Roth IRA Withdrawals for Early Retirees: Tracking What's Accessible Now

Roth IRA Withdrawals for Early Retirees: Tracking What’s Accessible Now

8 Comments / Taxes and Financial Planning, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments / /

I retired at the age of 43 at the end of 2018 so I could spend more time with my family and choose how I want to spend each day. It’s been amazing so far and I’m looking forward to the years to come. Strangely, you need this thing called “money” to be able to pay for your expenses in life. They getcha coming and they getcha going, don’t they?! 😉 Fortunately, we were prepared for that and socked away […]

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Investment Risk: Rebalance Your Way to Peace of Mind

Investment Risk: Rebalance Your Way to Peace of Mind

12 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Taxes and Financial Planning / /

Another day, another dollar… hopefully. Aside from some small hiccups along the way, the stock market has continued its way upward since 2009 after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. As an early retiree, I’m happy to see that happen as our portfolio easily continues to outpace our spending. When I retired at the end of 2018, our net worth was not quite $1.1 million. Currently, we’re floating at a little over $1.75 million even while it pays our living expenses No

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Lights, Camera, Exhaustion: I Worked as a Movie Extra for 6 Grueling Yet Awesome Days

Lights, Camera, Exhaustion: I Worked as a Movie Extra for 6 Grueling Yet Awesome Days

16 Comments / Life in Early Retirement / /

You probably know that I’m a big advocate of trying out new and sometimes adventurous things. Not only can it be fun to learn or do something completely different, but it helps you to find new passions, learn what you like and dislike, and make some new cool memories along the way. So when we were on our road trip this past year and I learned there was a call out for those wanting to be a movie extra in

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The Realities of Adventure: Are the Headaches Before and After Worth It?

The Realities of Adventure: Are the Headaches Before and After Worth It?

12 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Kids, Panama, Road Trip, Travel and Vacation / /

There’s no doubt we’re making the most out of our early retirement freedom. I left my career at the end of 2018 and we’ve done a lot of unique things since then, including: The point is that we’ve stepped out of our comfort zone to do some different things – some involving a fair amount of adventure. There are two on that list that really stand out though on the adventure list just because of the commitment, work involved in

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Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

9 Comments / Spending, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

Well, I’ve gone and done it again… I switched personal finance apps in my quest to find the right one for what I needed. I thought PocketGuard was the one, but it turns out I was wrong. I only used PocketGuard for about 6 months but it had some shortcomings that just didn’t work well for me… so I decided to bail on it. Fortunately, I think Quicken Simplifi will be the answer I have been looking for all this

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8 Months and 13,409 Miles Later... Our RV Adventure is Over

8 Months and 13,409 Miles Later… Our RV Adventure is Over

19 Comments / Road Trip, Life in Early Retirement, Spending, Travel and Vacation / /

After 8 months of living in an RV (with a couple of small breaks in between), our RV adventure has come to an end. It’s a little bittersweet in a lot of ways. We saw so many incredible places that we never would have had the opportunity to do otherwise. We got to do so many cool things during our life on the road. And we saw several old friends we usually don’t get the chance to see very often.

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The Next Mission… Free Cruises Through Casino Status Matches!

The Next Mission… Free Cruises Through Casino Status Matches!

22 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

I love going on cruises for vacation – it’s my absolute favorite vacation. I know that some people hate ’em and think they’re nothing but a big old petri dish ready to spread disease to whoever gets on board. Some people don’t like the idea of being on a ship in the middle of the vast ocean. Others don’t like that you might only get 8-9 hours in port to explore other countries. Guess what… I don’t care. I love

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The World’s Largest What??!! 7 Months of Our RV Road Trip Complete, 1 To Go!

The World’s Largest What??!! 7 Months of Our RV Road Trip Complete, 1 To Go!

22 Comments / Road Trip, Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

It’s pretty crazy to think that we’ve now been living in an RV for over 7 months. Yes, we’ve taken a couple of breaks and stayed at my mother-in-law’s house for a few weeks twice in that timeframe, but our home has been the RV… for better or worse. Around this time last year, we brainstormed a way to do something different to escape the winter blues and cold of Ohio for one winter season… and this was what we

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The Case for a Little "Fun Money" in the Stock Market - My $800 Bet That Turned into a Mind-Blowing $43,000!!

The Case for a Little “Fun Money” in the Stock Market – My $800 Bet That Turned into a Mind-Blowing $43,000!!

12 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

I admit it – I’m a boring guy when it comes to my investment portfolio. Over the years, low-cost broad-based index funds now make up over 77% of our investment portfolio. REITs and bond funds account for another 22%. So what’s the remaining 1+% invested in? Well, that’s our fun money in the stock market. And that number accounted for a lot more until recently when I cashed in on some gains. But why have fun money in an investment

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Why Our Daughter Chose Homeschooling for High School… and Why I’m Secretly Happy About That

Why Our Daughter Chose Homeschooling for High School… and Why I’m Secretly Happy About That

14 Comments / Kids, Education, Life in Early Retirement / /

We’re now on the third and final loop of our 9-month monster RV road trip – it’s about time! This is the leg of the journey we’ve been looking forward to from the onset… the trip out west! We’re hopeful that we saved the best for last. We had a lot of fun doing our road trip out west in 2020 and the one we took in 2022 – and those were just sleeping in the back of a Honda

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