Category: Uncategorized
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Cuenca, Ecuador — July 2026 Health 907Rent 450Food 437Restaurant 320Preschool & Aftercare 278Alcohol 178 (This does include some meals we ate out as well, which inflates the number.)Housecleaner 90Household 86Transport 70Other 35Social Life 28Education 96Beauty 15Apparel 3 Total: 3099 US Estimated Equivalent (Used rural Missouri numbers where we used to live, where possible) Health 2740…
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Crab bucket mentality is a social behavior where someone tries to sabotage, pull down, or undermine someone who is trying to succeed or improve. The idea is pretty simple. If you put one crab in a bucket, it will simply climb out, but if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, the other…
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Is frugality something you’re born with, or something life teaches you? I think the honest answer is both — but the way each one works is more interesting than the debate usually gives it credit for. The Marshmallow Study The infamous “marshmallow” study tested young children on their ability to delay gratification for a bigger…
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Someone online was writing about a date they went on. The guy was hesitant to pick up the check. They drank only water. He wanted to split the entree even though it was just a cheeseburger and she didn’t like cheeseburgers. When it was time to leave he wanted all the leftover fries for later.…
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Financial Independence is the Important Part of FIRE Financial independence is when the money your assets make replaces your income, meaning you no longer need to work. I think the most important thing about financial independence is that it’s a progressive concept — you get more and more benefits the further you go on the…
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The Expat Cost Advantage The 4% rule says if you can live off 4% of your portfolio, you’re financially independent. For $100k/year in expenses, that means a $2.5 million portfolio. But if you can lower your expenses, you can retire much sooner — and the easiest lever I’ve found for that is moving somewhere cheaper.…
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I retired to Ecuador about a year ago. I was 39. My brother, ten years older and still working, was convinced I’d end up “sleeping under a bridge in the third world.” I told him that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t fully convinced, but he let it go, the way brothers do. That conversation…
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I’ve been thinking lately about which choices actually got me here — not the spreadsheet-optimized version of my financial life, but the real one, messy timeline and all. Some decisions I got right for the right reasons. Some I got right for reasons I’m not proud of. And at least one thing I got wrong,…
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Part of moving to Ecuador was selling everything we owned in the States. We sold both our cars and all our furniture. We sold extra clothes and other household goods, and what we couldn’t sell we ended up donating or throwing away. Before we boarded planes to an entirely new country with only a few…
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Health 2947 Rent 2700 Culture 2505 Transport 2448 Restaurant 1946 Food 1794 Preschool 1790 Household 1634 Alcohol 931 Utilities and Phone 584 Housecleaner 500 Apparel 485 Beauty 480 Other 458 Pets 188 Social Life 182 Education 40 Total 21,617 3602/month So looking at the last 6 months, a couple of things stand out. First, our…
Millionaire Librarian 