Route to Retire ...the path to financial independence

Here’s Why I’m Liking… The Courage to Be Disliked

18 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Motivation, Product and Service Reviews / By Jim @ Route To Retire / December 1, 2020 December 1, 2020

I’m not sure why I had the book “The Courage to Be Disliked” on my Amazon wish list. Someone either told me it was a good read or I had read about it somewhere. I use different wish lists on Amazon for myself so I don’t lose track of the books I’m interested in reading. Since I only get a chance to read a little each night, it takes me a while to get through each book. I’ve got probably …

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5 Things I Wish We Were Doing Again in Panama

10 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama / By Jim @ Route To Retire / November 24, 2020 November 25, 2020

I’m so glad to be back in Boquete, Panama again. We really thought that we weren’t going to be able to get back here so that’s a wonderful wish that came true for us. You know I love the temperate weather here in the mountains (hard to beat daily 75 degrees temps!). However, we had a rough week here due to the effects of Hurricane Eta. Although Panama doesn’t directly get hurricanes because it sits outside of the hurricane belt, …

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The Best Chrome Extensions for Online Shopping $$$

8 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Saving, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / November 17, 2020 November 13, 2020

Last week, I dished out a post of over 6,800 words: Moving to Boquete or Visiting? The Ultimate List of Tips!! This week, I thought I’d keep things a little simpler and let you know about some of the best Google Chrome extensions for online shopping. It’s time to save some money, folks! With the holidays around the corner and the pandemic continuing to do its thing, shopping online should be even more widespread than ever this year. Sometimes I …

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Moving to Boquete or Visiting? The Ultimate List of Tips!!

18 Comments / Panama, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / November 10, 2020 November 7, 2020

When we decided to make moving to Boquete, Panama a reality a few years ago, I didn’t know too much about the intricacies here. I knew it would be a lot different but you just don’t know what you don’t know. Now that we’ve been here since the middle of 2019, I can tell you that we’ve learned a lot. There are still oddities that make us raise an eyebrow, but we have a much better hold on things nowadays. …

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$1.3 Million Net Worth… Yet Scraping By Right Now

30 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Spending / By Jim @ Route To Retire / November 3, 2020 October 30, 2020

Anytime you can throw the words “million net worth” into a discussion, the words “scraping by” shouldn’t follow. It just doesn’t fit the bill. Now before I continue, let me say that we’re fine, but we ran into an interesting financial problem that has messed us up this year. And, of course, my job is to share that with you so you can make sure you don’t run into a similar small dilemma. I’m always very forthcoming regarding our money …

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Boquete, Panama – What’s It Like Today?

24 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 27, 2020 October 27, 2020

When we left Boquete, Panama on a humanitarian flight at the beginning of summer, there were some borderline draconian measures in place here. The reaction to the pandemic here was to shut everything down to the extreme. Everyone was literally on a full-time lockdown. Women were only allowed out for two-hour periods on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays based on the last digit of your cédula or passport. The same went for men but they could only do Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and …

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Our Trip to Panama – What to Expect As Borders Reopen

28 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 20, 2020 October 17, 2020

We made it! Our trip to Panama went well and we’re back at our condo in Boquete safe and sound and enjoying the beautiful weather again. It was only a couple of months ago that we thought we’d be unable to get back to Panama at all. But in an unexpected turn of events, Panama announced they were going to reopen Tocumen International Airport to tourists starting October 12, 2020. Although I wasn’t confident this would actually happen, we booked …

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Getting an Antigen Test to Travel to Panama… Ugh!

12 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Panama, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 13, 2020 October 13, 2020

Yeah… ugh. What a mess things are. As you read this, we should be just hours away from flying back to Panama. The key to making this happen… finding a place to get an antigen test done. Oh, and we needed to take the test within 48 hours of our scheduled arrival time in Panama. And somehow we had to have the negative results in hand in that small window of time. That can still be a real hurdle and …

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Free Nights – We’ve Had 5 at Hilton Hotels Recently

8 Comments / Spending, Travel and Vacation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / October 6, 2020 October 6, 2020

Getting free stays at a hotel can be such a winning feeling. But free nights at various Hilton Hotels makes it even nicer! Our recent 40-day road trip took us through a lot of the country. On leg one and leg two of the trip, we didn’t really need a hotel to stay at. We spent time camping, staying with friends and family, and even had a few nights sleeping in the car (including once in a Cracker Barrel parking …

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To Truly Reach for the Stars, Challenge Herd Mentality

24 Comments / General Thoughts, Kids, Motivation / By Jim @ Route To Retire / September 29, 2020 September 26, 2020

I had a little bit of a strange realization the other day. We tell our kids, friends, and other family members that we support their dreams. We tell them to reach for the stars and they can be or do anything they want to in life. But guess what – those are just some empty words. Even though we say to reach for the stars, those words can be meaningless due to our actions. We push our kids to chase …

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