We recently took a five-day trip, Thursday to Monday, to Tamarindo, which seemed a perfect example of bleisure (business + leisure) travel. We timed the trip around the annual homeowners’ association meeting at our condo complex, so it was first and foremost a business trip. Once we had the dates for the trip, we lined up other business meetings and errands since many things are best handled live - in fact, some things can only be handled live. Of course, since Costa Rica is a place that we love, we squeezed in our favorite leisure activities in-between. A trip to [...]

A few months ago, we moved into one of our Florida rentals and have made Florida our primary residence as of 2020. The rental needed a lot of work, as we had a tenant in place for six years. A longtime tenant is great financially because there is no lost rent due to vacancy or turnover costs in-between move-ins. However, when you do turn over the unit, there is a lot of deferred maintenance that you now have to do. At the time we turned over this unit, we considered selling it. Therefore, we didn’t want to make big updates [...]

We posted before about how we are targeting FIRE in stages of increasing spending levels: Our stage 1 is relocating full-time to Costa Rica and a level of spending that can easily be covered by our current income streams. This first stage is also purely hypothetical -- a Plan B option we set up just in case we need to drastically reduce our spending. As of now, the longest time we have spent there is one month in Costa Rica in 2019. Our stage 2 is relocating full-time to Florida and a higher level of spending than Stage 1 but [...]

With the upcoming tax season comes the inevitable reckoning with our numbers and seeing how we are doing with our businesses, mutual fund accounts and investing in real estate. We had no new acquisitions but still had six real estate closings in 2019! We did a cash-out refinance on our Florida duplex to pay back a private loan we took from a friend. We also sold our entire portfolio in Indianapolis which was more effort for less result than we targeted. We are now at 11 properties and not necessarily looking to buy more just for the sake of activity. [...]

During the morning of Christmas Eve, our family of four was in midtown New York City, but not for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Instead, we were at a law office signing important documents everyone should have (and more paperwork than a typical real estate closing!). Our daughters signed their power of attorney documents, which name who can take over their financial accounts and decisions if they are unable to manage themselves, and health care proxies, which are similar documents for medical decisions. Scott and I signed power of attorney documents, health care proxies, as well as an updated estate [...]

Our trip to Arizona was split almost equally among Tucson, Phoenix and Sedona. It was our first “real” trip out there other than a handful of days across the years on quick in-and-outs to Phoenix. We LOVED it and can see ourselves returning again and again. Best of all, there is so much to do for free. In fact, most of our activities turned out to be free. 10 free activities that are highly recommended: Driving around Mount Lemmon and Tucson Mountain Park in Tucson Garden of Gethsemane sculpture in Tucson Casa Grande Ruins between Tucson and Phoenix Phoenix Desert [...]

I LOVE movies and easily watch over a hundred movies each year. My favorite aspect of air travel is getting to watch movie marathons – I watched 15 movies in flight on our last trip to the Philippines. More time for movies is also one of my favorite aspects of the flexible FIRE lifestyle – I’m still giddy over seeing Rowan Atkinson live at a screening of his latest Johnny English film. On our current trip to Arizona, I watched a three-movie marathon on the flight from New York City, and was struck by how all three films had money [...]

The end of a year is already an introspective time, and now that Scott and I are officially empty-nesters, we are taking advantage of our slower, freed up schedule to dig even deeper. We are organizing our mementos, decluttering our stored items, updating our estate plan -- various tasks which prompt us to get even more introspective about then and now. Click to pin me! Some of the tasks, like updating our estate plan, are obviously financial in nature. But even going through our stuff has a financial element – would we buy these things now? What could we have [...]

I am lucky to get dozens of free books each year since my consulting work includes writing advice columns, and publicists send me review copies to hopefully feature their clients in my columns. I try to read as many review books as I can, and I also pick up books on my own dime and time. I particularly love business, personal finance and self-improvement books. You won’t see any fiction in my list. I used to read more in the leadership development category but as I have weaned myself off of working with large institutions and focus more on individuals [...]