How the Dream of Our (Semi-ish) Early Retirement Transformed into a FI/RE

Way back in 2012, a younger Joe and I were hanging out and talking about our eventual retirement (as all young people do) and possibly even an early retirement.

So, with this simple aspiration to retire early in mind, we figured it would be smart to increase our real estate assets.

Focusing Our Real Estate Goals

We could seek out a potential retirement location—one that would also be a good place to make a real estate investment.

Where Is the Best Place to Retire?

We decided to go online and just search “best places to retire.” ILM covers a lot about travel, but largely focuses on inexpensive foreign countries to retire in, where your money can go 5-10 times farther than in the US. And just like that, lightning struck. Synapses fired. We were just like, “Eureka! That’s it! We get to travel AND have an early retirement!”

Let the Research Fun Begin!

After traveling through most of this English speaking country, we felt pretty confident that this was a place where we could envision ourselves having an early retirement. Since we liked Belize the best, we put our money where our minds were. Sold.

We bought a piece of raw land on the island of Ambergris Caye, Belize. With our lot’s perfect view of the turquoise water, it gave us a real place to imagine ourselves someday, far away from the 9-5.

Buying Our First Piece of Land

A SDIRA allows you to invest your retirement funds in almost anything—real estate, a business, or other assets like oil wells, equipment leasing, etc.

Buying Land with a Self-Directed IRA

So there we were, Belikin beers in hand, and land owners on an island in Belize. It was too cool to be true. Now we had a beautiful and peaceful place to picture ourselves enjoying our future early retirement.

Real Inspiration to Commit to Early Retirement

Real Inspiration to Commit to Early Retirement

We began to wonder, “Why can’t we just move there NOW? Then again, how would we make money if we just quit our jobs in Los Angeles? The gears started to turn. It was clear that we both wanted an adventure.

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