Wandering Money Pig - A journey of early retirement and FIRE (financial independence retire early)

  Henderson Beach State Park, Destin, Florida  Oscar Wilde: “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” August 2024 marks my wife and myself’s 4 year anniversary of our early retirement.  My, how time flies!  It does seem like yesterday that we made the leap of faith to trust the concepts of the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement and to retire. Just thinking back to the days leading up to my final day at my job floods me with nostalgia.  It was during the peak of the pandemic, so I had to work remotely.  I remember dropping off all the company equipment on August 17 (my last day) like laptop, cell phone, etc., then meeting one of the best supervisors I’ve ever had (Kelly), for an exit interview. I could tell she was emotional after working together for the better part of 14 years, then having to say goodbye.  It was Kelly who made working there possible in the first place as she was one of the interviewers when I was hired.  She ...

  Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, Georgia  While I was planning our 8 week long road trip to the American South/Southeast/Deep South/Central South, I had this idea of visiting bunch of forts as well as other interesting points of interest along the way.  I’m not sure when I started to get interested in forts, but almost overnight, they looked really interesting. There’s something very appealing about forts with their combination of beauty, situated right near the waters, with plenty of history thrown in.  It’s learning about history not through textbooks, but rather from actually seeing and experiencing it first hand, simply the best kind of learning possible. I knew I wanted to visit the following forts during our trip: Fort Pulaski National Monument, Fort Frederica National Monument , and Fort Pickens Area of Gulf Island National Seashore .  Just  planning and mapping them out was so exciting, and it really got my brain working overtime, but in a good way...

  Tybee Island Lighthouse, Georgia Anonymous:  “Retirement is not the end of the road.  It is the beginning of the open highway.” Even after 4 years of living our early retirement, my wife and I still get asked similar questions we got when we initially told our family and friends of our plans to retire early.  Such questions are: 1) What do you do all day? 2) How do you save up enough funds to retire early? and 3) Is retirement still enjoyable?There are probably many other questions we do get asked about, but I would say these are the more common ones.   When we started planning for our early retirement way back around 2010 or so, we thought carefully about all of these questions ourselves.  What should we do to spend all that time after calling it quits from the rat race?  How do we save enough so we can live for the next 30-40 years?  How do we enjoy ourselves in retirement and not just live to survive? We both had good ideas about early retire...

  Fort Pulaski National Monument, Savannah, Georgia  Two years ago, my wife and I went on a West Coast/Southwest/Central South cross country road trip.  On that trip, we visited incredible national parks, monuments, and landmarks.  It is without a doubt what makes America great. It is knowing that every American can enjoy them without needing to worry that someday they’ll be turned into condos, amusement parks, or retail establishments.  Don’t we already have too many of these??? We experienced so much of what it means to live in this great country that is the United States of America.  The places we visited were amazing, many of them otherworldly, and awe-inspiring to say the least.  Places like Zion National Park and Death Valley National Park will live in our memories forever… We really got into visiting these national treasures that particularly trip.  Whereas in the past we would’ve stopped for not more than 30 minutes to take some photos at ...