I had a painful deja vu moment last week when I left the house for a meeting in downtown at 9am. It was the same route (and same building) which I had trekked to MegaCorp for more than a dozen years at the start of my career. It was also a route that was choked from start to finish with an unending traffic jam. As … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Grinding Traffic
Last week I had the pleasure of enjoying dinner with a good friend that I haven’t seen in more than 15 years. Michael and I were long-ago colleagues at a now distant MegaCorp and I have always enjoyed his perspective on life, family, and happiness. This is a guy who does a great job prioritizing all three and not letting work, money, and business get … Continue reading The Best Things In Life Are Free (and Outdoors)
MrFireStation doesn’t read a lot of celebrity gossip or People magazine, but I can’t help notice stories in which wealthy celebrities sue their accountant for mismanagement and running them into debt. Alyssa Milano, according to the Daily Mail, has been left in “financial ruin” by her accountant. The article, which cites arguments included in a California lawsuit, claims that she was “totally in the dark” … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – In The Dark Financially?
No words of wisdom from the FIRE Station this morning – just some interesting numbers to put your journey to FIRE into some perspective: AGING 50% of Americans are retired at age 63 18 years is the average length of retirement 13% of the US population is over age 65 today 6.1K Americans turn 65 each day 10.K Americans retire every day 55% of Americans … Continue reading Numbers To Put Your FIRE Journey In Perspective
This is the second post in our summer travel series and I thought I would feature one of my favorite cities in the whole world, Barcelona. If a city every stood by the name ‘colorful’ – it would be Barcelona. On a hot summer day & night, there is something truly magical about the Catalonian capital that give it a funky, laid-back, and romantic vibe. … Continue reading FIRE Travel – Barcelona, Spain
Earlier, I wrote a few posts on financial failures on our route to financial independence and early retirement (FIRE). The idea was to share that everything hasn’t been challenge-free on our route to a life of goofing off. Today’s story isn’t patently a financial failure, but it runs completely counter to the advice that you might typical hear as you build your retirement nest egg. … Continue reading Financial Failures – Taking Loans From 401k
Travel is a big part of our early retirement plans, so I thought I would start a Friday morning summer series on a number of places that we have enjoyed visiting and would recommend. We have good friends that are originally from the Czech Republic and they hosted us on our first overseas trip there about 12 years ago. It was a fantastic visit and … Continue reading FIRE Travel – Prague, Czech Republic
Some say not to ignore the LITTLE things each day because you might discover that they are really the big things in life. I have written a bit about some of the big things that have changed in our life since retiring early last year. The BIG things are the easy things to notice that aren’t to hard to figure: I am a lot more … Continue reading The Little Things In Life
We declined on rejoining the boat club we belonged to for the last five years and now that the weather has jumped up into the 80s, I’m wondering how much we will miss it? Financially, it certainly was a terrific deal. We paid $3K a summer and had unlimited uses of a terrific fleet of speedboats, cruisers, pontoons, and water ski boats. I wrote in this … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Boat Life
MrFireStation 