Travel/Vacation Archives - Route to Retire

Panama Vacation – Part 1 – Nueva Gorgona and Anton Valley

We finally made the trip I’ve been waiting for… our Panama vacation! And guess what – it was awesome! Because there’s a lot to cover, I thought I’d break this up into a couple posts. This first post will cover the first half of our trip and the second post will cover the second half – easy enough, right? 🙂 If you’ve been following my adventures, you know that I’ve been doing a lot of digging to determine if Panama is the perfect place for us to retire. You might also know that I’ve become a lot more serious about the idea over the past year. Well, reading’s not enough, so taking the trip was the best way to determine

Panama Vacation Booked… Check!!

Well, we’re making it happen… we just finished booking our Panama vacation. I’ve heard all kinds of good things about the country for retirees and it’s really peaked my interest… enough so that we’ve been digging into the idea for quite a while now. We’ve learned quite a bit more about the country since I wrote my post “Is Panama the Right Place to Retire?“ a year and a half ago. We’ve been reading everything we can find out about the country and I talked to someone who lives there to get some feedback as well. Through our digging, we now have a better idea of the geography and the places that seem intriguing to live. We also have a somewhat better understanding

2017 Personal and Financial Goals

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we may receive a referral fee (at no extra cost to you) if you sign up or purchase products or services mentioned.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

The Cost of Vacation

Just got back from a great vacation in Texas. My brother and his wife moved to Austin about a year ago so we went to visit them. They just built a really nice house with a pool, hot tub, cabana, outdoor kitchen, etc. – how can you pass up a visit with all this good stuff?!! So we stayed at their “oasis” for a little over a week and had a great time. Unfortunately, I was so relaxed that I realized I had forgotten to think of what to write about this week. So I decided that I’ll give you a breakdown of what we spent on this trip to get your feedback on if we spent too much money or got away with

Four Weddings and Maybe My Funeral…

Today I’m getting slightly off track because I need to rant and, well, it’s my blog so I’m going to go for it! Ok, first off, maybe four weddings is an exaggeration… I have three to go to in the next month. And maybe it’s not really going to be my funeral, but it sure feels like it! Here’s the problem… Wedding number one is out-of-town – it’s in the big city… New York City. I hate the big city. I’m a suburbs kind of guy. I don’t care for the hustle-bustle of big cities like Chicago and, even though I haven’t been there before, I’m going to assume NYC as well. Now, I know a lot of you live for

Is Panama the Right Place to Retire?

I’ve been trying to figure out a good place to retire that’s not, well… Ohio!! I’ve lived in Ohio for most of my life and it’s done well for me, but why live in a place that ever snows?!! The answer is simply that I have roots here… friends, family, stable job, and so on. Pulling the trigger to move out of your comfort zone is a tough thing for most of us to do. And the problem is that once you have kids, they start to establish their own roots, and the cycle continues. My brother made the move probably around the age of 30 and hasn’t looked back. He moved to Florida without a new job or knowing anyone except his wife (girlfriend at the