Ten years ago, we took our first long trip overseas and our first to Europe. The travel bug hit us hard. It led to our decision to retire early this year and become “location independent” to slow-travel the world.
On that first trip, we visited Rome for a week. Then it was Morocco, where we stayed with Frank’s childhood friend Mike and his family. We finished with a week in Madrid. The history, the culture, the food – we couldn’t get enough.
Visiting Vienna, Austria in 2017
On the next long trip a few years later, we truly started wondering if it was possible to travel full-time. We spent three weeks in Munich, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague with our youngest son Ronny. At the end, we looked at the costs. We realized that – excluding flights – it had cost us less to live in Central Europe on vacation than it did to live our regular lives in Eureka, California. Wow!
We started looking into things, and realized there were quite a few people using new digital apps and services to more or less travel all the time. Some were working or running businesses as “digital nomads” while others were often called “retired nomads”. We were intrigued, and we’ve spent the last few years really researching how people do this.
This year, we decided to go all in and try it out. We retired early, sold the house, and gave away nearly everything. With a bag and backpack each, we fully launch into world travel on Aug. 26, heading to Europe for a week in Paris, a month in Slovenia, a week in Croatia, and then six weeks in Italy. After that? We’re still working on it.
The bottom line is that unless the books and Internet and YouTube have misled us (which we know is possible), our scheme looks good. Retiring early to live on savings and our pension while traveling the world should work out. In fact, we should save money every month. On paper, the plan looks good.
What are some of the best resources we have found? See the lists below. (Worry not, we have no affiliate agreements, kickbacks, or similar set up with Amazon or anyone else.)
Books
- Your Keys, Our Home by Debbie and Michael Campbell
- A Better Life for Half the Price by Tim Leffel
- Two Carry-Ons and a Plan by Chris Englert
Blogs
YouTubers
Facebook Groups
- Go With Less
- Senior Nomads
- r/digitalnomad
- r/onebag
- r/travelhacks
Final note: The good resources we used DO NOT include International Househunters or the similar British show called A Place in the Sun. That said, we have watched an embarrassing number of episodes of each.