Travel and Vacation Archives

My 3 Rules and My 3 Favorite Indulgences Cruise Vacations

Cruise Vacations – My 3 Rules and My 3 Favorite Indulgences

14 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 25, 2022 October 21, 2022

Ah, the world of cruise vacations… some people love ’em and some people hate ’em. Without a doubt, I’m in the former camp. Cruising is my absolute favorite type of vacation and I’ve even dug into what it would take to live on a cruise ship! I guess I’m not the only one either. My friend John over at ESI Money wrote a deep-dive post into the subject a few years ago titled, Is Retiring on a Cruise Ship an …

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7 Cool Resources for Your Mind, Body, and Wallet

14 Comments / Motivation, General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Investments, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 4, 2022 November 10, 2022

I love reading articles that have something tangible to present. It doesn’t matter if it’s books, documentaries, software, or some kind of hack to improve your life that’s good for your mind, body, or wallet. Make me a better person! Sometimes folks ask me questions about how I accomplished something or why I do things in a particular way. The questions usually revolve around anything from finances to technology to health or anything else that might be on someone’s mind. …

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Is It Worth It to Open a Credit Card With a Huge Annual Fee?

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Product and Service Reviews, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / September 27, 2022 September 25, 2022

Yeah, this was something I was initially against. Why on earth would anyone pay that much money to open a credit card?! After several years of thinking that way, I’ve since changed my mind. And I recently applied for and got a credit card with a $395 annual fee!! It was something that we’d never done before. Premium cards like this are expensive and they never seemed worthwhile to us. Sure you get some good perks with them, but could …

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Finding My Place Again in the U.S. – 3 Things I’m Worried About

27 Comments / General Thoughts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / September 13, 2022 September 13, 2022

We moved to Boquete, Panama back in 2019, just months after I had retired from work at the end of 2018. We had sold everything we owned and moved to a country that we had only visited one other time – a country where we knew no one and almost everyone speaks Spanish. You would think that this whirlwind would be one of the biggest hurdles in life to adjust to and figure out. Funny enough though, finding my place …

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The #1 Best Way To Track Credit Card Rewards

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Product and Service Reviews / By Jim @ Route To Retire / August 30, 2022 August 29, 2022

We’ve been leveraging credit card travel rewards for several years now. It’s given us the ability to travel the world either for free or very inexpensively. The biggest hurdle though is figuring out a good way to track credit card rewards. I wrote in my post, Travel Rewards, 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!, that I had created a spreadsheet to track credit card rewards for ourselves. I use it all the time and it’s a freebie I share …

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Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone Led to an 8-Night Fishing Trip of a Lifetime in Canada

18 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement / By Jim @ Route To Retire / August 9, 2022 August 8, 2022

I like to push myself to try new things that are outside of my comfort zone. A good example of this is when I hiked up a volcano in Panama earlier this year. Although it was definitely out of my wheelhouse, these are the sorts of things that help open my mind up to new and possibly great experiences. So when my cousin Dennis told me they had someone back out of their big week-long fishing trip in the bush …

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I Need a Mental Break

30 Comments / Health and Fitness, Blogging, General Thoughts, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / July 12, 2022 July 7, 2022

I’m exhausted and I need a mental break. There’s this weird dynamic in the blogging (and social media) world where the more you’re out doing “stuff”, the more it looks like you’re out living the dream. I’ve never really cared much about all that but I do put my life out there for everyone (both good and bad). And this year, we’ve been insanely busy doing more stuff than I could have ever imagined. Most of you know that we’ve …

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On the Road: The Wrap-Up and Some Fun Stats!

10 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / July 5, 2022 July 2, 2022

And we’re back! We just returned from 31 days on the road. Even though we didn’t plan for a specific number of days, we ended up traveling for a full month pretty much on the nose! We had so much fun and got to check out so many places we’d never been to before. Along the way, we had our share of headaches as well (that comes with traveling!) but I’m glad we did this trip while our daughter’s still …

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4 Easy Ways We Were Able To Save Money in Las Vegas… BIG Money!

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / June 28, 2022 August 20, 2022

I’m always happy to save money in Las Vegas. I’ve been there a lot over the years and every time it’s a little different. Regardless, of the trip though, I’m always all about “finding the best deals.” We’re currently on our month-long road trip around the country and just spent a whopping 8 nights in Vegas! That’s the longest I’ve ever stayed there in one trip. In that amount of time, we crammed in a lot of fun including walking …

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Our Summer Road Trip So Far Includes a Flood, Wildfires, Freezing Temps, Blistering Heat, Strong Winds, and a Thrown-Out Back!

Our Summer Road Trip So Far… Mother Nature’s Vengeance!

8 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Health and Fitness, Kids, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / June 21, 2022 July 17, 2022

Yeah, there’s a lot going on there, right? Looking at a title like this, you might feel convinced that our summer road trip has been a bust. I can’t argue with that line of thinking. There’s not one thing on this list that sounds positive at all. So you might be surprised to know that the first two weeks of our summer road trip have actually been a ton of fun. And two of Mother Nature’s natural disasters made us …

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