Saving Archives - Route to Retire

The Case for a Little “Fun Money” in the Stock Market – My $800 Bet That Turned into a Mind-Blowing $43,000!!

8 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 23, 2024

I admit it – I’m a boring guy when it comes to my investment portfolio. Over the years, low-cost broad-based index funds now make up over 77% of our investment portfolio. REITs and bond funds account for another 22%. So what’s the remaining 1+% invested in? Well, that’s our fun money in the stock market. And that number accounted for a lot more until recently when I cashed in on some gains. But why have fun money in an investment […]

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Why I Chose PocketGuard as the Best Mint Replacement for Me

10 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Debt, Investments, Product and Service Reviews, Saving, Spending / Jim @ Route To Retire / December 19, 2023

If you haven’t heard, Intuit decided to shut down the Mint personal finance site/app on January 1, 2024. They made this announcement on October 31, 2024, giving users only about 2 months to decide what they were going to do. All I can do is shake my head at how disrespectful this is to their loyal customer base. UPDATE: I just I received an email from Intuit on 12/17/2023 stating that I can continue using Mint until March 23, 2024,

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Your Money, Your Choices: Why Personal Finance Is Deeply Personal

12 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Investments, Saving, Spending, Taxes and Financial Planning, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / September 26, 2023

Personal finance is such an interesting facet of life. It’s a part of every one of our lives whether we like it or not and most of us think we know what’s best for ourselves… and everyone else. But the reality is that while we can learn as much as we want about the subject, we really should only focus on what’s best for ourselves. Why is that? It’s because, funny enough, personal finance truly is personal. You might have

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Running Out of Money To Save $52: Is It Worth It?

17 Comments / Spending, Life in Early Retirement, Saving, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / July 11, 2023

Here we are cruising along into almost 5 years of early retirement. It’s been a heckuva blessed ride… life’s been good for sure! But now we’re at a pivot point that will likely make running out of money by the end of this month a good possibility. Wait, what? Aren’t you guys millionaires? How is that even possible and what the heck is going on?! It’s not as bad as it sounds but I’m pushing things right to the wire

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The Surprisingly Boring Career Path That Brought Us to Financial Independence

23 Comments / Motivation, Debt, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Real Estate, Saving, Self-Employment / Jim @ Route To Retire / June 27, 2023

There tends to be a stigma in society that you need to own a company, become some big real estate mogul, be a celebrity, or just come from money in order to find your way to financial independence. So then we like to come up with excuses reasons as to why we can’t do that ourselves… “If I was in that position, it would be easy! No way I can do that because of xxxxxxx [insert whatever rationalization you want

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Limited Time, Unlimited Dreams: 3 Steps to an Extraordinary Life

6 Comments / Motivation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Saving, Spending, Travel and Vacation / Jim @ Route To Retire / May 9, 2023

As I find my way closer to 50 (I’ll be 48 in a couple of months), I’m starting to see those small changes creeping up that I thought only happen to old people. Oh crap, am I old?!! Out of nowhere, my eyes have gotten a little weaker – both near and far! I can see close-up pretty well most of the time but I finally broke down and bought some readers for nighttime reading. The same goes for distance.

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Is Temu Legit? Here’s How I’m Saving Big With This Fun App

12 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Saving, Spending / Jim @ Route To Retire / April 11, 2023

So I’ve been playing a Mahjong game on my phone periodically when I get a few minutes here and there. My wife, Lisa, loves to rag on me and tell me that it’s a game for 95-year-old women but I enjoy it so I’ll just graciously accept my lumps from her. But the game does have its share of ads in it that you can’t pay to remove (though I’d probably be too cheap to do so anyway). For the

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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 / 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).

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

28 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving / 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

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

10 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / 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

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