Several prominent early retirees have shared their challenges with life-changing events to include divorces, major medical surprises, and death of a spouse. While these events have a low chance of occurring for most early retirees, the impact of these events could derail our retirement plans. Some early retirees had to return to full-time employment as their passive income no longer covered their expenses. But others had a strong enough financial picture to weather the significant cut in net ...| Living The FIgh Life
Launa and I celebrated our second anniversary of nomadic travel this month. It has been an incredible life experience so far with so much more to see and do in the world. After letting go of 98% of our possessions and turning our house into our second rental unit, we embarked on a full-time nomadic … Continue reading 10 Things I Have Learned From Two Years Of Slow-Traveling The World Full-time| Living The FIgh Life
My wife (a public school teacher) and I (a government employee) both achieved financial independence and retired at the age of 52, or 15 years before Social Security’s full retirement age. Coming when we are still able-bodied and relatively healthy, that 15 years represents a lot of time to follow our curiosities.| Living The FIgh Life
Accounting helps businesses track and organize financial information so business leaders can make informed decisions. Similarly in personal finance we all implement some level of accounting to help manage our finances to track, budget, spend, save, invest and file taxes. In a past life I managed multi-million dollar businesses with complex financial statements and taught basic accounting to US Air Force Officers. While individual people are not required to follow business accounting principle...| Living The FIgh Life
The quaint city of Ely in the county of Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom is far enough off the beaten path and such a lovely place worth visiting that I would like to share it with you.| Living The FIgh Life
The (ability to) retire early part is the primary thing that makes the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) community different from all the other personal finance approaches. We CAN retire early, and we as a community should own it.| Living The FIgh Life
Becoming a minimalist takes a lot of introspection. Identifying what you value the very most and letting go of the rest is hard work. Asking yourself tough questions to separate the objects you own from the emotions, marketing pressures, perceived value, and other forces that drive what we buy and own. Likewise, I’ve found that staying a minimalist doesn’t happen on its own––I have to stay focused on my values to avoid falling back into the collect-purge cycle. | Living The FIgh Life
Thinking about inflation? Me, too. With recent increases in government tariffs on foreign goods, the specter of higher inflation has increased, and the potential impact on your expenses may be a worry. But the impacts of inflation are not always bad—or as bad as we may think. Inflation is demonized because we tend to notice higher prices for gas or groceries on a regular basis, but we tend not to notice when prices stay neutral or go down, or when our income goes up.| Living The FIgh Life
Since my early retirement in 2020, I have noticed several misunderstandings about pursuing financial independence (FI) and retiring early that are frequently perpetuated by FI content creators and their guests. Here are six common myths regarding pursuing full FI and early retirement. While some of these might be true for some individuals or in very specific cases, they become myths when touted as general truths. It is time to debunk several:| Living The FIgh Life
So, you have a lot of old photos scattered in boxes and old albums in your basement and attic. If you agree with my case to scan your old photos yourself and you decided to skip an overpriced photo scanning service and help cash in on your memory dividends this article is for you. You’ve taken on a big job, but a very rewarding one—I think you will love the results. As my wife and I embraced minimalism and downsized our personal possessions by 98% in preparation to become full-time nomads...| Living The FIgh Life
Hello from Fethiye, Türkiye. Launa and I just completed hiking 100 miles (per her Fitbit) last week from Bologna to Florence along the Via Degli Dei. We love inn-to-inn hikes, so we flew to Türkiye to embark on a 220-mile adventure hiking the Lycian way (roughly from Fethiye to Antalya)—today is our first day. To keep my pack light I jettisoned my laptop, so I’m typing this update on an iffy WiFi connection on my phone (apologies for typos). My purpose in writing this short post is to l...| Living The FIgh Life
When host Regis Philbin asked his game show contestants and audience “who wants to be a millionaire?,” he tapped into a belief many of us learned as children, that a million dollars was the pinnacle of financial success. | Living The FIgh Life
