Before I started pursuing FI, I thought there was only one option in life. That was to work full-time at a job that I hopefully didn’t hate and where I felt like I was contributing meaningfully to the world in some way.
I knew that some people went against the grain, mainly travel bloggers and entrepreneurs. People like Chris Guillebeau (The Art of Non-Conformity), Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek), and Paula Pant (Afford Anything) have been inspirational.
But I did not feel like this lifestyle was possible for me, nor was that level of “hustle” required to make a living desirable for me.
Therefore, my only option told me that I’d spend most of my life working. I could spend time with friends and family and travel on the weekends, holidays, and the three weeks of vacation time each year.
To me, this was a life that would never feel balanced because there was always too much stress, too much to do, and not enough time to do it.
The story of my life sometimes felt like: get up, go to work, get home from work, relax from work, go to bed, get up, and do it all over again.
While we have done a lot to try to make this current lifestyle seem more enjoyable (working in nonprofits, making easy meals, easing up on housework, finding meaningful things to do outside of work, etc.), we still had this feeling that we were missing out on the best of what life had to offer.
It wasn’t until I learned about Financial Independence that I started to hear about the unconventional and exciting ways that people were choosing to live their lives.
Through learning about the lives of so many of the early Fioneers, I’ve learned that when people are Financially Independent the world opens up for them. The choices available are beyond what I thought existed or were within my grasp.
There are an infinite set of options. My choices do not need to be limited to the expectations that society has of me.
This is liberating.
Lifestyle Designs
Once people reach Financial Independence, whether they choose to retire early or not, they often have intriguing lifestyle choices. I’ve been exploring their stories to broaden my views of what my future could hold.
Slow and/or Nomadic Travel (International or Domestic)
Some people have become location independent and have chosen to travel full-time. While being financially independent isn’t necessarily required to do this, there are only a few money-making options that allow for this lifestyle, such as freelancing, digital entrepreneurship, or an amazingly flexible job that allows you to work remotely full-time.
Jeremy and Winnie of Go Curry Cracker are a great example of this lifestyle. They were able to quit their jobs in 2012 and have been traveling ever since. They’ve traveled to 40 countries so far on their journey. They know they have the rest of their lives to travel, so they are not in a rush. They have embraced the concept of slow travel, which is where you spend a significant amount of time in each place and learn about the local culture.
FIREcracker and Wanderer from the Millennial Revolution became financially independent at 31, quit their jobs, and have been traveling the world for the last three years. On about $40,000/year, they have traveled all over Europe, Asia, and Central and South America.
Michelle of Making Sense of Cents has been living a nomadic lifestyle for years now. While she certainly wouldn’t call herself retired, I think it’s safe to say that she’s Financially Independent while running her online business and traveling the world. She’s spent time living in an RV traveling the country and following great weather. While she’s given up the RV life, she recently bought a sailboat and is preparing to cruise the world.
Steve from Think Save Retire and his wife have been on the road in an RV for over a year now. They have spent time traveling up and down the western United States. Steve says he is “retired from full-time work,” meaning that while he will hopefully never work in a corporate environment ever again, he will take on projects that he is interested in that might pay him money.
Geoarbitrage
What is “geoarbitrage”? Simply stated, it is moving to an area that has a lower cost of living. It’s a place where your dollar will stretch a lot further.
There are many examples of people moving to an area that has a lower cost of living to reach Financial Independence and/or Retire Early.
For example, Dylan and Allison from Retire by 45 moved just 10 miles from San Francisco to Oakland. They sold their San Francisco condo for $1.25 million and bought their Oakland condo in cash for $638,000 for the same amount of space. Because they were able to buy the condo in cash, they decreased their annual expenses by about $80,000! This decreased their FI timeline by 8 years.
There are also examples of people moving to countries that have a much lower cost of living to retire early. This allows them to stretch their dollar while living a comfortable life.
Pauline of ReachFinancialIndependence.com moved to Guatemala where she only needed about $1,400/month to live a very comfortable life. Within this budget, she lives on a waterfront property and is even able to hire a housekeeper. Because of this, she was able to retire early at 29 with a nest egg of about $300,000.
