2019. What are the chances a once-in-century pandemic hits shortly thereafter and throws everything out of whack? The odds can’t be very high I would guess. I’ll tell you what – it’s been one helluva ride so far. The first six months were pretty awesome. We got settled in, had the opportunity to be on House Hunters

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5 Things I Wish We Were Doing Again in Panama

5 Things I Wish We Were Doing Again in Panama

10 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement / /

I’m so glad to be back in Boquete, Panama again. We really thought that we weren’t going to be able to get back here so that’s a wonderful wish that came true for us. You know I love the temperate weather here in the mountains (hard to beat daily 75 degrees temps!). However, we had a rough week here due to the effects of Hurricane Eta. Although Panama doesn’t directly get hurricanes because it sits outside of the hurricane belt,

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