Travel and Vacation

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

30 Comments / Panama, Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

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

14 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

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 / Spending, Debt, Travel and Vacation / /

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!!

46 Comments / Panama, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

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 / Travel and Vacation, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

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 / /

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 / /

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

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

14 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Panama / /

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

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We Thought We Could Just Pack Up and Go…

We Thought We Could Just Pack Up and Go…

26 Comments / General Thoughts, Travel and Vacation / /

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

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Using Google Voice to Stay in Touch While Living Abroad

Using Google Voice to Stay in Touch While Living Abroad

107 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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