Retiring early is normally pretty simple: Just spend less money than you earn, invest the difference in index funds, and follow the 4% rule. The 4% rule says that once you have at least 25× your annual expenses invested, you can withdraw enough money to…
A somewhat literal summary of Walden by Henry David Thoreau might call it a recollection of one man’s peaceful (and inexpensive) life in the woods of Massachusetts during the late 1840s — documentation of an uncomplicated world that’s long since past. But a book review…
Last year, we picked a country off our wishlist and booked a flight. We weren’t a part of an exchange student program or a research project. We didn’t have a work visa or a job offer. We were just randomly going on vacation…for three months.…
At age 29, we quit our jobs with a paid-off home, a reasonably well-stocked investment portfolio, and no plans to work full-time ever again. As financially independent early retirees, we’ve been praised for our prowess with money. But in truth, the decision to retire early…
Yesterday, the gorgeous seaside views grew distant as we said goodbye to the South Coast and headed inland to experience the eucalypt forests of Western Australia. From our Airbnb in Albany, it took about an hour and a half to drive across some hilly farmland…
We’re about a month into our three-month trip across Australia, and we’ve been buying iced lattes from McDonald’s (or “Macca’s,” as Aussies call it) almost every day. That’s not exactly one of our best hacks for making long-term travel cheap, but it’s the truth. We’re…
A few weeks ago, I walked into Chase Bank in Florida and asked to withdraw cash from my checking account in the form of Australian dollars for an upcoming trip. The branch manager smiled and quoted me a currency exchange rate that was seven percent…
For our wedding anniversary this year, we decided to keep it simple. Instead of taking one of our typical months-long road trips, we just drove an hour and a half north into Georgia to visit a little patch of Google Maps greenery that we’ve had…
For the most part, I consider myself to be sort of a minimalist. Aside from being notoriously frugal, I also don’t feel like I need a ton of stuff to be happy. But with that said, I’m cool with a little extravagance when it’s free.…
On day 45 of our road trip to some of the National Parks in Canada, we suddenly changed our plans. A fellow traveler suggested we load our camper van onto a ferry and enjoy the ride along the Inside Passage from Skagway to Haines, Alaska,…
When you’re trying to research an investment of any kind, you probably go straight to a historical price chart before anything else. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that most people have absolutely no idea how to read a stock chart correctly. It seems like…
The unfamiliar Taco Bell was out of Diet Pepsi, ice, and several varieties of Border Sauce. I placed my crippled order and handed over my Citi DoubleCash card. “Our machine’s broken.” After fishing a five-dollar bill out of my wallet, I paid 19th century style…
Last year, we planned to go to as many Canadian National Parks as possible on a summer road trip — and failed miserably. Strict COVID testing requirements combined with an overwhelmed healthcare system at the Montana-Alberta border stopped us dead in our tracks, diverting most…
When we tell people that we took six months off work for our honeymoon in Hawaii, or that we spent seven months on the road visiting every National Park in the US, or that we later retired early at age 29, we often receive an…
When I buy shares of VTI (Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund), I get a tiny slice of almost every publicly traded company in the United States. I own a piece of the entire stock market. Historically, this type of low-cost index fund has delivered…
We’ve been blogging about saving and investing money for nearly three years now, and somehow we’ve never actually shared what’s inside our own portfolio. Oops! I guess the main reason is that it’s really nothing special. We don’t have any super secret investments that helped…
I started college during the Great Recession, and I admittedly wasn’t very tuned in to politics or financial markets at the time. In the years leading up to that crisis and the recovery afterward, I was mostly focused on paying my bills and trying to…
At the beginning of 2015, I was a public school teacher, Lauren was doing marketing for a small financial company near Orlando, and we were both getting a little bored with working 8+ hours a day for ~$40k/yr. Luckily, we had a plan to fix…
We get a lot of “interesting” comments on TikTok and Instagram explaining why saving tons of money to enjoy life more is a dumb idea. In the past few months, the most popular argument against us has gone something like this: “By the time I…
Sometimes saving money feels completely incompatible with dating. But it’s not. When going out, what you do isn't nearly as important as how and why you do it. The same is true of all your choices — the car you drive, the house you live…
The US stock market grew 25.7% in 2021, causing a lot of personal finance influencers to show off their investment gains. They posted about passive six-figure growth over 6-month periods and preached about the power of investing. The same was true for us, actually…Investing is…
Do you know the interest rate on your savings account? If not, don’t feel too bad — most people have no idea. But since nobody really pays attention to this number, big banks get away with paying way below the fair market interest rate on…
In his early twenties, Jeremy Schneider founded RentLinx, a website that helps landlords list their properties for rent on multiple platforms simultaneously. At age 34, he sold that business for millions of dollars, invested the proceeds into stock and bond market index funds, and retired…
A month or so into any good trip, you begin to forget what it’s like back home. You get to break out of old routines, spend more time learning about yourself, and really start to live in the moment. It can feel as if you’re…
