Saving Archives - Route to Retire

The HSA Benefits Just Keep Rolling In

I’ve written about Health Savings Accounts (HSA) before and how they are one the best retirement plans you can get your hands on. In fact, it might be THE best account out there. I thought I knew all the HSA benefits I could get out of this account, but in this post, I’ll tell you about a new one I learned about. If you’re not familiar with an HSA, it’s a medical savings account that’s paired with a high-deductible medical plan. Because you’re on a high-deductible plan, you usually pay less of a premium (the amount a lot of us see taken out of each of our paychecks). What usually gets people started in this is that they can then

What I’m Doing With My Money Right Now

I’m pretty excited to see that our net worth has grown over $70,000 in just three months since I wrote the post $1 Million Net Worth… Now What?. It’s great to see my money continuing to grow, but there’s still a downside to it. Most of the money is tied up in the stock market right now and it’s a bull market right now. No one has a crystal ball to tell us if this is only the beginning. The gains could just keep rolling in for years to come. It’s also possible, however, that we’re at the top of the market and a recession is just around the corner. I don’t know what’s going to take place in the

It Doesn’t Matter, So Stop It!

In general, we seem to have a tendency to focus a lot of our time and money on the things that don’t really matter. It’s time to stop it and instead concentrate on what does matter… So far this summer we’ve taken a fantastic trip to Panama and spent a few days at a cottage on Kelleys Island on Lake Erie. We’re starting to pack for a week-long vacation trip to Tennessee we have coming up in the next couple of weeks. I’m also going on a backpacking weekend in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania in September. And, of course, I’m more than excited about my first trip to FinCon in Dallas in October. In the meantime, we’re trying

Why I Like Overdrawing My Checking Account

Once upon I time, a young man we’ll randomly call “Jim” was in college and barely had a dollar to his name… Ok, fine – that young man was me – dang it, you ruin everything! Anyway, like a good number of college students, overdrawing my checking account wasn’t too uncommon. In fact, it actually wasn’t uncommon for me to blow out my balance on a periodic basis for a year or so after graduating college as well. Eventually, though, I started to make some good progress on my finances over the years and overdrawing my checking account became a pretty rare occurrence, if it happened at all. Over the past year or so though, I’m back to overdrawing the account again. And

2017 Personal and Financial Goals

Well, it’s 2017, which means it’s time to take stock of how your previous year went, but more importantly, you should set your sights to the future and get your personal and financial goals put in place for the year. Here are my plans for the year… My 2017 Financial Goals Buy another rental property Buying rental property is an important stream of passive income that I’m working on building. Currently, we own a couple of rental properties – a single-family house and a duplex. They’re both filled and the duplex brings in a much better cash flow, but either way, I’m happy with the direction things are going. But now it’s time to expand. One of my financial goals in the long-run is

Saving for Kids – Thoughts to Consider

When it comes to saving for kids, there are a ton of different options out there. Should you start a separate account for them somewhere and if so where? Mrs. R2R and I have a 6-year-old daughter and we’re starting to think through this whole problem right now. Here’s what we’ve figured out so far… First things first Before you do anything for your kids, you need to make sure to get your own finances in order. If you have any hanging debt (other than maybe your mortgage), you need to address that first. We all want to take care of our kids, but your debt affects your own well-being and guess what? Your well-being can become your kid’s problem

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