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congrats on pulling the trigger. DW and I also both loved what we did. Objectively, perhaps too much so--leading to far more hours at work that most people devote. BUT, once we had enough assets, we gave our lengthy notices and quit on the same day in 2017. It has been amazing. We've spent...

Yeah, that's us too. We occasionally get together with two couples in town (2 or 3 dinners a year?), and with two others that live 13 and 8 hours away (We get together with them for a week or so every year, plus the occasional drop in.). Then we also have our kids/grands, and other relatives...

In general, I agree. But the process of trying to find such individual friends, when we never found any such connections during our careers, is ... difficult. Particularly when we are such outliers on travel, and when we are home, we are getting ready for the next trip or two. (No Church, no...

Interesting. We thought the drivers were pretty good as a whole. But, then again, we were mainly in rural areas.

I read articles like that and, fortunately, am at a loss to understand them. Much like articles talking about sleep difficulties... DW and I looked forward to retiring at the same time so that we could finally spend a large amount of quality time together. Almost 7 years in, traveling...

Your wife is definitely in the majority with her wine preference; we felt a little weird in preferring the country's Riesling, Pinot Gris, and Syrah wines. (The Central Otago Pinot Noirs, OTOH, are beautiful and needed no apologies!) My wife actually avoided Queenstown in her planning out of...

Wow. What a trip. 55 days, including 5400 miles in a 53 day car rental! We did a rough figure 8 on both the North and South Islands, hitting m/l the southernmost and northernmost points. Route and stops shown here: Our route between lodgings Wine tastings? Oh yeah! We tasted a bit more than...

In Nashville, based on prices, news articles, and our work acquaintances/friends/clients, the merely "rich" find the Franklin/Brentwood areas attractive. Why? That's where the "rich" live (aka, successful lawyers, doctors, and business executives). And good schools, decent yards (1-2 acres?)...

The most desirable for whom, what, and when? When we moved here 20 years ago with our teens, we wanted land and reasonable proximity to both the metro center (25 minutes) and DW's office and main hospital (12 minutes to her parking spot in the middle of the night). That put us well away from...

We returned last week from a trip in which we sandwiched a long trip to NZ with two weeks of land-based diving in Fiji. (Relatively speaking, it was attractive to do business class roundtrip to Nadi, Fiji, and connect to Auckland via 3 hour flight in coach; during the NZ trip, we stored our...

We haven't seen credit card surcharges much in the US. But, in NZ, I it was VERY unusual not to see them. I hesitate to use the word "all," but it sure seemed like we always had them at restaurants during our recent trip. (about 60 restaurants in total.) It didn't trouble us much, as we...

We do, both locally for new restaurants and when traveling. Sometimes we look deeply into the reviews, as on our recent NZ trip when looking for fine dining in small towns. And we try to leave comprehensive reviews ourselves if the restaurant has not been the subject of many reviews.

Excellent. Thanks for posting! We retired at 57/56, almost 7 years ago. These particular points are definitely true for us as well! Hope that it continues for you as it has for us.

Were you on Grand Cayman or the sister islands? (Don't know if that would make a difference, but the development pressures are different.)

Wow! Nifty looking site. Just now seeing it, as we were traveling (not in the sense of being banned.:eek:). Good work, folks!

DW has a personal travel blog that is organized around her (and occasionally my) photography. This originated as a way to update friends/family as to what we were doing, and for our future selves. Given that we travel half the year (and spend much of our time at home planning and booking...

We retired in 2017 at 57/56. DW gave me a lot of grief over the several years of telling her to work "4 more years," as I applied more conservative metrics and more retirement calculators . In the end, we were looking at 2% withdrawal of the initial portfolio to fund our expected "at home"...

We do only carry on unless we are diving. We always travel with two laptops and DW's 35mm camera and 18-400 lens. Perhaps the trip that stretched us the most on carry on was a 2.5 month trip to Santiago (fancy restaurants), Easter Island, Montevideo & Buenos Aires (more fancy restaurants), 3...

That's understandable, and is true for us as well. (Currently in Mount Cook national Park!). The only way we would taste 200 wines here (projected number), is by not being in a hurry to leave. 😂 We also have a booking at Ripon in Wanaka (I think in a couple of weeks, on our second stay there?)...

We bring two laptops on our trips, including the present 2.5 months in Fiji and NZ. DW does extensive photography and her personal travel blog. I shoot underwater video. The editing/review process for each is extensive. I also use mine for quicken so as to avoid having to process weeks of...

Travel (50% +) Fed taxes on Roth conversions Fed taxes Mortgage (fixed 2.75%) Everything else. Sorry for lack of detail. Traveling and laptop SSD fizzled just 54 weeks after purchase.

Yes, those wines were quite good. Interestingly, the islands as a whole avoided phylloxera, so there are a lot of "new/old" varietals. I should have updated my first post, which dealt only with our first tasting experience. The Canaries have good and unusual wines and were a fun wine...

Currently on a two month exploration of New Zealand. Binging on wine tasting. They have a lot more to offer than what we see on offer in the States (Not just different varieties in addition to sauvignon Blanc and Pinot noir, but entire regions that we were unaware of until planning for this...

We definitely had "too much" in TIRA accounts at retirement. But, unlike OP, we were 57/56, and have been able to aggressively convert to Roths for the past 6 years. Since all Roth monies were in stock investments, we now are basically 50/50 between Roth and traditional, and on our way to...

We save a copy of the EOB and a copy of the bill, writing on the bill the date of payment and which credit card we used. We don't bother with Co-Pays. (Actually, we don't bother with anything under $100.) The first time we tapped the HSA, some years ago, we had a mail audit. Copies of those...