Yesterday was one of those perfect days of early retirement. A beautiful 76-degree day, tennis in the morning with my brother, $5 matinee in the afternoon with my son, a short nap, and a delightful alfresco dinner with my wife and some good friends at the village wine bar. I drove the convertible around all…
I read a few versions of this story online recently and thought I would share a cleaned-up version of it. It highlights both the incredible cost of small bad habits to our journey toward financial independence and retiring early (FIRE) and the self-righteousness that some “geniuses” apply to other people’s decisions – forgetting that personal…
Our son is working part-time this summer and is off to college this fall. He is pretty good with his money at this point of his life and shows a lot of interest in frugal living and how money works. I like to think that I am helping teach my son about financial independence &…
It is better to have money than not to have it, but the revelation of how much money we have or don’t have is always a bit awkward. This is why most often people keep their financial matters quite private, but when you’ve retired early people deduce that you have certainly won the money game.…
To start with, the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge we embarked on for the month of May, required an extra full 15 days of June. That said, it is complete! And we over-delivered the number of items that needed to be decluttered by a wide margin. The challenge started last month with this POST. The goal…
When it comes to trips, I agree with the saying that the journey is as much fun as arriving at the destination. Likewise, there is something fun about thinking about your future and imagining how you might want it to look. The visioning part of any effort is where we fall in love with our…
The one thing, as much as anything, that consumes people’s thoughts when they think about early retirement is money. How’s the market doing? How are my savings doing? Will I have enough? Have I estimated well enough? I was no different over the last 25+ years as we saved for early retirement. I have a…
