This summer, my family of five will be visiting England and Scotland. International travel became my top priority after my high school Latin class went to Italy in 1993. That trip inspired: A 60-day European backpacking trip in 1998, which led to Four months in China and South-East Asia in 2001, Five months in South America…
I moved in with my parents when I was 27. The football wallpaper in my bedroom was gone, and the bed was bigger. But it was still the room I slept in for the first 18 years of my life. While most of my friends were married and starting high-salary jobs after years of graduate…
Yep, I’ve been writing this blog for 10 years. But instead of rewriting what’s already been written, I want to focus on today and the future. Today’s post is a personal update about my current situation and how my life and business are moving toward closer alignment with “the why” of the early retirement goal…
Early retirement is a loaded phrase that ignites internet skepticism. We can partly blame the mainstream financial media for picking up stories about “early retirees” that run six and seven-figure businesses. Inconsistent messaging among early retirement bloggers doesn’t help, and I suspect the phrase is tossed around liberally on YouTube and TikTok. The FIRE crowd…
A former colleague once told me that if I ever started drinking coffee, I’d never stop. Frida drank ten cups a day. She was an administrative assistant in the media department at my university. I worked in the darkroom developing film and printing black and white photographs for various campus publications. The coffee maker was…
After two years of COVID-19 apprehension, our family is going on a real vacation — airplanes, amusements, and sit-down restaurants. Planning for upcoming trips reminds me of the kind of retirement travel that I’m ultimately working toward — month-long+ excursions on and off the beaten path — and how I’m getting closer to that kind…
A week after graduating from college, I flew to London and spent the summer riding trains and sleeping in hostels around Europe. Two things became clear that summer. I had no interest in more formal education, and I wanted to travel a lot more. The fastest way to travel again was to find a decent-paying…
It’s summer break for our kids. They don’t have much to compare this summer to, but life is good. No school. No homework. No job. No workday calendar. No bills to pay. They had Lucky Charms cereal for dinner Saturday night. Parenting fail. This is the best dinner ever. – My 4-year-old daughter The marshmallows are way…
In my mid-twenties, I quit my job to travel the world for 14 months. I visited 18 countries and spent about $10,000. A lifestyle of frequent and extended travel in retirement, funded by passive income, is a primary motivation to reach financial independence. This post is about how I was able to travel the world…
After choosing a domain name and starting my blog back in September of 2013, the software behind the scenes called WordPress asked me to declare a tagline. Unprepared, the first three words that came to mind were Invest. Retire. Travel. Those three words accurately presented the message I wanted to convey to my readers so I went…
I’m super-excited to bring you a guest post today from my friend Chad Carson of CoachCarson.com. Chad primarily writes about achieving financial independence via real estate investing. But he’s also in the midst of an epic year living abroad with his wife and two daughters in Cuenca, Ecuador. I’m envious of their planning…
Mrs. RBD’s brother proposed to his long-time girlfriend in 2016. Shortly after the jubilant celebration, my one-track mind started thinking How much is this wedding going to cost me? The answer: A lot. Other people’s weddings can be expensive, travel required or not. As a couple, traveling for a wedding is a nice getaway. As a…
Traveling the world in my 20s was my top priority after college. I ended up visiting more than 40 countries before turning 30, carrying with me a small Eagle Creek Backpack and no more than six pairs of underwear at any time. Now that I’m over forty, I look back on my days of full-time…
At age 27, I was broke, unemployed, and living at home with my parents. Not surprisingly, I was single too. Sounds depressing, right? Not so. I had recently returned from an epic 14-month backpacking trip to Asia and Latin America, spending just $10,000 on the entire journey, then completed a three-month, 8,000-mile road trip throughout the U.S and…