Jason from Mr. Free at 33 moved to Thailand a little over a year ago. In Thailand, he can rent an upscale furnished apartment for $400/month. This is a swanky apartment; it has a pool, a gym, and even fingerprint access. Because of this and the fact that everything else, especially healthcare, is less expensive, he can live on about $1,200 per month.
Even more interesting is Michael and Ellen from Uncommon Dream, who have figured out how to do short-term geoarbitrage by spending their winters in Ecuador and renting out their fully-paid-off house on Airbnb during that time. Not only do they get to create incredible family experiences in another country, but they’re also making more money through Airbnb than they are spending on their trip. Now, this is an idea worth looking into.
Moving to your Ideal Location
I’m sure you’ve heard of Liz from Frugalwoods, whose family gave up their urban life in Cambridge, MA to move to a 66-acre homestead in central Vermont on May 2016. Liz makes it very clear that they did not move to rural Vermont in pursuit of a lower cost of living. In fact, they found that their chosen living situation costs them more. Regardless, they used their Financial Independence to follow their dreams of living on a homestead.
Tanja from Our Next Life and her husband Mark retired from their day jobs in 2017. A few years prior, they chose to move from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe, CA. Why did they choose this? Certainly not because it was inexpensive. They chose it because they are huge fans of the outdoors and like to get out as much as they can. Around their new home, they can ski, hike, backpack, cycle, mountain bike, climb, paddle, etc.
What does my Ideal Life Look Like?
The short answer is: I don’t quite know yet.
There are so many potential options for what our life can look like after we achieve Financial Independence. There are many things we want to explore, and we have a bunch of ideas about what our priorities will be.
Entrepreneurial Ventures
For us, FI is not about retiring early. While we might not ultimately work for an employer, we are excited to work for ourselves. We will most certainly have some entrepreneurial ventures, such as this blog, real estate, and possibly a coaching business, amongst other things.
While I understand that many people make a living through entrepreneurial ventures before reaching FI, I’m not sure I want the pressure of hustle just yet. As of right now, I prefer having a job to cover my living expenses and savings while I can build up entrepreneurial ventures on the side.
This way I don’t have the pressure to ensure my entrepreneurial ventures can cover my expenses. This also ensures that my side hustles are passion projects that I’m doing because I enjoy them not because I need the money.
I’m certainly not against side hustles making money; I just want to have passion projects that I choose to do regardless of whether they make money. If they do, great. If they don’t, that’s okay too.
We will also very likely choose to volunteer or consult with nonprofit organizations or political campaigns whose missions we believe in.
Location Independence
For me, the most critical thing about FI is location independence. Again, I know people can achieve this before FI. I’m just not sure that I would find fulfillment now from doing the things required to do this before reaching FI. If I need to wait for 8 years, so be it.
Traveling, exploring new places, and learning about other cultures are some of my true passions in life.
How would location independence play out for us?
Home Base
We love where we live, so we identify with choosing a place to live based on what you enjoy, even if it’s more expensive than other locations.
We have built a close community and network of friendships here in the Boston area, so I’m not sure we’d ever give up on calling the northeast home.
While we both love to travel, we would also consider ourselves homebodies, so I think we’d always want to have a “home base”.
I love the idea shared by Uncommon Dream about renting out your house through Airbnb while you are traveling for significant lengths of time. Their story makes me realize that I can still have a home base, travel frequently, and not have it break the bank.
Frequent, Slow Travel
Even with a home base, we want to do a significant amount of travel. I could see us taking 3-to-6 months (shorter or longer depending on the year) each year traveling. We already have a lot of ideas for travel.
We’ve discussed RV travel soon after we reach FI. While I don’t think I’d want to live in an RV for a significant amount of time, I would love to do this for perhaps 1 year or 3-to-6 months at a time for a few years. I know it’s a big goal, but I’d love to visit every national park.
This would likely be our first significant travel after reaching location independence. Why?
We currently have a dog, who we LOVE. I don’t think we’d want to leave her with a family member or friend for a 3-6 month (or longer) international trip. We could still take shorter international trips during this time.
I also want to do quite a bit of international travel. I have a goal of traveling to 100 countries in my lifetime. I only have 14 under my belt so far, so I have a long way to go. I love to learn new languages, see new sites, learn about cultural differences, etc.
