Spending Archives - Route to Retire

The Importance of Balance – Frugality vs. Overspending

Saving every penny and pushing frugality to its limit or spending every penny to live for today. How does the Route to Retire family handle their spending? Good news! After a lot of prodding, I think I might have been able to convince Mrs. R2R to do some occasional guest posting. Hopefully, you’ll see some more of these in the mix. She told me she’s hoping to write a post on the process she’s gone through in figuring out homeschooling for our move to Panama. Wrapping your arms around everything involved and choosing the right curriculum has provided her with some “fun” over the past few months. In today’s post though, you’ll get an idea of her take on some

The Drawdown on Investments – Our Game Plan

After last week’s post on the breakdown of our net worth, I thought it might be a good follow-up to provide more detail on our drawdown plans… a part II, if you will. “Why?”, you might ask.* I realized that there aren’t a lot of folks in the trenches talking about this subject. Many FIRE sites talk about the strategies of getting to the point of early retirement. However, it seems like there aren’t too many that talk about actually drawing down on your investments. So, why not share more of our own plans to help spur some discussion? Maybe this will help you come up with some ideas for your own strategy on drawing down your accounts. Or perhaps you’ll

Being a FIRE Millionaire Doesn’t Mean You’re Rich

There’s an interesting mentality that I notice creeps up periodically. It’s the idea that some people think that being a millionaire makes you filthy rich with plenty of money to throw around. Folks who aren’t as entrenched in the personal finance world tend to think that if you’re a millionaire, you actually have $1 million ready to spend. In other words, if you’ve hit that mark, you must be sitting on bushels of cash just ready to be spent. This is probably a common way of thinking if you don’t fully understand how early retirement works. I know I thought the same thing before we continued to grow our finances. However, that’s really not true, particularly with those who are

The 4 Worst Words for Your Financial Future

I’m about to share something important with you. Four words that might be the worst in the English language and can crush your financial future. We’re all at different points in our financial lives and we all have different goals. However, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all here for the same reason – we want to be sure that our future is financially stable. In my own life, I started to recognize a common theme that has bitten me quite a number of times over the years. It’s a mindset that I have and didn’t even realize it until recently. I also think that the majority of people tend to think the same way. So what are

Why Less Is More and Bigger Isn’t Better

I’ll leave the “bigger is better” jokes up to you guys. But, if you’ve been around the personal finance blogosphere long enough, you’re bound to hear things like that or “less is more” or some other variations of the phrase. To me that just seemed obvious – sure, if you want to cut your costs, eliminate your cable or drive a used car and **poof** you’ve saved a few bucks. Frugality at its best. However, I’ve learned that spending less can actually lead to much bigger savings that I wasn’t even thinking about. Sometimes when you spend less in one area, it has a domino effect in other areas that make the costs even less overall. And in some cases,

For Those Who Hate Budgeting, Try Reverse Budgeting

Last week, I talked about money throughout my life. I’ve had my ups and downs with it just like most folks. What I didn’t talk about though is my hate for budgeting. I’m probably one of the most organized people with a good old case of OCD you’d love to know. I need structure in order to operate. For me, everything has its place and making a plan is always the smartest way to do something. It’s actually soothing for me to do little things like putting away the dishes from the dishwasher. I think that’s because I feel like order is being restored and everything’s going back in the cupboard or drawer it belongs in. I sound like a

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