Travel and Vacation

How We Use a VPN for Streaming & More While Abroad

How We Use a VPN for Streaming & More While Abroad

6 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Product and Service Reviews, Travel and Vacation / By / May 8, 2020

If you’re like many of us, you’ve been spending a heckuva lot more time at home during this pandemic. And right now, streaming services are busy providing entertainment to folks at home. But living outside the U.S. generally warrants a VPN to access that same entertainment. I’m sure you’ve heard that term “VPN” before, but even if you’re not very technical, I’m going to get you on the right page with what you need to know. Today I’ll talk about …

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House Hunters International (Panama) – Jim, Lisa, & Faith

36 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Podcasts and Other Appearances, Travel and Vacation / By / April 30, 2020

Any House Hunters International fans out there?!  Of course, you are! Anybody a fan of Jim, Lisa, and Faith (that’s us!)?  Ok, fine – maybe not of me, but at least Lisa and Faith?  Hopefully, you are – that’s why you come to this site in the first place, right?! How about Panama?  Maybe even specifically Boquete?  Yeah, that’s us, too. But wouldn’t it be even more fun to squoosh all those cool things together and come up with something …

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A Beach Vacation Totaling $405? Yes, Please!

A Beach Vacation Totaling $405? Yes, Please!

18 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By / March 7, 2020

Who doesn’t love a good beach vacation?! The magnificence of the ocean in both sound and sight is something I could just take in forever.  Throw in some sand, palm trees, and a couple of drinks and it’s hard to beat that tropical atmosphere! I’m used to going on a beach vacation every year or two with family or friends.  It’s an awesome, but expensive trip to look forward to that I’m sure many of you are familiar with doing. …

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What’s It REALLY Like to Live in a Foreign Country?

30 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By / February 18, 2020

We’ve now been living in a foreign country for six months.  If you’re not familiar, we moved to Panama in August of 2019. We had visited the country in the summer of 2017 as a sort of recon mission along with my brother and sister-in-law.  Don’t worry, we had plenty of fun while there, but the real goal was to determine if we could see ourselves actually living there. The cities we scoped out included Nueva Gorgona, Coronado, El Valle …

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Our Return Trip to Panama – How We Saved Thousands

12 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By / March 9, 2020

This return trip to Panama is well overdue.  We had a blast, but we’re whupped and ready to get back home (we’re finally starting to get comfortable calling Panama “home”). We spent over a month in the U.S. enjoying time with friends and family.  Then we took a roundtrip Caribbean cruise out of Miami. Who’da thunk that we’d be ready to go home after so much fun?!  But we really are – it’s time to enjoy the holidays together and …

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We Got Turned Down for a Credit Card… Ok, Four!

16 Comments / Debt, Spending, Travel and Vacation / By / February 3, 2020

Yeah, getting turned down for a credit card isn’t a good feeling. It doesn’t matter that Lisa and I each have credit scores of over 800.  It doesn’t matter that we have plenty of credit cards already and don’t really need another. We also have more of an unused credit line spanned across all our cards than we’ll never need.  And then, of course, there’s that little piece of info that we’ve saved up enough money that we never have …

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We're Now Living in Panama... Finally!!

We’re Now Living in Panama… Finally!!

44 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By / September 24, 2019

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 …

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Flexible Travel Can Yield Huge Benefits

Flexible Travel Can Yield Huge Benefits

16 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Spending, Travel and Vacation / By / September 26, 2019

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 …

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

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

18 Comments / Spending, Travel and Vacation / By / August 14, 2019

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 …

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6 Months of Early Retirement… We’re Now Homeless

18 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / By / March 9, 2020

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 …

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