We are overseas as this post publishes on Monday morning in the USA. We left yesterday for our summer vacation to Japan. We are going to spend 11 days in Tokyo & Kyoto. It is our first trip to Asia as a family and our first since early retiring in April. Many people leave for a dramatic trip immediately after retiring. My friend John left for … Continue reading Relaxed Travel Departure
There are people working all around us, of course – every day 24×7. Especially during the workweek, but there are also many people working on the weekends. That said, even after just three months of early retirement you start to not notice them as much. Many jobs are ‘out of site’ – people that work in office buildings, folks that work on the road, and … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Road Crews Reactions
This post is part of the MrFireStation.com series called Life After FIRE … For MANY years, when we would go to church the weekly program would announce what the Retired Men’s Group was doing that month. It sounded FUN. They were golfing, they were listening to an expert on a local business or project, they were raising money for a good cause,or they had a speaker … Continue reading Life After FIRE – Fitting In
With Independence Day, it is hard not to see the parallels between what the Founding Fathers fought for as a nation and what we all fight for in our lives … FREEDOM. As it says in the Declaration of Independence, we “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ——” These are the … Continue reading Freedom – For Our Nation, For Ourselves
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 finance starts with the word PERSONAL. The example here is … Continue reading Parable of Saving: Where’s Your Ferrari?
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 was to eliminate a set number of things each day … Continue reading Decluttering Challenge – Complete! (Late)
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 goals and are free to imagine anything we want to … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Up Your Imagination
I often tell people that my decision to retire before I turned 50 is either the smartest or stupidest decision I ever made. I am not sure which it is yet. The fact is, there often is a razor thin line between absolute brilliance and utter foolishness. Only time will tell which side of the line you are falling on and by then it is … Continue reading FIRE Station Fun – Taking Life’s Risks
My mind has been thinking back to school days lately. Three weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit my old elementary school in Michigan for the first time in over 38 years. This past Friday, our son graduated from high school with a big ceremony at the Cathedral and and enjoyed his all-night senior party at school. He went to the same high school … Continue reading Summer Break – Class of 2016
Not long ago I had lunch with my recently early retired friend Russ, who gave me the inside scoop on snowbirding from wintery Minnesota to sunny Florida. Russ and his wife, Tracey, are new to the lifestyle, having bought a condominium on the gulf coast of Florida last year, which they can enjoy now that he retired from MegaCorp at the end of January. They … Continue reading Early Retirement “Snowbirding 101”
