the money tools you need to be set free
Last year I traveled for six months with just a personal item. This year, I went back to Southeast Asia and improved my kit with the lessons I learned. Like last time, I fit everything in a 28L Cotopaxi Allpa bag and a small backpack. On this trip, I went to Thailand, Sri Lanka, and […]
How did we go from Early Retirement Month 7 in the last post to Month 17? Well… after the months of traveling last year, I went back home and did not have many more travel updates to give. However, I’m traveling again, doing another two months in Southeast Asia, visiting Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the […]
After a wonderful bop around the Southern half of New Zealand, we booked flights to head up to Auckland in the North. After renting a car in a super sketchy, dark parking lot, we made it to the attic-turned-Airbnb where we crashed for the night. We were raring to go on hikes, so we only […]
Thirty plus years ago, a woman in England left her hometown to travel the world. On the bus going to the Milford Track, in New Zealand, a young man sat next to her. Originally from Long Island, his job laid him off and gave him a pretty decent severance package, so he was also going […]
A hundred years ago, we thought technological advances would mean we would work less. Instead, we are working more than ever. There is not much of a blueprint for early retirement. I want to help demystify what early retirement might look like. So I recently sent out an email to ask for reader questions. Thank you for everybody who submitted theirs! Here are my 17 answers to your burning questions about early retirement.
Tokyo, Sapporo Ice Festival, Skiing in Hokkaido, Kyoto, and my friend’s farmhouse Stepping off the plane in Japan felt like stepping into another dimension. My previous experience with anything Japan-related now felt like a weird knock-off version of the real thing. I had a mangled impression, built on grocery-store sushi, a few video games, and […]
Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life. By month five of early retirement, I was traveling solo to Vietnam and Taiwan, and feeling a world away from home. I usually don’t know what I’m going to be doing more than a day in advance. It’s often not until I arrive in a city that […]
When I was searching for the “perfect” bag, the Osprey Fairview 40 Travel Backpack was on the top of my list. I was planning on travel indefinitely in just one bag, so I needed it to check a lot of boxes. However, one downside many people complained about with that bag is that the laptop […]
After moving abroad to Amsterdam, I had the opportunity to travel a lot around Europe. With each trip, I perfected my packing game. European budget airlines have started to charge for carry-ons, so I worked to fit everything into a personal item. Little by little, I’ve managed to trim down what I carry to a […]
After a memorable month in Thailand, I took a short flight to Vietnam. I had very high hopes, and was especially excited for the food! Disembarking the plane with a big smile on my face (having just come from Land of the Smiles), I headed off to Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital city. I knew it would […]