Our Fantastic 2-Week Hawaii Vacation… Would I Go Back Though?

Our Fantastic 2-Week Hawaii Vacation… Would I Go Back Though?

2 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Life in Early Retirement, Spending / /

Hey, everyone – we just got back from a two-week Hawaii vacation… super cool trip. We flew down to O’ahu with our best friends, Dave and Kellie, who we’ve known for over 25 years! They stayed at an Airbnb in Waikiki for the first week. We stayed the first week with some of my other best friends, Matt and Mandi (who I’ve known even longer!), and who live in Pearl City We did a ton of cool stuff throughout the […]

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The Huge Blind Spot in Empower's Asset Allocation

The Huge Blind Spot in Empower’s Asset Allocation

6 Comments / Investments, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE) / /

I love using the Empower dashboard to manage our investment portfolio. Not only is it worth its weight in gold, but the price of $0 is something worthwhile, too! They’re hoping you decide to use their investment services, but it’s not a requirement. I don’t use their services, but I have heard good things about them. So, if you want an easy way to aggregate all your financial life into one dashboard with amazing retirement and investment tools, sign up

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Leveraging AI Made Filing My Taxes Surprisingly Less Stressful

Leveraging AI Made Filing My Taxes Surprisingly Less Stressful

6 Comments / Taxes and Financial Planning, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments / /

I’ve got mixed feelings about the power of AI (artificial intelligence). Privacy can start blurring quickly and the bad guys will continue leveraging AI to be exponentially worse than before. But… AI is helping to do some amazing things. The one area that keeps me fascinated is the world of medicine. AI is helping to detect cancer better, provide better risk prevention, and improve surgical outcomes. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about cures for diseases that seemed like they

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Being Lucky Has Little to Do with Luck

Being Lucky Has Little to Do with Luck

16 Comments / Motivation, General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Life in Early Retirement / /

I had an interesting conversation in my head today. I was wrapping up some things I was working on and thought, “Wow, that’s really starting to fall into place… we’re pretty lucky.” Then I started thinking, “Ya know, the far majority of the time, things consistently do fall into place with what we’re doing.” Then that really got my mind going – is it that we really are just lucky, or is it something else? And that’s when my brain

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How Our 38-Day Europe Trip Took an Unexpected Turn (And Why It Was the Best Part)

How Our 38-Day Europe Trip Took an Unexpected Turn (And Why It Was the Best Part)

16 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Travel and Vacation / /

Well, our big Europe trip is officially over… and it was truly awesome. We spent time in a ton of cities and countries throughout, but somehow we still have so many more we want to visit! Nothing’s ever perfect, but this trip was pretty darn close, and it checked all the boxes of a fantastic experience for our first time on the continent. All the cards just seemed to fall into place, making for an amazing time. With this being

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An Exciting Net Worth Milestone and Some Other Ramblings

An Exciting Net Worth Milestone and Some Other Ramblings

14 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Blogging, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Investments, Road Trip, Travel and Vacation / /

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. I think I’m starting to get into a nice cadence that I’m enjoying a little more. I still really love writing for Route to Retire, but after 10 years, I decided earlier this year that it was time for a lighter rhythm. It didn’t make sense to keep holding myself to some self-imposed, arbitrary schedule, especially with all the other fun things I’ve been keeping myself busy with lately. So although

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The Self-Hosting Spark: How Ditching Google Reignited My Tech Obsession

The Self-Hosting Spark: How Ditching Google Reignited My Tech Obsession

13 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Motivation, Product and Service Reviews / /

I’ve been talking about a project that I’ve been working on for several months now, which has kept me pretty busy. It’s time I fill you in that it’s been all about self-hosting (I’ll explain that soon). What was not expected was how this project sparked a renewed interest in technology for me. The feeling of fun I’ve had with this stuff hasn’t been there since the early days of my IT career, which started back in 1999. Yeah, I’m

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The 3 Scenes of the Superman Movie I Made It Into

The 3 Scenes of the Superman Movie I Made It Into

4 Comments / Life in Early Retirement, General Thoughts / /

Last summer, I wrote the post “Lights, Camera, Exhaustion: I Worked as a Movie Extra for 6 Grueling Yet Awesome Days” about the opportunity I had to be an extra in a movie. It was so cool to get the chance to do this and see how the sausage is made. It was also grueling with a lot of long days in the hot sun. At the time, I wasn’t allowed to reveal the movie that they were filming. However,

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The Surprising FAFSA/SAI and Roth IRA Conflict that Almost Sabotaged Our Financial Aid Plan

The Surprising FAFSA/SAI and Roth IRA Conflict that Almost Sabotaged Our Financial Aid Plan

24 Comments / Taxes and Financial Planning, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Kids / /

Updated: 08/27/25 We’re closing in on the end of my 7th year of early retirement. I was fortunate enough to run my last day on the hamster wheel on December 31, 2018. At the time, I had a plan and was confident it would work (though there’s always that tiny bit of self-doubt!). Fortunately, it’s worked better than we could have expected, thanks in part to retiring at a time when the stock market has continued to climb with only

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Why I Got the Chase Sapphire Reserve… Even With Its $795 Fee

Why I Got the Chase Sapphire Reserve… Even With Its $795 Fee

6 Comments / Product and Service Reviews, Here's Why I'm Liking..., Saving, Spending, Travel and Vacation / /

Long-time readers know that we’ve been playing the credit cards travel rewards game for several years now. The more we learn how to play the game more efficiently, the further the rewards have taken us. Without a doubt, credit card travel rewards have easily saved us tens of thousands of dollars on travel and helped us vacation in some amazing places. Regardless, we’re still pretty judicious about which cards we apply for. Just because a bonus is good, if it

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