Around 14 years ago, one of my closest friends told me he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. I was shocked by the news but he didn’t seem any different and I knew he’d be just fine. After all, he was in his mid-thirties like I was and it was just a hurdle to overcome and life would be fine again. But then it wasn’t. As the months progressed, he got worse and worse and the chemotherapy and radiation didn’t ..read more

Life is interesting. And that’s a good thing. How boring would it be if every day on this planet was the same? For about a decade now, we’ve made some choices that have swung our days into some crazy adventures. There’s no doubt this took us out of the realm of monotony. Between retiring at the age of 43 at the end of 2018 and then moving to Panama for a few years starting in 2019, we got a lot ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more