Since 2013, we have exchanged our Arlington, VA home 10 times (excluding several planned exchanges foiled by the pandemic). We exchanged with families in Paris, Barcelona, Montreal, and Iceland, to name a few. With the world opening back up, this is a good time to share what is great about a home exchange experience.| Living The FIgh Life
My wife and I bought a $600 high-quality photo scanner and spent the time to cull, organize, and scan our 10,000 or so pre-digital hard copy photos. We are so glad we did! Now, they are a seamless part of our digital photo collection. Our pictures are always with us and we can easily search … Continue reading The Case For Scanning Your Old Photos Yourself| Living The FIgh Life
My wife and I are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary this year (and 38 years of being a couple). While on a public ferry in Luxor, Egypt we quizzed each other on the many other ferry boats we had ridden together. We each remembered examples the other hadn’t. It was a fun walk down memory lane from the British Columbia ferry we rode on our honeymoon to a recent public row boat from the cities of Rabat to Salé across the Bou Regreg river in Morocco [see photo above]. | Living The FIgh Life
I often hear (and read) discussions about choosing either the military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) or term life insurance to help the surviving spouse remain financially secure. This is comparing the wrong two things.| Living The FIgh Life
Having an emergency fund is foundational to healthy finances and our pursuit of financial independence. From an unexpected car repair to the loss of a job, the primary job of an emergency fund is to help you weather unexpected financial challenges that could derail your financial progress. Depending on your situation, you may have anywhere from $1,000 upward to 6 months worth of expenses in a readily accessible account standing watch over your financial castle while you sleep a little more so...| Living The FIgh Life
On August 28, 2020 at 5:47 pm, at age 52, I declared my financial independence (FI), packed up my personal belongings and left my GS-15 job at the Department of Defense after 9 years of civil service and 20 years of active duty. How was I feeling? As you can see from the below video, I felt great.| Living The FIgh Life
My wife Launa has a new guest blog series at Reading Rockets about how children from different countries are taught to read. As we travel around the world, she and I are having a great time visiting local schools and talking to teachers about how children in their country learn to read. To be clear, … Continue reading Our Adventures Visiting Schools Around The World| Living The FIgh Life
Minimalism has had a profoundly positive impact on my life. I’m healthier and calmer, I have more time and flexibility with money, and I’m more content overall. In an effort to share why I have chosen a minimalist life and why it is so rewarding to me, here are my eight benefits of being a minimalist: | Living The FIgh Life
I used to be a cyclist, gardener, canner, aspiring musician, soccer coach, coin collector, stamp collector, home owner, DIY handyman, and Department of Defense hospitality expert. | Living The FIgh Life
Before I embraced minimalism, I loved to go camping. In the woods I noticed how quiet my mind was. It wasn’t just bathing in the trees that was calming. I enjoyed not being reminded by my multitude of belongings of the many chores I needed to get done at home. Similarly, when I was in a hotel for a few days, I didn’t have mental conversations with the items in the room. The wallpaper with the lifting seam, the fake floral arrangement that needed dusting, or the floor tiles with the marks ...| Living The FIgh Life
Minimalism changed my life for the better. Minimalism at its core is focusing on what we truly value and eliminating the rest. There is not a definitive number of things a person should own to be a minimalist, and making minimalism a comparison game defeats one of its key purposes. | Living The FIgh Life
My wife and I sold or gave away 98 percent of our belongings. Our dream to be full-time nomadic travelers took flight in July 2023––a goal we never thought possible until we fully embraced minimalism. | Living The FIgh Life
I frequently hear on Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) podcasts and read in FIRE blogs that the RE (Retire Early) part of the FIRE acronym should be dropped. They can’t imagine not working, they say, and besides, they enjoy working.| Living The FIgh Life
(Originally published Feb 1, 2023. Revised—substantial edits in italics) The FIRE community talks a lot about the rent vs. buy discussion. Which is the optimal financial decision for your personal housing and how to calculate that? While there is great information out there to help you decide, I see two important considerations often left out of these discussion:| Living The FIgh Life
“I want to be happy” was how I replied when asked as a youth what I wanted to be in life. Likely inspired by our country’s Declaration of Independence, I bought into the enticing desire of achieving full happiness. It doesn’t work that way.| Living The FIgh Life