While I don’t think we’ll have a fully nomadic lifestyle, we do want to travel frequently and slowly. I could see us traveling for 1-to-6 months at a time, and spending more time in countries where the cost of living is lower.
If we happen to make enough money from the entrepreneurial ventures that we enjoy, it’s possible that we might reach location independence before we reach financial independence. Again, we only want our entrepreneurial ventures to be things we enjoy, so we’re also okay if this doesn’t happen before we reach FI in about 8 years.
How are we going to Design our Ideal Life?
Reaching financial independence and/or location independence is not going to happen overnight. There are many things that we need to do between now and then.
We need to first reach either financial or location independence and we need to determine what our ideal lifestyle is through trial and error.
The three key things we will be doing to reach financial independence are:
- Increase our income through side hustles (that could turn into something more), real estate, and earning more at our day jobs.
- Decrease our expenses by lowering our food spending, using credit card rewards to minimize travel expenses, and just by buying less stuff we don’t need. We are already reasonably optimized on the housing and transportation front – we live in a small condo that fits our needs and are a one car family.
- Invest what we save, so that we can take advantage of compound interest.
Another important aspect of lifestyle design is trying things out to see if you like it.
We know we love to travel. We’ve both done some slow travel in our lives. During college, I spent two summers in Mexico, one summer in Ecuador (I went with Corey on this one!), and studied abroad in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. All of this travel was for extended periods (2-to-6 months), so I think we already know that we’d like to slow travel.
What we don’t know is if RV travel would be for us. As someone who has never been on a road trip in my life, I honestly don’t know if I’d enjoy it. I love beautiful scenery, and whenever I’ve gone on day trips where there hasn’t been a strict itinerary, I do enjoy stopping at places along the way. I’ve only camped in a tent, and the only time I’ve ever even been in an RV is visiting my grandparents at their old folks RV park in Florida when I was a kid.
To learn if this is something we’d enjoy, I think we’d need to test it out. First, I think we’d need to test out a road trip of a week or longer to see if that’s something that we enjoy doing. Then later, we could try renting an RV for a shorter amount of time.
Let’s remember all of life is about trial and error; I’d expect lifestyle design to be no different. Maybe we’ll love RVing and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’d do a bunch of slow travel, absolutely love it, and decide to be full nomadic travelers. Maybe we will realize that we don’t enjoy the slow travel all the time and want to stick to our several-week itineraries.
That’s the joy of financial independence. The world is open to us, and we get to decide.
What is your ideal lifestyle design?
Great article! And thanks for including us, Jessica. It’d be great to meet you guys in person at some point. FinCon? Costa Rica? 🙂
Thank you, Michael! I appreciate the feedback. Your family’s lifestyle design is the one that appeals to us most (which I’m sure came through in the post).
We will definitely both be at FinCon2019 in DC and would love to meet you in person. Corey has been a PF blogger since 2011, so he’s been to all of the FinCons, but this will be my first one. Is there something specific happening in Costa Rica that we should know about? Or is that where you all happen to be right now? We’re headed to Central America (Panama) for vacation in March, but no plans for Costa Rica (Although, I’d love to go back; I studied abroad there in college).
Best,
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
Jessica,
Thanks for including me! 🙂
I totally hear you. FIRE gives you the opportunity to totally customize your lifestyle. It’s a life designed for you, by you. You (mostly) get to do what you want, when you want, how you want, where you want, with whom you want. That’s priceless. Certainly worth more than the luxury stuff most people chase after.
Best of luck designing the “best fit” for you!
Cheers.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your comment! I agree that doing what you want, when/where/how/with whom you want is much better than having lots of stuff! That’s such a great way to put it.
Thanks again,
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
See you in D.C. then! I only mentioned Costa Rica because we’ll be spending quite a bit of 2019 there and I was wondering if it was someplace you’re considering returning to. We plan to visit Boquete, Panama as well in the March or April timeframe so please stay in touch and let us know when you plan to arrive.
I’m loving your site so far. Perhaps Corey’s experience helps explain how you’ve launched with such a beautiful site. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to see our initial design. xD
Keep up the great work!
