Caroline

New York City is finally seeing some nice weather, and we can resume our Excursion Fridays, where we visit the many magnificent nature sites the city has to offer. It is surprisingly easy to find nature in NYC but difficult to squeeze in the time when you’re tethered to an office job. Now that Scott has joined me in the virtual consulting world, we have the flexibility to take advantage [...]

We go a little bit crazy with our road trips. We bought a new car in December 2016 and have already put 88,000 miles on it! Even crazier, I don’t drive, so Scott has driven the entire 88,000 miles all by himself. Last week, we spent six days on a road trip from New York City to Fargo, ND for the Fargo marathon (Scott’s 16th state in his quest to [...]

I think of achieving FIRE in stages based on the lifestyle we’d like to live. At a minimum, we have achieved FIRE if we decamp to Costa Rica full-time – that’s why I think of Costa Rica as our FIRE escape plan B. However, we are still working on our ideal FIRE escape, which would include part-time living in a variety of places, including Costa Rica, Jacksonville, and New York [...]

Since cutting the cable cord a few years ago, we don’t keep up much with the latest TV shows. However, I remember Million Dollar Listing from before because it was quite the spectacle. Apparently, it’s still going strong with Season 11. One of its stars, Josh Altman, recently released a book, The Altman Close: Million Dollar Negotiating Tactics From America’s Top Selling Real Estate Agent. Altman has a fascinating, Type-A [...]

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. May 1 was decision day for college enrollment (or deposit day, if you’re like me and all about money). As I mentioned in a previous post, our youngest was considering two public colleges and two private colleges. The extra expense of private college (~$25,000 per [...]

This reader is thinking of making a real estate investment in Costa Rica but is also considering options closer to home: I LOVE what you guys are doing! I stumbled across your blog a couple weeks back and have been reading various articles that you've published. You two are my heroes!My wife and I are in a similar situation to you (although we met and had kids a bit later [...]

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. This reader is shopping for a Costa Rica vacation rental that yields a 10% return on investment: Hi, I wonder if you were able to get the 10% net that you were looking for. My husband and I are interested in investing in a rental [...]

High season for our Guanacaste vacation rentals is mid-December through Easter. We are already getting some reservation requests for the 2019/2020 high season. In fact, we recently received a request to reserve our Condo Reeves for six weeks from late January to early March 2020. However, after much deliberation, we turned it down. Here’s why. We definitely thought long and hard about the request before turning it down because long [...]

As we build our FIRE escape plan, health insurance continues to bedevil us. Our health insurance premiums went up several percentage points for 2019, and that was enough to put us over the $3,000 mark for coverage PER MONTH. Health insurance is our single highest line item. It is higher than our monthly housing and car payments combined! If we’re going to feel secure in our FIRE escape plan, we’ll [...]