Hello, my name is Chris and I am semi-retired at a young age and living/traveling abroad with my wife and two young boys. For the last few years we have been inspiring others to retire early like we did. We did not win the lottery. We didn't inherit any princely sums. We have been in HUGE debt before. We worked hard and took the necessary steps and sacrifices (yes, you must sacrifice) to be where we are now.
EDIT AUGUST 2017: Through some really bad luck and trusting the wrong people, we ended up nearly broke and are starting over. This page is not 100% accurate anymore. However, if you follow along then it eventually will be again. We did it once and can do it again. The great part is that so can you![And yes, we are still traveling full-time!]
The whole clan cheezing it up
For most of my adult, working life I have been able to make easy money in many areas outside of a regular, wage-paying J-O-B. Whether it was stocks, forex/currency, or even gambling, I never really had a problem turning a profit with these side gigs. Yes, I was even profitable at gambling in casinos playing blackjack (I counted cards, so I had an advantage). But even with those quick gains, we never got rich. That's because every time I made money, we spent it. Grand vacations, nice cars and clothes, collecting things, and eating out all the time kept us living paycheck to paycheck. It took us over a decade to stop doing this and we are finally on our way to financial freedom. I figured out the path to true wealth. True wealth has nothing to do with how much money you make (we make way less now than we did a few years ago). True wealth is gained when you can greatly spend less than you make.
Our main goal with this site is to help others succeed. We regularly run into younger people who say they wish they were like us (they can be!) and those already retired who are older and tell us we are doing everything right, how they wish they had traveled/retired sooner rather than later in life. We had to stumble a few times to get to where we are and we aren't 100% to where we want to be financially, but we're close. Once we realized how simple and easy this stuff was, we decided that sharing it with the world was our way of paying it forward.
The things we learned, in a nutshell:
Feel free to look around, get personalized retirement advice/support from us, and take advantage of what we know. You can also send us an e-mail and if you happen to be in the same part of the world we're in...we can meet up!
Miss-preggo with Oliver in Casco Viejo, Panama