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

  Since the last couple of years, I’ve been hearing lots of complaints everywhere about high prices for everything, like housing, cars, groceries, gasoline.  For the most part, I concur.  I saw average home prices rise close to $420,000 here in the United States for example, wondering how young couples can ever afford a home, unless they have a combined income of $140,000!  Just as a comparison, the average home price in 2004, just twenty years ago, was around $195,000. I don’t know about you, but $140,000 combined income is no laughing matter.  For those of you wondering why I mention this number of $140,000, the answer is simple:  mortgage banks typically want  prospective buyers to earn roughly 1/3 of the price of the home.   Price of cars are through the roof.  Case in point: all American car companies like Ford, GM, and Jeep love manufacturing big, profit generating trucks and SUV’s.  They seem to be hell bent on creating bigger and...

  Ijams Nature Center, Knoxville, TN The last time my wife and I visited the city of Knoxville, Tennessee was in October 2003.  We were getting ready to leave the rat race of New York behind for the perceived paradise of Hawaii, which would come the following month. We were excited for that move, a new chapter in our lives.  Before leaving the “mainland”, we wanted to make sure we see more of it, before leaving.  To that end, we really tried our best that same year. First, it was the 3 week long west coast road trip, going from New York City to Colorado and back.  It was followed by this 10 day long trip that would take us to Knoxville, Memphis, then to New Orleans.   Knoxville was more a layover destination on our second road trip that October.  We stayed just one night, on our way over to Memphis.  We knew we needed to rest up to break up the trip, as the driving distance from New York City to Memphis is over 1100 miles. Knoxville seemed like a...