Seeing the World on 60% of Our Income

Well, we did it! My wife Rita and I just closed on the sale of our house in eastern Tennessee, so we are now officially homeless. Or, as we prefer to think about it, the world is now our home.

You see, last fall, our planned nine-week trip to Eastern Europe was cut short when we both contracted COVID somewhere in Istanbul or Vienna. But rather than discouraging us from more travel, it instead made us more aware that you never know what will happen in life, and the time to get out and experience more of the world is now. After all, we're both over 65 and not getting any younger.

So we put our house on the market, arranged to sell or give away some of our household goods, and put the rest in storage. Now here we are—getting ready to take off for the first page in a new chapter of our lives by heading for Mexico with just one checked bag and one carry-on item each to contain our whole lives.

I must admit, it's a little scary. We've never been without a home base before. Even when we spent six years living on the coast of Ecuador, we still owned a property in the US that we rented for a little income, and just in case things didn't go as we hoped.

Jim and Rita spent six years living in Salinas, Ecuador. |©iStock/Iryna Kurilovych

Heading out into the world without the safety net of a safe place to return to is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It was a difficult process, paring down everything we owned to what we could fit in our bags—especially when we do not have a really firm itinerary in mind. We know we're headed to Mexico for five weeks, and we have a pet-sitting gig back in the US for a month after that, but for the rest of the summer? We're not really sure yet.

We know we will probably stay in Central or South America, since we need to be at the Ultimate Go Overseas Bootcamp in Las Vegas, Nevada at the end of October.

Colombia, Belize, and Costa Rica are all on the list of possibilities. After the conference, another pet-sitting job, this time in a suburb of England, so the fall should find us mostly in Europe. But details? We'll just have to work that out as we go.

We do know that we want to embrace the slow travel or un-tourist style of travel. We plan to stay a month or more in each country we visit. Sure, we will not avoid some of the typical tourist destinations—if we're staying within a train ride of Paris for example, we will certainly take some time to visit the Louvre and other spots of interest—but tourism is not the main focus of our journeys.

Instead, we want to get a feel for what life is like in other lands. We want to shop at the local markets, meet the local people, and just generally enjoy a slower and more relaxing pace of life.

Living out of a suitcase and bouncing from city to city on a tight schedule is not what we have in mind. We're looking for longer-term Airbnb stays and scouting for house and pet-sitting jobs instead. We think living in homes instead of hotels will help us avoid the feeling that we are rootless now that we have no home of our own. We will think of each stay as just a few rooms in a larger home that encompasses the whole world.

Of course, that condition of not knowing exactly where we will be and for how long can seem a little frightening as well. But in another way, it also gives us a strong sense of freedom from cares and worries.

There's a financial advantage to our new lives as well. True, we're paying storage fees we didn't have before, but consider the bills we have eliminated. No utility bills, no yard maintenance, no HOA fees, no property taxes or insurance, and no repairs, just to name a few.

Better yet, we were able to set a comfortable travel budget that only requires about 60% to 70% of our retirement income. The rest can be banked each month, or used for an occasional splurge.

As for the proceeds of our home sale, we were able to sell at a time when the market is high, without the need to turn around and purchase another property at today's high prices and interest rates. Instead, we were able to deposit the funds into secure HYSAs (High Yield Savings Accounts) and CDs, so that our nest egg will be growing while we're out enjoying our new lives. We will actually be earning money while we travel.

So yes, this is a frightening time in our lives, but also an exhilarating time as well. In many ways however, the hardest part is behind us. Taking that first step into a larger world is always a difficult thing to do. Now we find ourselves in the position of only needing to pay attention to where we are now, and where we might want to go for our next destination.

And that's a big step, indeed!