Author: FIRECracker
Let’s Go Exploring! Slovenia: Switzerland without the Lavish Price Tag
Long term readers of this blog know that ever since we quit our jobs to travel the world in 2015, we’ve been playing this game we like to call “Schengen Bingo”. For those that don’t know, Schengen is the area in Europe consisting of 27 countries without internal border controls. Travellers can freely move through this area without border checks between the countries. With our Canadian passport, we can only stay in the Schengen zone for maximum 90 days. During our 9 to 5 days, we only had 3 weeks’ vacation so 90 days was an eternity but when you’re […]
Reader Case: Entrepeneurs Closer to Early Retirement Than They Thought
Hey peeps, before we get started with today’s reader case, I want to invite you to a Facebook live event where we talk about Passiv, one of our favourite investing tools. We’ll chat about our FIRE lifestyle, our approach to investing, and how you can use Passiv to help you reach Financial Independence. As you know, we never recommend any products we don’t love and use ourselves, so we want to tell as many people as possible about Passiv to help make investing easier for them. The session is on March 15, 2023 8pm EST and here’s the Facebook event […]
Is ChatGPT Coming to Take Your Job?
Back in 2006, when we were about to graduate from engineering school, our biggest fear was having our tech jobs outsourced to India. Which, as it turns out, wasn’t unfounded considering how many jobs in my last company did get outsourced to Indian developers. I mean, how are you supposed to compete when they can work remotely for a measly $5/hour? And not only that, one of them even willingly missed the birth of their own child because he was on call for an “urgent production issue.” He never complained. But now, there’s an even bigger threat. A threat […]
Let’s Go Exploring! Zagreb, Croatia: Quirky Museums and Eye-Opening History
Most travellers use the capital city of Croatia, Zagreb as a stop-over on the way to more exciting destinations like Split, Dubrovnik, Hvar or Plitzvice. But that’s a mistake, because even though it’s not as popular as cities along the Dalmation coast made famous by Game of Thrones, it wins for its quirkiness, history, large variety of food and craft beer. Plus, the cost of living in Zagreb is only a 3rd compared to the tourist-mobbed places. In Dubrovnik, you’ll be paying through the nose. In Zagreb, you simply live like a local. I also enjoyed the quirkiness of Zagreb. […]
Our 2022 Expenses
Early retirement isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, especially when you have to deal with what I like to call “The 4 Horsemen of Early Retirement.” Specifically, running out money, losing your identity, losing your friends, and dealing with inflation. Because we’ve lived through multiple market downturns in the past 8 years of retirement and built a solid recession-proof portfolio, I wasn’t afraid of the first horsemen. And we managed to slay the 2nd and 3rd, by building whole new author identities, and an amazing community through Chautauqua and the digital nomads. But this past year, the 4th horsemen reared its […]
