Travel/Vacation Archives - Route to Retire

Holy Schnikes! Another Change of Plans for Us!

Another day, another change of plans! This slight change is going to add to our already exciting adventure! As most of you already know, we’re moving to Panama this summer. I retired from my job at the end of 2018 and we’re getting closer to making this happen. In the meantime, we have two reasons we’re waiting so long to leave: We need to wait for our daughter to finish out her school year. We have a vacation planned with Mrs. R2R’s side of the family at the end of July. When we head from Cleveland to South Carolina for the vacation, that’s about it. Our lease will be done at the apartment and we’ll have our two suitcases each

The Minutiae of Moving to Another Country

Minutiae. It’s such a funny word. It makes me chuckle just saying it, so I thought it would be perfect for what I want to talk about today. We’re learning pretty quickly that when you want to move to another country, you can’t just pick up and leave. There’s a lot of minutiae that will need to be ironed out in the planning. See, wasn’t that was fun to read that word again? Minutiae. Anyway, I thought I’d take some time today to talk about some of the minutiae we’re starting to think more about lately. Fine, I’ll stop saying the word… for now. But I do have a funny feeling it’ll find it’s way into this post at some

You Get What You Get, So Don’t Throw a Fit

You get what you get, so don’t throw a fit. This might be a little bit of an off-topic post, but since cruises are my favorite vacation and that’s the banner on my site, I’m hoping you’ll hang with me on it. Plus, the point is actually more than the cruise itself – it’s about enjoying life and aiming for more. I started this post while on a cruise ship. We’ve been on a number of cruises with lines like Princess and Celebrity, but this is our first time with MSC Cruises. We’re on the MSC Seaside en route from Miami to St. Maarten, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas before we head back to Miami. We didn’t plan to take

Expat Health Insurance – Our Plans for Panama

Expat health insurance – the one piece of retirement unique to those living in another country. One of the biggest struggles for folks wanting to pull the trigger on early retirement in the U.S. tends to revolve around healthcare. Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that one except to say to plan for the worse. You have to build the unknown into your FIRE number because it can be the one wildcard that can throw off anyone’s plans. That sucks, but it’s our fault as a country for letting the healthcare industry get as powerful as it has. Unfortunately, that puts most of us in the U.S. in a tough spot where medical care costs more here than any other

A Moment to Exhale… So Now What?

Well, we’re finally over the hump. We actually had a moment to exhale. We sold the house and moved into an apartment. Everything should start to get easier and easier as we get closer to the big move to Panama next summer. I started this post while at the airport on our way to Miami to get our cruise kicked off. We booked this trip at the beginning of the year thinking we’d have nothing going on at this time. Yeah, we were wrong. Once we got through security here at Hopkins airport here in Cleveland, I got a text from my agent telling me everything just finished. The closing is officially done and they’re in the process of filing

Travel Rewards – 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!

You ever see those offers from the credit card companies with the big juicy sign-up bonuses? They might be offering 50,000 points or miles in travel rewards for spending maybe $3,000 in the first few months. If you’re like I used to be, you get those offers in the mail and just tear ’em up and pitch ’em. Those jerks aren’t suckering me into their little trap of overspending my hard-earned money for a lousy plane ticket or hotel stay! Yeah, well that was then. Back in my college days, I got my first credit cards and ran up about $30k in credit card debt. It took me years to realize just how screwed I was and work my way

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