That’s great! In March, we’ll be spending time in Panama, but we’ll be in central Panama. It looks like Boquete is just over the border. If you end up making it to central Panama in mid-March, let us know. We’ll be spending time in Panama City, El Valle de Anton, and the Pearl Islands. We’re only there for 8 days (the non-FI life of only have so much vacation time). If you have an interest in making it to one of those places, definitely let us know!
Thanks for the feedback on our site. Yes, I credit the site design and editor in chief to Corey. 🙂
I also find it so inspiring to read about all of the different ways people have designed their lives. It proves that there are many different paths. Sometimes I take the time to visualize what my ideal would be — will we try a homestead like the Frugalwoods? Will we ski bum on the mountains? Excited to see what life you Fioneer 😉
Thanks for the comment! I love to read about people’s unique lives are or what their ideal could be! I can’t wait to see what you do!
Best,
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
This post totally resonate with us Jessica. So thanks for putting it out there so other can read it and hopefully get inspired by your journey. And congratulation for reaching a 57% saving rate in 2018!
Similar to you, my wife and I love travels. We “accidentally” discovered FI/RE after looking at “the cost of a year of travel” and stumble upon some of the blog you mentioned. By the time we looked at our numbers (~two years ago), we realized that we were already FI. (I will “blame” it on my parents for the “values system” I inherited from them that shaped my spending/investing habits over the years. A gift I’m forever grateful to have receive from them).
It took us two years (and one Chautauqua in Ecuador) before deciding to pull the trigger on the “ideal life” we thought about. We became aspiring minimalists (https://www.nomadnumbers.com/minimalism-or-how-to-live-a-more-fulfilled-life-with-less/), sold everything (besides our backpacks: https://www.nomadnumbers.com/carry-on-packing-list-for-nomadic-long-term-travels/) and made the world our new home by becoming nomadic travelers for life. We’ve been on this new chapter of our lives for less than a year so it’s still early but this has been a great move so far. Similar to Jeremy & Winnie (who we had the chance to meet in person) we are slow travelers which give us the ability to pull the geo-arbitrage more easily than before. For the next few years we want to explore the world slowly and hope to find our new home base(s) when we expect to spend between 3-6 months per year. This is one of the reason we started our blog so we keep tracking & document our detailed cost of living in each place we are visiting (https://www.nomadnumbers.com/category/destination-reports/). We also hope that if our blog draw attention, it can inspire people to think differently about the life they can design for themselves.
As for finding your passion I might have a suggestion for you. I am a strong believer that we don’t know what we don’t know and that it is through trial/error that you can find our true passion. Have you read the book Designing Your Life? It is one of the few that we do recommend on our blog has it has a big impact on our lives (https://www.nomadnumbers.com/books/#personaldevelopment). This book unbunked the idea that there is just one calling we need to find and follow to live a fulfilled life. They provides techniques on how to discover your multiple lives and let you experience with each of them before you can commit to the one that is the best for you. If you decide to read it, definitely let us know what you think about it!
I will keep following your journey and would love to meet you guys at some point as I think we have a few things in common. Community is the next biggest challenge if we want to make our nomad lifestyle something sustainable on the long run and something we secretly hope our very young blog will help to build over time.
Hi,
Thank you for your comment! I realize that I already follow you on Instagram and followed you on Twitter as well. I love that you realized that you were “accidentally FI” – that’s fantastic. It’s exciting to see the life you created for yourself, and I’ll be interested in following your journey as well.
I haven’t yet read Designing Your Life yet, but it’s actually been on my to-read list for awhile. Your recommendation has moved it up the list, so thankf or that.
I think the main thing that would hold us back from fully nomadic travel would be community (and I think we both just really like home sometimes). We’d love to meet you sometime. Will you be at FinCon in DC in September? If not, let us know if you’ll be in the Boston area, which is where we live.
Where are you headed to after Mexico?
Best,
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
Your homebase + slow travel design is almost exactly what we’ve talked about as our ideal life design.
Right now we follow the work hard/play hard design to balance out work intensity. It means that when we do travel, we’re so fried we need those lounging type vacations. We’re really looking forward to taking those longer extended adventure trips. But, we love where we live and will always come back. Though, we’ll need to downside because of the high-COL.
