The HSA Benefits Just Keep Rolling In

8 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Health and Fitness, Investments, Saving / /

I’ve written about Health Savings Accounts (HSA) before and how they are one the best retirement plans you can get your hands on.  In fact, it might be THE best account out there.  I thought I knew all the HSA benefits I could get out of this account, but in this post, I’ll tell you about a new one I learned about. If you’re not familiar with an HSA, it’s a medical savings account that’s paired with a high-deductible medical […]

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What I’m Doing With My Money Right Now

6 Comments / Saving, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Investments, Real Estate / /

I’m pretty excited to see that our net worth has grown over $70,000 in just three months since I wrote the post $1 Million Net Worth… Now What?.  It’s great to see my money continuing to grow, but there’s still a downside to it. Most of the money is tied up in the stock market right now and it’s a bull market right now. No one has a crystal ball to tell us if this is only the beginning.  The

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It Doesn't Matter, So Stop It!

It Doesn’t Matter, So Stop It!

14 Comments / Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Motivation, Saving, Spending / /

In general, we seem to have a tendency to focus a lot of our time and money on the things that don’t really matter.  It’s time to stop it and instead concentrate on what does matter… So far this summer we’ve taken a fantastic trip to Panama and spent a few days at a cottage on Kelleys Island on Lake Erie.  We’re starting to pack for a week-long vacation trip to Tennessee we have coming up in the next couple

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Panama Vacation – Part 2 – Boquete

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

In my post, Panama Vacation – Part 1, I talked about the first half of our trip to Panama.  If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend you check it out… a lot of good information on Nueva Gorgona and Anton Valley.  But now it’s time for some Boquete talk and that’s what I’m excited about! After initially getting everyone on board for the idea of this trip, I started researching.  I dug into a lot of areas in the country

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Panama Vacation – Part 1 – Nueva Gorgona and Anton Valley

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

We finally made the trip I’ve been waiting for… our Panama vacation!  And guess what – it was awesome! Because there’s a lot to cover, I thought I’d break this up into a couple posts.  This first post will cover the first half of our trip and the second post will cover the second half – easy enough, right?  🙂 If you’ve been following my adventures, you know that I’ve been doing a lot of digging to determine if Panama

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Financial Regrets That Slowed My Path to FIRE

Financial Regrets That Slowed My Path to FIRE

24 Comments / General Thoughts, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Real Estate / /

Financial regrets, I’ve had a few… As I guy in my early forties, I sometimes take a moment here and there to reflect on how my path in life has gone.  I don’t dwell – I just try to look back at my mistakes and learn from them to make for a better future. And maybe the “regrets” part of “financial regrets” is a little excessive.  If you’re a regular follower of my blog, you know that we’ve recently surpassed the million-dollar net worth mark. We’re

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The Lazy Man’s Guide to Fitness

14 Comments / Health and Fitness, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

I hate exercise and fitness. You know how some people talk about how running or a good workout makes them feel refreshed and invigorated? Well, I’m not that guy.  I despise knowing I have to do it, I hate the actual exercise, and when I’m done, I’m just glad it’s over. If you’re a guy or gal who’s on top of your fitness goals, this post probably isn’t going to be up your alley.   If I hate fitness, why do anything? Well,

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Another Reason Why Working for Yourself is a Smart Idea...

Another Reason Why Working for Yourself is a Smart Idea…

27 Comments / Self-Employment, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Kids / /

We all know that working for yourself has a lot of benefits that you can’t get from working for someone else.  The ability to better control your company’s destiny, the independence and freedom you can gain, and the flexibility in hours are just a few of the possibilities that might be gained. However, I was thinking recently about another major benefit that working for yourself can provide.  But what fun would that be to just share it outright with you? A personal anecdote would

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An Open Letter to My Daughter

An Open Letter to My Daughter

10 Comments / Kids, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Motivation / /

An Open Letter to My Daughter My father passed away when I was around the age my daughter is now.  That’s made me think over the years that, should something ever happen to me, I’d like to know that I was able to pass on some of what I’ve learned. With that, I decided to write a letter to my daughter with some of my thoughts. I consider this a work in progress.  There’s ultimately too much information to share at

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Why I Like Overdrawing My Checking Account

Why I Like Overdrawing My Checking Account

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

Once upon I time, a young man we’ll randomly call “Jim” was in college and barely had a dollar to his name… Ok, fine – that young man was me – dang it, you ruin everything!  Anyway, like a good number of college students, overdrawing my checking account wasn’t too uncommon. In fact, it actually wasn’t uncommon for me to blow out my balance on a periodic basis for a year or so after graduating college as well. Eventually, though, I started to

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