Wandering Money Pig - A journey of early retirement and FIRE (financial independence retire early)

  Dave Ramsey:  “You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.” In my early days of investing, way back in 1996, I honestly didn’t know squat about investing.  That is fact.  I didn’t know how 401k’s or IRA’s worked, nor did I understand what all different types of mutual funds did.   Back then, it was just too much to take all that new information in.  I mean, I was barely 25 years old.  I knew retirement was probably 40 years away and besides, why worry about the future when you need to enjoy life right then and there? I didn’t care to learn about investing.  I just took the advice of my colleagues and selected the mutual funds that they themselves chose.  It was investing on cruise control.  I didn’t want to know and I didn’t really want to spend the time to learn about any of this complicated stuff. After putting away portions of my paycheck every two weeks, I found out my 401k account was growing....

  Williamsburg, Virginia is one of those special places in America that beckons every American to come visit.  We were certainly one of those people. Our first trip there coincided with my wife and myself’s lease of our first brand new car together, a Saturn , made by GM (General Motors) .  Our car, a SL1 , was a simple car: a manual transmission, no power steering, no power windows/locks, no fancy stereo system, and rear drum brakes! Although it was a very simple car, we still loved it, as it was the first new car we would get to lease under our own names.  We were so proud to be signing that lease, then driving it to our home.  Who doesn’t love a brand new car smell? We would take that car on a long journey from New York to Williamsburg which back then, felt like an eternity, at a driving distance of roughly 400 miles.  As long as traffic didn’t back up, I was doing fine, but you know traffic is bad especially during the summer months along the infamous ...