Thanks for the post – I look forward to reading more.
Hi Principal FI,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, we often work hard/play hard also, so previously our vacations were beach vacation or renting cabin in the woods. Traveling and experiencing different countries is a huge priority for me though. We often try to take a 1-2 week long trip each year now, and have part of it be adventurous and part of it be relaxing. For example, we’re headed to Panama in March – we’ll spend 2 days in the rainforest, 2 days in Panama City, and then 3 days out on an island at a beach for relaxation. It’s our compromise. I like the “go-go-go” vacations and Mr. Fioneers prefers the relaxing. 🙂
I look forward to engaging with you further!
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
Excellent article, love your goals and outlook. Geoarbitrage is something that appeals to me, but tough right now with the kids settled in school and the in-laws living next door. Think we’ll be here for another 10 years, but then who knows.
Keep working on those side hustles and just save everything you make.
Gavin,
Thank you! I completely understand that our life circumstances often dictate where we live. Your living situation sure sounds like it makes the most sense for you right now. It’s great to know that we have seasons of life, and we can always change things later. In the grand scheme of things, 10 years will feel both long and short at the same time. We also have 8-10 years before we’ll do the part-time geoarbitrage plan, but we’re going to make our life awesome in the meantime. 🙂
Thanks again,
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
Sounds like you’ve got it figured out. The location independence lifestyle sounds good in theory, but I’m not sure if it will work for us. For now, we like living in one spot. I want our son to have a stable childhood and we’ll try to avoid changing school too often. Once he’s independent, then we’ll try geoarbitrage. That’s a long way off, though. And traveling has been less alluring lately. We might not want to travel much once we’re older.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the comment. I completely understand that different things will be desirable in life at different stages of life. For me, location independence means that I also have the choice to stay home if I want to. I can imagine that traveling with kids might be less alluring. I also think that we’ll maybe go through a phase of wanting to travel a lot, and it’s possible it loses its allure to us as well. Who knows what will happen until we try it.
Thanks again!
Jessica
Great article, Fioneer. Too many folks grow up and end up living a life they think they should, rather than one they want. Of course what we want tends to change over the years. As you allude to there are many ways to enjoy a rich full life, being creative with your money just gives you more options.
This FI Kiwi bloke is spending his last couple of years as a stay at home dad before looking at the next series of options.
Thank you so much for your comment. I definitely agree. I expect that we’ll want different things in different seasons of life. The great thing is that you have the options to choose it. Congrats on being able to stay at home, that’s amazing!
Great article! I’m like you: home base + slow travel. Our home base is in Detroit — it’s a LCOL city and that’s where our core friends, network and community are based. But it’s not somewhere I want to spend the winter, so we travel from December through April. Most years we stay in LA and have developed circle of friends and connections here as well. I like new experiences but I deeply value my social connections.
Hi Kerry,
Thanks for your comment! It’s great to hear others doing a similar thing and it working. We’re in Boston, so brrrr. It was 10 degrees today. I’ll definitely be looking forward to the days where I can go somewhere warm for the winter. It’s great to hear that you’ve built up connections in LA too. That’s also really important to us.
Thanks again,
Jessica (aka Mrs. Fioneer)
Greetings! Very helpful advice on this article! It is the little changes that make the biggest changes. Thanks a lot for sharing!
Your welcome. Thanks for commenting.
Hey Jessica, I’ve come across this article pretty long after you originally published it, but still wanted to reach out. Not sure if you ever got to try out the RV, but we are currently living in ours and slowly traveling around. We move about every 2 or 3 weeks. For longer stays, it’s about 3 months.
I’d say if you’re trying to compare it to something, it’s more like having a moving apartment than a road trip, but that really depends on your pace. We’ve also found out that it can be CRAZY cheap! We spend half of what we were before living in an apartment.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
Hi Breana,
Thank you so much for your note! We are actually planning a campervan adventure for next summer, so I’m super excited to see what we think of it. I like the idea of it being like a moving apartment. Do you find you stay in places for longer than you expected to?
Best,
Jess