Travel/Vacation Archives - Route to Retire

We’re Now Living in Panama… Finally!!

It feels like we’ve been planning this for years (because we have!), but it’s finally happened… we’re now living in Panama! I wasn’t going to post about this yet since we’ve been here less than a week, but I figured a lot of you want to know the details about this adventure. Although I started this site in 2015 intending to focus mostly on personal finance, I feel like I’ve become known more for our plans to retire early and move to Panama more than anything. That’s not a bad thing at all – it was just a little unexpected. We were doing this just because it seemed interesting to us. It was initially “just” a plan to utilize geoarbitrage

Flexible Travel Can Yield Huge Benefits

One of the facets of early retirement I was looking forward to the most was flexible travel. I knew that we’d be able to save some money by not having to be so rigid in our plans. I didn’t realize the extent of how beneficial it could be though. We’ve been retired for less than eight months now and what we’re already experiencing is awesome! Between cheaper flights, hotels, and cruises, the price is definitely right. Then you throw in that the destinations are generally less crowded and that makes things even better. Mix in a little more hassle-free travel along the way like smaller lines through security screenings and life becomes a real winner! Vacations step up their game

Were We Spending Too Much in July? You Tell Me…

Our July adventure is officially over and now I’m wondering if we were spending too much throughout the month. As most of you already know, we’re moving to Panama later this month. When we booked our flight earlier this year, my wife, Lisa, wanted to wait until the end of summer to fly out so we could go on vacation with her side of the family first. Because of that, we were running a month-to-month lease on our apartment for the last few months. Well, Lisa had a brilliant thought to end our lease a month early and use that money to spend the month of July as vagabonds floating around the country. The idea was that without the cost

6 Months of Early Retirement… We’re Now Homeless

I left my management job in IT at the end of 2018 at the age of 43. The goal was to reach early retirement with my family so we could live a life of freedom and adventure… and now we’re homeless. This might sound unexpected, but here’s the thing – that was exactly the plan. Being homeless is something we’ve been working toward for a long time now. For those of you familiar with our path, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. But for my new readers, you might be a cringing a little bit. No need to fear though, we’re not homeless in the sense of sleeping on the streets. We’ve just decided to spend about a month and

Global Entry – Why You Need It and How to Get It for Free

Global Entry was something pretty foreign to me at this time a year ago. We love to travel, but most of it has been domestic here in the U.S. The biggest exception to that are the cruises that we love to take. But here’s the thing – all the cruises we’ve been on are considered closed loop sailings. That means that we departed and returned to the same U.S. port when the trip was over. It also means going that through customs is a little simpler. You generally zip through those lines like nothing. However, with us planning to bounce in and out of Panama over the next few years, customs will become a little more of a burden. Sure,

We Thought We Could Just Pack Up and Go…

When we first sought out our new adventure, we thought we could basically just pack up and go. I mean, you just sell everything and move to Panama, right? Ha! Wishful thinking! There’s a tremendous amount of planning involved to make this a smooth transition. I’ve talked about some of the minutiae we’ve encountered in our planning, but now it’s time for more scoop. And considering we’re about to embark on a huge adventure, I thought it would make sense to try to update everyone a little more frequently on how things are coming along. Sometimes I get caught up in trying to stick solely to money topics that I forget our readers also want to know what’s actually going

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