Travel and Vacation

Using Google Voice to Stay in Touch While Living Abroad

Using Google Voice to Stay in Touch While Living Abroad

105 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

Ever heard of Google Voice?  If not, know that this could be one of the best ways of staying in touch with family and friends while you’re living abroad. One of the small concerns we had was how to keep communication simple with everyone while we’re living in Panama.  When we get there, we’re going to get Panamanian cell service for our phones. The problem is that gives us a Panamanian phone number.  So if we call anyone in the […]

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An Interview with My Daughter about Our Crazy Plans

18 Comments / Guest Posts, Kids, Travel and Vacation / /

We all know that everyone loves to hear from my daughter on here more than me.  So I thought that this time I’d bring her back as an interviewee. Most of you think that our plans to move out of the country later this year are pretty bold but cool (albeit, a little crazy). But the problem is that you’re only getting my perspective on our upcoming plans.  And I know a lot of you want to know what the

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Holy Schnikes! Another Change of Plans for Us!

Holy Schnikes! Another Change of Plans for Us!

19 Comments / General Thoughts, Travel and Vacation / /

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

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The Minutiae of Moving to Another Country

The Minutiae of Moving to Another Country

32 Comments / Panama, Geoarbitrage, Travel and Vacation / /

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

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

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

16 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Motivation / /

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

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Expat Health Insurance – Our Plans for Panama

27 Comments / Insurance, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

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,

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A Moment to Exhale... So Now What?

A Moment to Exhale… So Now What?

22 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Travel and Vacation / /

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.

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Travel Rewards - 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!

Travel Rewards – 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!

18 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

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!

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The #1 Question We’re Asked About Moving to Panama…

37 Comments / Geoarbitrage, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Panama, Travel and Vacation / /

My loyal readers know that we’re planning on moving to Panama in 2020. We’re quitting our jobs at the end of 2019.  We’ll then let our daughter finish out her school year (fourth grade).  And then, yeah, we’re moving to Panama. Sounds crazy, right?  You can say it – you won’t hurt my feelings. What’s funny is that most of our friends don’t have the heart to tell us what they’re really thinking.  We know what they’re really thinking is

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A Fun Interview on Our Plans to Move to Panama

2 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Panama / /

Hey everyone – I just wanted to let you know that Laurie at The Three Year Experiment recently invited me to be interviewed on her series, “Location Independent, International Jobs.” I was excited to say yes and she hit me with all kinds of great questions (both financial and otherwise) regarding our plans to move to Panama in a couple years. Among other things, we talked about working or not working, schooling for my daughter, costs of living, and of course the

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