How easy it is to buy things nowadays? Just a week after getting my extra garage space, I’m on a plane this morning to a car dealer near Madison, Wisconsin to pick up my new Jeep. After researching what I wanted online for a week, I bought this Wrangler with just 2 phone calls and an email. One call to confirm it was available and … Continue reading How Simple To Spend $$$
I just got this notification from WordPress that it has been 6 years since I started babbling nonsense through this blog. In January 2015, I still was 14 months from quitting my job and living a life of nonsense. This writing project was inspired as a way to perhaps help others think through their journey to early retirement. I found very few longer-form descriptions of … Continue reading Six Years Of Nonsense
It’s always interesting to see what articles people responded most to at the end of the year. Some posts connect with current events, some were linked to by bigger websites, and some are perennial favorites. have several thousand hits. Top 2020 posts … 1. Time To Put Off Retirement? – This early-pandemic post (April 2020) pondered if it was a still a good time to … Continue reading MrFireStation’s Top 10 Posts in 2020
We’ve been retired for over 4.5 years now and I find myself surprised that it has been that long. People still say I seem too young to be retired, but when you consider it’s almost been 50 months since I went to work at MegaCorp … it feels ridiculous. Where has all the time gone? I find myself really unable to account for the last … Continue reading Where Does The Time Go?
I made a big stack of buckwheat pancakes for myself yesterday, topped it with real maple syrup & berries, and added a glass of orange juice. It’s a repeat of the breakfast that I had the morning I walked away from working and into the wonderful world of FIRE (financial independence & retired early). Related: FIRE Milestone – Final Day: Blasting Into Retirement It only took … Continue reading Big Breakfast
This past Tuesday, my wife and I celebrated our 30th Anniversary with a getaway to Minnesota’s scenic North Shore on Lake Superior. Over dinner on the deck of a lakefront restaurant, we were sharing memories of our wedding rehearsal, ceremony, and reception. They are all distant memories now, but many stick with you from the time they happen. I recalled my Dad’s reaction to the … Continue reading Anniversary Memories
At a backyard ‘social-distanced’ event last weekend, people were asking me about our early retirement. As is often the case, one person cut in and asked if my wife was still working while I was being a goof off. She doesn’t work, but the question always comes with a ‘gotcha’ tone as if they are suspiciously wondering if we are really retired – or am … Continue reading From This Day Forward …
I’ve been gone from work for 4 years as of April Fool’s Day and even though 4/1 was more than three weeks ago, I never even reflected on the anniversary as it passed. In previous years, I’ve written a post to articulate how things are going, but I guess after this much time, early retirement has just become who I am. Last Friday I had … Continue reading Zooming Back To MegaCorp
The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece this week listing the FIRE (financially independent & retired early) movement as a key development in personal finance over the last decade. The overall focus of the story is on the 2010s as the “Decade of Frugality”. We started our journey to FIRE long before we knew the FIRE acronym and many years before the 2010s began. … Continue reading Decade of Frugality and FIRE?
On my Apple News feed, a recent story popped up about the Kansas State Lottery ‘Holiday Millionaire’ game, which gets drawn on the day after New Year’s. Winning that would change most people’s lives, wouldn’t it? Well … some people don’t think so. As much as the media loves to bedevil wealthy people these days, they also like to poo-poo the idea that having a … Continue reading Christmas Lottery Millionaire?
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