About

• The path to financial independence and early retirement
• The money mindset
• Minimalism
• Military, veteran, and government civilian benefits
• Nomadic travel
• Real estate

My definition of financial independence retire early (FIRE): the point after which you have enough passive income streams where paid work is optional (i.e., having the ability to retire early) and you have complete freedom to pursue your interests.

If you are interested in new content, I recommend using an RSS newsfeed app (NetNewsWire works good for me) to get notifications when I add new posts as I am an inconsistent blogger (hey, I’m retired 🙂)

A little about myself:

Living through the economic challenges of the late 70’s and early 80’s with high unemployment and high inflation (~14%) rooted me with some good (and not so good) money beliefs. I have been frugal and debt averse, but also risk averse. I have owned and managed one or two rental properties since 2005. I discovered FI concepts in 2018, and they allowed me to shift from a “I’ll have to work until I am 70” mentality, to leaving paid work just 2 years later. To be clear, I already had a strong financial foundation, but I needed a seismic shift in thinking – building a strong money mindset. This has been the real journey.

I served 20 years active duty in the Air Force managing commissary, exchange, and morale, welfare, and recreation programs, and, later as a DoD civilian, overseeing DoD policy for these programs. I attained basic financial independence (lean FIRE) in 2011 and full FI in 2017. I quit my job in 2020, declaring my “financial independence” from paid work 15 years before traditional retirement age. My wife quit her job in 2022. Our passive income comes from my pension, our stock investments, and real estate. Since we skipped DoD’s Survivor Benefit Plan, we instead smartly invested the premiums and other savings so my wife wouldn’t need to work if I (and my military pension) died off.

After “FIRE’ing” from work, I went back to grad school to study history (a long-time passion of mine). But I kept finding my attention coming back to personal finance. I have spent thousands of hours reading financial-related books, articles, blogs, and listening to numerous personal finance podcasts. In 2022, I worked for a year in the DoD Office of Financial Readiness educating service members on personal finance—my dream job. I quit my dream job after one year because it prevented me from doing what I valued most-—extensive travel and spending more quality time with friends and family.

My wife and I are now both retired (minor real estate work aside). We fully embraced minimalism and sold or gave away all of our possessions except for a 5x5x7 container worth (stored in a friend’s basement) and we are pursuing our passion of learning about the world as full-time nomadic travelers (a carry-on and a small backpack each) as we pursue happiness contentment.

I started this blog in 2022 as a way to capture my thoughts on a myriad of topics. I don’t monetize this blog in any way (and never will) as I truly don’t need the money and I want to be able to share my thoughts without any perceived financial influence.

Thanks for joining me, I hope you will find something of value in these virtual pages.

Cheers,

Justin