Caroline

The return trip from the Philippines is so much fun for me. I get another movie marathon! I can easily watch 7-8 movies on the 17-hour trip, and with the time change (gaining 12 hours), you land as if you just flew cross-country within the US. We left early morning on a Tuesday and arrived early afternoon on the same day! I watched another eclectic mix of movies, and I [...]

This trip was all about the food, ranging from the food court at NAIA (Manila airport) to the expansive buffet at the Oriental Hotel in Legazpi to several great Filipino food options in Manila, and included eating at every donut shop we could find!

We started our week in Legazpi because it’s the location of a non-profit we have supported for 23 years and counting, Children International. CI recently opened a new community center, and the last time we visited in January 2017, it was just a concrete foundation and digital renderings. Now, it’s a fully built out, multiple-level, dual structure compound (with a covered basketball court!) that serves over 3,000 kids in the [...]

ser·en·dip·i·ty: noun: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. This week, CostaRicaFIRE got two media mentions, which is one of closest experiences I have had with serendipity in my goals; both of these media outlets were a big part of the inspiration behind our pivot into real estate, the FIRE life, and Costa Rica specifically! First off, the publication International Living, which inspired me to take [...]

One of the main reasons Scott and I chose a new retirement lifestyle is the freedom it gives us to travel. We took a trip to the Philippines in January 2017 (Scott’s first and my fourth, but after a 25-year absence), and we loved it so much we booked another trip in April. We found cheap fares on Cathay Pacific and jumped on them. Now I’m writing this post from [...]

For me, health optimization is related to stress management. When I’m stressed, I get sick – a cold that won’t go away, an upset stomach, sore muscles. In the year or so right before I left my corporate career, I was besieged by tingling nerves and numbness in my hands and feet that would come and go. Because it was clearly nerve-related, I had my spine looked at, an MRI [...]

We are not independently wealthy, and we have two kids who still live at home, but, we still have the time and money to travel. In 2017, for instance, we were away from home for about three total months, with several of the trips international. Our careers in our 20’s and 30’s were traditional corporate jobs tethered to our desks. But we did pick up some key skills that have [...]

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. We purchased our second investment in Costa Rica, Casa Salita, using our retirement money. Up until a few years ago when I seriously started researching real estate investing, I only thought of paper assets like stocks and mutual funds when considering where to invest my [...]

We closed on our first property, Condo Boom, in October 2017 and then on our second property, Casa Salita, just under two months later. Why two investments so close together? Having expanded our real estate portfolio from two rentals in our first eight years of investing to two or three per year since then, we’ve seen the benefit of volume. When you have two properties and one goes vacant, you [...]