Spending

6 Years of Early Retirement: What I've Learned About Life, Money, and Happiness

6 Years of Early Retirement: What I’ve Learned About Life, Money, and Happiness

Today is the anniversary of my last day of work six years ago. At the end of the workday on December 31, 2018, I became free in a sense. That was the day my early retirement began. If you’ve dreamed about early retirement for a while like I did leading up to this, there’s a little surprise in store that you might not know… It’s not going to be exactly the way you envisioned. That’s because when we daydream or […]

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Traveling the World: 121 Days, 9 Big Adventures, and 6 Cruises Throughout the Globe

Traveling the World: 121 Days, 9 Big Adventures, and 6 Cruises Throughout the Globe

Things certainly have escalated quickly at the Route to Retire household! We started with the plan to take a couple of vacations over the next year and suddenly we’re traveling the world for 121 days! We seem to have this problem – almost a sickness – where we get an idea and tend to go overboard with it. Instead of visiting the country of Panama for a month or two, we lived there for three years (so worth it!)! The

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Southwest Companion Pass: Why Now's the Best Time to Act

Southwest Companion Pass: Why Now’s the Best Time to Act

The Southwest Companion Pass… the holy grail of travel. If you’re not familiar, the Companion Pass allows the earner to bring someone with them for free on every single flight booked by the holder (provided there’s an available seat). Think of the money you could save by cutting flight prices for two people in half while traveling! This is normally a “prize” for someone who flies a lot… like a real lot. The qualification is to fly 100 flights (or earn

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Free Cruises with Just a Little Leg Work… Living Like Rock Stars!

Free Cruises with Just a Little Leg Work… Living Like Rock Stars!

Back in May, I wrote a post called The Next Mission… Free Cruises Through Casino Status Matches! It was all about how we stumbled upon a way to get free cruises and what we planned to do to make it happen. Well, here we are several months later and I realized it’s time to update you on how it’s going and what’s next. It’s actually been a cool little adventure figuring out what we need to do and then taking

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The Funny Thing About Sequence of Returns Risk…

The Funny Thing About Sequence of Returns Risk…

If someone decides to retire and live off of their investment portfolio, an important detail called the sequence of returns risk can be one of the most critical components to comprehend. You might have an understanding or at least a notion of the 4% rule that helps give you some direction in retirement planning. The idea is that you likely can take out 4% from a given portfolio every year and never run out of money. There are several caveats

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Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

Well, I’ve gone and done it again… I switched personal finance apps in my quest to find the right one for what I needed. I thought PocketGuard was the one, but it turns out I was wrong. I only used PocketGuard for about 6 months but it had some shortcomings that just didn’t work well for me… so I decided to bail on it. Fortunately, I think Quicken Simplifi will be the answer I have been looking for all this

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8 Months and 13,409 Miles Later... Our RV Adventure is Over

8 Months and 13,409 Miles Later… Our RV Adventure is Over

After 8 months of living in an RV (with a couple of small breaks in between), our RV adventure has come to an end. It’s a little bittersweet in a lot of ways. We saw so many incredible places that we never would have had the opportunity to do otherwise. We got to do so many cool things during our life on the road. And we saw several old friends we usually don’t get the chance to see very often.

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The Next Mission… Free Cruises Through Casino Status Matches!

The Next Mission… Free Cruises Through Casino Status Matches!

I love going on cruises for vacation – it’s my absolute favorite vacation. I know that some people hate ’em and think they’re nothing but a big old petri dish ready to spread disease to whoever gets on board. Some people don’t like the idea of being on a ship in the middle of the vast ocean. Others don’t like that you might only get 8-9 hours in port to explore other countries. Guess what… I don’t care. I love

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

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

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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My Game-Changing Spreadsheet to Track Upcoming Credit Card Bills

My Game-Changing Spreadsheet to Track Upcoming Credit Card Bills

Once upon a time, I decided that I wanted to be a little more “hands-off” with our finances once we became early retirees. This didn’t mean to push down the major planning or big moves but rather just the day-to-day spending. For years, I was spending my life inside Quicken instead of taking a step back, handling the big picture, and not worrying so much about all the smaller details. So, I let Quicken go after almost 20 years of

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