Introduction: Why Financial Freedom Matters
We are here to talk to you about creating the financial freedom lifestyle you’ve always dreamed about. Maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t dream about financial freedom.” Really? We’re willing to bet that you do—regardless of the amount of money you currently have. Why do we say that? Because you’re probably still working. You’re probably saving for retirement. And once you’re sure you’ve hit your number, we bet you’ll do something different than you’re doing today. Right? Maybe you’ll stop working, work less, or finally quit your 9-to-5 job and start your own business. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. The idea is to feel comfortable knowing you can finally do what you want without being terrified of running out of money. We are going to show you how.
Our Story: From Panic to Planning
We’ve told you many times that we are the perfect Americans. We both worked since we were 14 years old, raised children, lived in lovely communities, had great friends, and took a couple of vacations a year. Our life was good—great compared to most people in the world. But if we were out of work tomorrow, all of that would come crashing down around us. Our savings and investments just didn’t grow fast enough to cover our lifestyle. And let’s be honest—we were spending too much and giving ourselves all kinds of excuses as to why. We were never going to get to the finish line and do what we wanted.
Facing Reality: Making a Plan for Retirement
As Alan aged, we admitted that we wouldn’t be able to retire until I was 67, which meant Alan would be 76 years old. Panic ensued. We needed to get it together and figure out how to make our investments grow, fast. We were determined to retire when Alan was 66. So, I started the journey to help us change our ways and learn to actually manage our investments. We had always read about and researched investing but never believed we could become our own experts. Somehow, we believed some other guy was more capable of managing our money.
Taking Control: Becoming Financially Independent
Guess what? Once we truly started believing in ourselves and stopped just paper trading and dreaming, our world changed. We became life coaches. We took investing classes, learned how to properly research companies, and mastered options trading, as well as long-term and short-term investing. We took classes, read books, joined coaching groups, and discovered where our money could take us and what was going to change in our life.
Introducing FIR: Financial Independence Retire
I was well into my 50s when I discovered this thing called the FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. My first thought was, “Well, I missed that boat.” Then I decided to not just be jealous of someone else who retired at 45. We were going to create our own version of this journey—FIR: Financial Independence Retire!
We even developed a new program called the FIR Program—Financial Independence Retire! This program is designed to help you take control of your financial future, whether you want to retire early or simply gain more freedom in your life. It includes tools, strategies, and insights we’ve gained through our own journey to financial independence. It’s never too late to start, and we’ll show you how to create a plan that works for your goals and timeline.
Living the Dream: Portugal and Beyond
We want you to know that we’ve been living in Portugal for three years. We’ve traveled to six different countries and are always planning the next part of our travels while living a dream life. We enjoy coffee on the balcony overlooking the ocean, walk the promenade with Greer, our Cairn Terrier, and take 20-minute drives to the mountains to hike levadas.
Our Financial Strategy: Living Below Our Means
During the last three years, we have continued to save and invest, build our side incomes, and live below our means. Many people our age have millions and fantastic pensions. Not us. We can actually live on Alan’s Social Security check alone. Does that give us a lot of extras? Nope. We wouldn’t be able to travel or continue to invest. So, we supplement our income and don’t pull from our investments.
Building Wealth and Security
Now that we’ve figured out this combination of building a wonderful lifestyle, traveling, continuing to save, investing, creating generational wealth, and helping others do the same, we have no plans of stopping.
It’s Not Too Late: Start Your Journey
Are you ready? Come on! We are here to tell you it’s not too late. You can do it all at the same time. And maybe, like us, you’ll discover you can live on 50% less than you thought.
Backup Plans for Changing Times
Here’s something fun—our plans have many versions and backup plans in case economics change. We’ve had to use them and were afraid we made a mistake. We didn’t. Today, three years in, we have hit our original number for retirement and have started to create generational wealth.
Join Us: Programs and Groups to Help You Start
We are here to encourage you with our learnings and help you figure out how to put your journey together with what you have. Let’s get started!
Come join us in discovering what living abroad can add to your life. We have put together the Ultimate Moving Abroad Program. It covers everything from A to Z, and yes, there are entire sections on finances, budgeting, and finding your dream location (not ours). We even cover bringing pets, packing your house, and what you need to do when you arrive in your new place in the world. This program is packed full of everything we could think of.
Maybe you aren’t ready, or you just want to be part of a group and ask questions. We do that too! In our It'll Be Fun Monthly Online Meetup Group, we invite you to consider signing up to join us. It’s monthly, and you can come and go as you want—so no big commitments. And yes, we are finally putting together our resources and tools to make your journey easier!
Here are The Ways you can connect with us and our programs:
Our website www.itllbefunretirement.com - where everything is pulled together
On Youtube www.youtube.com/itllbefun - our FREE videos
On Patreon www.patreon.com/itllbefun - Online Meetup Groups
On Instagram @itllbefungreer - just pictures and stuff - nothing fancy
Our latest video is all about Real Estate, Mortgages and VISA's in Portugal
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