My Gamble with $691k in Retirement Money

20 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

Retirement money is definitely something you shouldn’t be gambling with.  But hey, it’s only your future on the line… what could go wrong? I admit it – I love gambling.  That’s not something you’d expect to hear from a blogger in the personal finance community, but it’s true. I’m not an avid gambler – I just enjoy some table games or video poker at a casino every now and again.  Sometimes I’ll even throw a little bit at a periodic […]

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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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After 20 Years on Quicken, I'm All-In on Personal Capital

After 20 Years on Quicken, I’m All-In on Empower (formerly Personal Capital)

42 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Debt, Saving / /

I’ve been using the Empower (formerly Personal Capital) financial software now for the past few years.  However, I’ve only been dipping my toes in with it… until now. Quicken’s been my go-to software for just over 20 years.  I stumbled on it back in 1999 when I first started at the career I just retired from.  I was hired in as an engineer to fight the scary Y2K bug and Intuit was giving away their Quicken 98 software for free as

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The Drawdown on Investments - Our Game Plan

The Drawdown on Investments – Our Game Plan

14 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

After last week’s post on the breakdown of our net worth, I thought it might be a good follow-up to provide more detail on our drawdown plans… a part II, if you will. “Why?”, you might ask.* I realized that there aren’t a lot of folks in the trenches talking about this subject.  Many FIRE sites talk about the strategies of getting to the point of early retirement.  However, it seems like there aren’t too many that talk about actually drawing

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The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments

The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments

19 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving / /

I’ve been considering providing a breakdown of our net worth for a while now.  I’ve held off for a couple of reasons though: Well, I love breaking taboo – if you’d ask my friends, they’d tell you how I tend to say things that seem inappropriate, but are usually what everyone is thinking.  It might be some stirring the pot but it gets some good conversation going! When our net worth hit the $1 million mark back in 2017, a

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Guest Post on the FIRE Stories Site

Interview on the FIRE Stories Site

2 Comments / Guest Posts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement / /

Hey everyone – just wanted to let you know about an interview I just did for Tim Pittman at FIRE Stories. FIRE Stories is a newer site that Tim started just this past January.  He interviews folks who have achieved financial independence and retired early.  His aim is to determine how they got to where they are today, what mistakes they’ve made along the way, and garner advice on how to start adopting the FIRE mindset. I didn’t know Tim when

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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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My First FIRE Presentation on Geoarbitrage

10 Comments / Podcasts and Other Appearances, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Geoarbitrage, Life in Early Retirement, Panama / /

Yup, you read that right… I did a FIRE presentation regarding geoarbitrage and our plans to move to Panama. Deanna (aka Ms. Fiology) asked me to do a talk for the ChooseFI local group in Northeast Ohio.  I’m a reasonably outgoing guy, but public speaking is a whole different ball game. I had never done a presentation like this before, but I decided why not push my comfort level and give it a shot?  So I agreed. Although my stipulation was

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Being a FIRE Millionaire Doesn’t Mean You’re Rich

20 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Spending / /

There’s an interesting mentality that I notice creeps up periodically.  It’s the idea that some people think that being a millionaire makes you filthy rich with plenty of money to throw around. Folks who aren’t as entrenched in the personal finance world tend to think that if you’re a millionaire, you actually have $1 million ready to spend.  In other words, if you’ve hit that mark, you must be sitting on bushels of cash just ready to be spent. This

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Christopher Guest Post on Physician on FIRE

Christopher Guest Post on Physician on FIRE

Leave a Comment / Guest Posts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

I first met the face behind Physician on FIRE at FinCon17.  Not only did he turn out to be a good guy, but he was giving out koozies for free… I love free swag! Physician on FIRE and I have a few things in common: Our blogs are both a handful of years old (mine started in 2015 and PoF’s in 2016) We’re both 43 – we’re aging like fine wines! We’ve both spent a little bit of time in

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