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

  Monument Valley, AZ/UT As an immigrant from South Korea, I was always in awe of the sheer size of the United States.  I couldn’t put my mind around how big this country is, especially coming from a small country like South Korea, which is roughly the size of Kentucky, maybe slightly smaller than Kentucky. I was too young (age 9) when my family moved to the United States, so I barely got farther than the capital city region of Seoul .  When I went back to visit South Korea in my twenties, I did get to drive all the way south to Busan from Seoul, which gave me a pretty good idea of the size of the country. That drive, took roughly 5 hours with some traffic along the way.  It almost reminded me of driving from New York City to Washington D.C.   Driving in South Korea is one thing, but nothing is quite like driving on the gigantic landmass that is the United States.  Nothing really prepares you for it.  Even when we drove in Europe to explore Germany and Austria, which was going from on

  Watkins Glen State Park, NY Unknown:  “A cemetery is the only place where people don’t try to keep up with the Joneses.” Recently, my wife shared with me a video of a psychiatrist who was discussing the topic of happiness.  In the video, she was discussing all the ways one can try to be happy and all the ways one can try to be unhappy.  Out of all the good things she discussed, one of the statements that stuck with me was when she stated that comparing yourself to others is the worst enemy of happiness . That really got me thinking.   When I was a young teenager, like everyone in that age bracket, I lived to be like someone else.  I wanted to be like Michal Jordan, Bruce Lee , or any number of famous celebrities that were rich and famous.  This got me into learning Taekwondo to try to emulate Bruce Lee, and this got me copying basketballs moves ala Michael Jordan.   Although I didn’t become any one of my idols, I at least got to experience what it’s like to learn Taekwondo or play a

  Lake Wallenpaupack, PA When our pack (my wife, myself, and our dog Toby) lived in the state of Pennsylvania from 2007 until we sold the place to retire early in August 2020, we visited quite a few places near and far from our home in the suburbs of Philadelphia.  We would take many day trips to explore the great outdoors, especially with our energetic Pomeranian dog Toby, nudging us to go walking on weekends. Thanks to our Toby, exploring new places were fun, and we owe him a great deal for making us embrace nature and all its incredible beauty.  We explored places like Ricketts Glen State Park, World’s End S.P., and Promised Land S.P. together, happily spending time walking/hiking/exploring some of the most beautiful parks in the state.   It was during one of our jaunts that we discovered Lake Wallenpaupack in the Pocono Mountains .  It was a place I had heard about from my work colleagues.  During the summers especially, Lake Wallenpaupack seemed to be a popular place for locals

  Horseshoe Bend, Page, AZ My wife and I are no strangers to either the states of Arizona or Utah .  We’ve visited several places like Scottsdale, Phoenix, Grand Canyons National Park in Arizona, and we’ve visited one of our favorite national parks, Zion N.P. in Utah. When we were planning our 2+ months long cross country road trip going from North Carolina to Southern California, we knew we wanted to revisit both states, but really see them in much more detail.  There are just so many wonderful, world famous attractions in both states, and we wanted to explore many of them during our trip. We knew we wanted to visit national parks/monuments/landmarks along our travels, including Petrified Forest N.P, Meteor Crater Natural Landmark, Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon in Arizona and all 5 Utah national parks including Arches N.P., Canyonlands N.P., Capitol Reef N.P., Bryce Canyon N.P., and Zion N.P. These are iconic places that all Americans revere.  I grew up watching them in Discovery