Here’s our latest interview with a retiree as we seek to learn from those who have actually taken the retirement plunge. If you’d like to be considered for an interview, drop me a note and we can chat about specifics. My questions are in bold italics and his responses follow in black. Let's get started... GENERAL OVERVIEW How old are you and your spouse? How long … [Read more...]
Seven Ways to Invest in Real Estate to Get Across the Retirement Finish Line
As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of real estate investing. For those who don't know, you can get caught up by reading why I got started in real estate, how my real estate investing plan came into being, and the results I've had from real estate investing. The summary: It's been awesome and I wish I had bought more when I had the chance! I've been thinking about … [Read more...]
Awesome Things People Are Doing in Retirement
You know I am a big fan of retirement. There's just not enough great things I can say about it. ;) But I'm pretty average when it comes to retirement activities -- I travel a bit, get lots of exercise, and run a blog on the side. Fairly average in my book. On the other hand, there are some people doing some amazing things in retirement. They have stepped it up big time in … [Read more...]
A Real-Life Example of How to Take Early Semi-Retirement
As I noted in my two previous posts (Early Semi-Retirement: An Alternative to Full Retirement and Early Semi-Retirement: Work Options and Fun Activities) discussing the book Work Less, Live More: The Way to Semi-Retirement, I wrote about the book in 2010 on my former blog. In one of those posts a reader commented that he had moved into early semi-retirement (going from … [Read more...]
Early Semi-Retirement: Work Options and Fun Activities
Today we're continuing our discussion of the book Work Less, Live More: The Way to Semi-Retirement which I started in Early Semi-Retirement: An Alternative to Full Retirement. If you want to catch up, I suggest you read that post first because I'm going to jump in quickly with new topics from the book. Plus that post was pretty interesting if I do say so myself. … [Read more...]
Retirement Update: Three Years
Woo hoo! It's now been THREE YEARS since I've been retired! This milestone is a great time to do a bit of reflecting, so here are some thoughts on retirement overall... First, I'm so glad I did it when I did. If circumstances had worked out differently, I might be still working. Second, I wish I had done it earlier. My biggest FI mistake was not retiring … [Read more...]
How to Find a Place to Retire To
After writing Retirement Housing Decisions and getting a ton of GREAT suggestions (thank you!) I decided to ask the Wise Sage of All Knowledge what they thought about retirement housing. Who is this Wise Sage? Google, of course. ;) After all, their entire business is built upon finding the best content for any given search term, so they probably have most of this figured … [Read more...]
Why Taking Social Security Early Might Be the Best Option
While deciding when to take Social Security (SS) is still some time off for me, it's been on my mind recently. As I've been reading the Retirement Interviews it seems there are a disproportionate number of comments and thoughts around how the retirees address Social Security. I'm interested in this as well because it's 1) a complicated subject and 2) something I don't … [Read more...]
Early Semi-Retirement: An Alternative to Full Retirement
Many years ago (on my first site) I wrote several posts on the book Work Less, Live More: The Way to Semi-Retirement. This pre-dated FIRE becoming more mainstream (and being known by me) as the book was originally published in 2007 and I wrote about it in 2010. At that time, the idea of semi-retirement was rather unique and somewhat "out there." (Though undoubtedly it, or … [Read more...]
10 Small Joys of Early Retirement
This is a guest post I wrote which originally appeared on PT Money. It's a bit dated but the ten small joys still hold true. We all are aware of the great benefits in retirement: the freedom of time, the ability to travel and, of course, not having to work. :) But what about the little things? What about the small joys that pop up in retirement? You know, the simple … [Read more...]
