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

  Ocean City, Maryland  It seems every day these day, anyone who is even remotely interested in money matters is closely watching the inflation rate.  I for one, is in that group.   When going grocery shopping seems expensive compared to just 4 years ago, or when going out to eat at a sit down restaurant costs an arm and a leg, we can’t help but notice how much more expensive things have become. I remember the early days of 2022, just prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when a gallon of gasoline near Myrtle Beach (where we were staying at during that winter) was around $2.25.  Fast forward to this year, and we’re seeing that same gallon of gasoline cost upwards of $3.00 or more. Going grocery shopping is one of the most unmistakable things I notice since the pandemic.  Just even 3 years ago, we spent roughly around $300-$400 on groceries per month.  These days, we’re spending something like $400-$500 per month.   Sure, you can blame greedy corporations that raised prices on every

  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 was so nice to have bought my favorite

  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. My brain is wired for trave

  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 retirement thanks to our commitment to the FI