I wanted to provide an update on upcoming changes at Root of Good. Don’t worry – a lot will stay the same, but there will be a few changes. I’ll elaborate more below, but in a nutshell, I plan to take a one year hiatus from posting highly detailed income, spending, and net worth reports.  What stays the same? I hope to continue posting monthly updates of some sort. We go on a lot of trips which produce a constant stream of interesting pics from around the world. This blog is a good home for sharing those photos with the…

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, let’s have a little fun comparing a lifelong relationship to your financial journey. From the first spark all the way to ’til death do us part.Get to know Matt and Sam better in this week’s getting-to-know-you segment before they tackle a question from a listener who is fearful that the market is due for a correction.For this week’s Retirement Ride Along segment, the duo talks about their time at the Waste Management Open in Phoenix.Here’s some of what we discuss in this episode:Get-to-know-you questions: Close friends, cats or dogs, and more (8:30)Quote of the week…

When I first started on my adventure into entrepreneurship, I thought the amount of money I made was the most important goal.But, as I’ve gotten older, I realize that just isn’t me.Sure, I’ll take all the money I can get BUT that is no longer the north star for me.I’m not trying to build the biggest thing. I’m trying to build the calmest thing that still pays well.That’s why the framework underneath everything I’m doing is run through what I learned in the Paul Jarvis “Company of One” book I read a few years back.It’s a philosophy that has now…

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! Happy belated New Years to all of you! We had a great 2025 and we’re looking forward to another great year in 2026. During December, we stayed at home the whole month to spend time with family over the holidays.  After a family-filled Thanksgiving at our house in November, we enjoyed having someone else in the family host our family gathering for Christmas. And we got together again on New Year’s Day for more holiday festivities.  Our adult children enjoyed having time off from work for the holidays even though…

Look what I learned this week…For the last few years, I’ve been leaning further and further into the “human” side of things. The more AI takes over, the more valuable the human side of thing of things will become.I found the map that does a great job of reinforcing that.It’s called the “AI Proof Quadrant” (credit to Perry Marshall via his monthly print newsletter). I sketched it out in my notebook last weekend. It validated everything we’ve been talking about here at Redefining Retirement.If you’re still clinging to the old rules of the workplace – efficiency, speed, predictable results -…

In 2006, Tom was your first friend. MySpace was bigger than Google. Bands were getting famous. People were quitting their jobs to be “MySpace Celebrities.”By 2011? Tom was gone. The site was a ghost town. And everyone who built their business on Tom’s platform lost everything overnight.They built their house on “Rented Land.”History is repeating itself.Facebook reach is dead unless you pay.Instagram changes the rules every Tuesday.TikTok was almost banned in half the world.And YouTube? One strike, one shadow-ban, or one bad algorithm update, and your paycheck hits zero.If your entire business lives on YouTube, you don’t have a business.…

Everyone is screaming about AI right now. Depending on who you ask, it’s either going to save the world or end it.I don’t care about the hype. I just want to know if I’m going to be able to make money to support myself and my family in five years.If you are like me, you aren’t trying to become a prompt wizard or a coder. You just want to secure your income and your retirement.We are Gen X. We grew up analog. We figured out the internet. We survived the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession. We can handle this…

It usually hits you on a Tuesday.You are sandwiching a Zoom call between checking on your mom’s medical appointments and worrying about your kid’s tuition. You look at the grocery bill, then at your 401(k), and you realize the math has changed.The “Traditional Retirement” deal we were sold—work 40 years, save 10%, get a gold watch, golf all day—is broken.For the Sandwich Generation (that’s us, squeezed between aging parents and launching kids), the old path doesn’t offer enough margin. We don’t just need “savings” that we can’t touch until we’re 65; we need cash flow now.But here is the trap.…

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We’ve been at home for about a month since wrapping up our Panama Canal cruise in November. We intentionally blocked off Thanksgiving and Christmas from our travel calendar so we could be at home during the holidays.  We will be at home for roughly two full months, with no more travel planned until the end of January when we depart on our next cruise adventure. Over the last month, I’ve been catching up on a lot of year-end tasks, checking things off my to-do list, and enjoying time just being…

Raise your hand if you ever felt like you’ve missed yet another gold rush…Or the dot-com boom.Or social media before it got loud.Or being able to rock a pair of Guirbaud jeans in the halls of your high school in 1989 because your dad wasn’t Daddy Warbucks…Then something kicks in once you’ve been around long enough.You didn’t miss it, you’re just early again.There’s always another one.After about 30 years of watching the “next big thing” come and go, you start to see a pattern. Opportunity doesn’t show up once. It shows up in waves.People don’t usually miss opportunities because they’re…