Saving Archives - Route to Retire

Make Your Money Work for You Instead of Vice Versa

I think I first heard the mantra of “make your money work for you” when I was a kid. I’d also guess that it was my grandfather who preached it. He was able to retire in his mid-40’s before the term FIRE (financial independence / retire early) was even coined. But it took me years to really understand what that meant. And even once I thought I got it, I still assumed it was just some pipe dream that only the rich could appreciate. Over the years though, I started to dig myself out of the credit card debt I was in. Then I started saving. And then I started saving even more and more. Eventually, I began to make

This Bad-@#$ Expenses Spreadsheet is My Gift to You

I’m super excited about a new expenses spreadsheet I’ve been working on that I think you’re gonna love. And this ain’t just any old expenses spreadsheet – it’s focused on your recurring expenses. If you’re like me, you’re familiar with those times when you make a big purchase and have buyer’s remorse shortly after. It happens. But those are the easy cases – it’s a one-time purchase and it’s staring you right in the face. The tougher problems to solve are those random costs that occur on a periodic basis (every few weeks, monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.) that are much harder to keep an eye on. We all have expenses or subscriptions that we signed up for and – meh,

Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence

I don’t normally write book reviews on this blog, but I’m making an exception for the new Choose FI book. I was expecting my opinion to sway one way with the book but my impression after reading it went in a completely different direction. Chris Mamula is the author of Choose FI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence (along with coauthors Brad Barrett and Jonathan Mendonsa). If you’re not familiar with Chris, he retired in 2017 at the young age of 41 (beat me by two years!). He also spends a lot of time writing at the Can I Retire Yet? site. I met Chris at the FinCon conference in 2017 – such a nice guy! We didn’t get a chance

Do Low and Negative Interest Rates Scare You?

A couple of weeks ago, I brought up the idea of negative interest rates with my nine-year-old daughter, Faith. Yes, this might be something a little weird to talk about with your kid, but it piggy-backed off of our personal finance class during homeschooling. And of course, I kept it pretty high-level. I had kept it simple talking about how banks pay interest to people who store their money there. The banks then take that money and loan it out to others and charge a higher interest rate to them for things like buying a home. These concepts are important for kids to understand. Eventually, we can talk about some of the causes and effects, but for now, that’ll suffice.

Did These Flip-Flops Lead Us to Financial Freedom?

People hear that my flip-flops are now over 12 years old and love to say, “No wonder you were able to retire!” But are my old shoes the reason we were able to reach financial freedom? You might decisively be thinking that’s silly, but let’s talk about this a little more before you jump to a conclusion. I think we all know that my shoes aren’t going to be the reason we were able to retire early. But, I can also tell you that these flip-flops could really be a symbol representing part of what made it possible. Being able to save more money means you’re either making more money or you’re spending less of it. In our case, one

Guest Appearance on the ChooseFI Podcast

I’ve been wanting to be a part of the ChooseFI podcast shortly after it began. Jonathan and Brad launched the show at the end of 2016 and quickly took the FIRE community by storm! It’s a fantastic podcast helping to discuss the path to financial independence. They bring on various guests to examine different aspects and strategies of reaching FI. What’s really great though is that they also focus quite a bit on enjoying the journey along the way. I fell trap to missing that important piece for a little while during our route to retirement. The discussion tends to be very insightful and honest. Brad and Jonathan are open and talk not just about the positives but also the

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