Two year anniversary of this blog “Wandering Money Pig”: Thank you readers!

 

Toby in Charleston, SC (2022)

Pablo Picasso:  “I’m always doing things I can’t do; that’s how I get to do them.”

December 2022 marks the second year anniversary of this blog “Wandering Money Pig”.  It’s true what people say about time.  It really flies, especially when you’re having fun.  I have a hard time believing it’s been two years since I started this blog.

The first year of this blog covered everything I personally felt and experienced about the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement leading up to my early retirement, as well as my personal journey of early retirement.  If the first year was laying down the philosophy of my personal variation of the FIRE movement, including how and why I got into the movement, then the second year covered how my actual early retirement was going.  

I traveled to so many places during the second year.  These places included Altoona (PA), Snowshoe (WV), Murrells Inlet (SC), Tupper Lake (NY), Stratton (ME), and Canaan (VT).  All of these are places I’ve never visited in the past, and as usual, I discovered that the land of the Americas is just vast, with so many things and places to explore.

The more we drive to arrive at a destination, the more we realize the immensity of the land.  However, compared to our first year, we’re now finding it easier to cover vast distances.  Prior to our retirement, we didn’t look forward to driving 300 plus miles per day, but these days, we’re doing that without blinking an eye…

I had gotten a true appreciation of well-known and less well-known places tucked away into all sorts of places in this great country of ours.  My wife and I discovered national parks, state/local parks, waterfalls, famous cities, and small tiny towns.  We enjoyed every one of them in different ways…

With each trip we took, we got incrementally better at packing for our month long (or longer) trips.  What used to be huge chore and a mild stress inducer for my wife, has become easier with each ensuing trip.  We are traveling lighter than our first year, as evidenced by the fact that I can see and actually use the rearview mirror, which was not possible the first year.

Two of the biggest things that happened during our second year were the passing of my mother-in-law and the passing of our Pomeranian Toby.  Interestingly enough, nothing much really changed after the passing of my mother-in-law, as we continued to live exactly the same way as we’ve been doing since our early retirement.  

We of course think about her and miss her, but with the exception of not being able to see her, our nomadic lifestyle, of staying at month long rentals using AirBNB didn’t change.  That wasn’t the case when our Pomeranian passed away.

Toby, our forever furball, baby, spoiled rotten dog, had an immense impact on our lives.  Because we had spent the past 15 years, literally side by side every day, with him sleeping next to us every single day, we miss him tremendously.  

Toby’s passing made us to alter our course in our nomadic lifestyle.  We no longer needed AirBNB type lodgings for one, and for other, we could spend our days doing things we usually couldn’t when we had Toby.

That allowed us to seek out hotel/motel as our preferred way to travel in October (and beyond) when we traveled to New Jersey and to Washington D.C. area to do more of the museums, restaurants, and just taking our time enjoying a meal or a cup of coffee when we’re exploring.

We’re trying to adapt to our new reality as best we could.  We don’t want to just reminisce about Toby or my mother-in-law all day and not enjoy our lives.  They wouldn’t want that, and neither do we…Like my dad always says, ones left behind when loved ones depart, must still go on, and continue to live their lives…

Second year of our early retirement was certainly sad, but it is called living a life.  We will always lose loved ones, as those that are born, must also die at some point.  Just because we’re retired doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with life.  

As of end of November, we are currently on our first cross country trip from North Carolina to California.  It has been close to twenty years since we drove from the east coast to the west coast.   We have already spent time in Biloxi (MS) and New Orleans (LA).  We’ll keep you posted along the way.

Thank you readers for coming along for the ride in our journey of early retirement and in our journey through this thing called life.  Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!  Please be well and be healthy.

Thank you,

Jake

Wandering Money Pig