Chicago is one of my favorite cities to visit in the United States. Between the incredible food, iconic skyline, professional sports, museums, and neighborhoods, there’s always something new to experience. Whether you’re visiting for a weekend getaway, a Cubs game, or simply crossing another city off your travel bucket list, you can accomplish a lot…

As the weather cools down, there’s nothing better than a warm, nutritious meal made with minimal effort. These 20 healthy crockpot recipes are perfect for busy families, offering easy crockpot meals you can freeze and enjoy throughout the week. Whether you’re looking for low carb dinner dishes or simple make-ahead school night dinners, these slow cooker meals for cold days are sure to satisfy. From lazy people dinners to school night recipe easy dinners, you’ll find something delicious and convenient to suit every taste and schedule. High Protein Crockpot Recipes When the weather turns crisp, high-protein crockpot recipes are the perfect way to fuel your day with minimal effort. These slow cooker recipes to freeze are ideal for busy families, offering a mix of low carb dinner prep options and the best winter crockpot soups that everyone will love. Whether you’re searching for kid-friendly meal ideas or a quick, easy, and healthy dinner idea for fall, these hearty dishes are sure to become new favorites. Lasagna Soup

A brief, no-fluff, summary of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you want to learn how capitalist countries become socialist, this book will help you. Let’s dive in. Atlas Shrugged: The Simple Version The world depends on a relatively small number of people who build, invent, and produce. They are the entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, industrialists, and creators who keep civilization progressing. Over time, mostly through the media and government, society begins to treat ability as […]

In 2023, I took a month-long Big International Trip (BIT) with Thing One (The Elder). I’d neither travelled internationally, nor anywhere for that long, for many years.  My prior long, international trips were all sorts of funsies. I expected no less for the 2023 trip.  And, that trip didn’t disappoint. But I learned things about myself over the course of it. I wrote about some of them at the time. Tl;dr: my standards had increased […]

Back in lesson 3 of this series, we saw how different assets can perform differently at different times. But what are these assets? And why should they go their own way? An asset is something you can own, buy, and sell. It’s the opposite of a liability. A house that you own is an asset. Your mortgage is a liability. One person’s asset can be another person’s liability. Your mortgage is a valuable asset for […]

I started investing in dividend-paying blue chip stocks in 1995 when my uncle gave me a share of Chevron stock. He told me that if I keep buying more shares and reinvesting the dividends into additional shares, I’d eventually have a lot of shares paying me a lot of money. With some imagination and an… The post From Dividend Stocks to ETFs – Why I Changed My Strategy appeared first on Retire Before Dad.

In 2026 I hit a milestone that seemed like a distant, foggy dream back in my corporate days: the ten-year anniversary of my retirement. If you want to go to the beginning and get the details on that blessed event, check out I Retired! There are some fond memories for me in that post! Anyway, my plan to celebrate this momentous occasion is to write several “10 Things” posts about retirement. So far, here are […]

Most retirement income strategies assume spending will remain relatively stable over time. You retire, determine a sustainable withdrawal amount, and then spend roughly that amount for the rest of your life, perhaps adjusting for inflation along the way.  That assumption is so common that it often goes unquestioned. Yet there are retirement income strategies built on a very different idea. Rather than trying to keep spending stable, they intentionally allow spending to rise and fall over time based on portfolio performance, interest rates, […]