Retire to Travel!

We are not minimalist, but we sold most of our assets! We have a small 5ft x 12ft storage unit which keeps our treasures that we wanted to keep safely!

Photo credit: Dr.Suhrud Sardesai who captured the moment!

Three years ago, my friends Lynne and Tim Martin said, " Postpone nothing!"  And this is so true.  Life is meant for living, life well-loved is a life well lived, no matter the circumstances!

I am almost 56 and my husband is 63, we retired in Feb 2015. Why did we decide to retire early? Both of us have a love for travel and we thought that we should see the world while we can still move and enjoy the freedom of health. It was not an easy decision, however, life events made the decision easier. I have cancer in my family and my husbands family has heart disease. When someone in the family becomes terminally ill, the sense of mortality heightens. Sadness is immense.  And that is exactly what happened to me a few years ago. The pain of these events was so unbearable, that my world turned upside down. Over a period of 2-3 years, I was able to reign in my thoughts and accept the reality. Acceptance brought about the decision to retire early. This would give me an opportunity to be able to spend time with my family without the conflict of a job or business. My husband and I talked and with a clear mind took this decision to retire.

Now that we are not working, and have been living in California for the last 18 years, the question came up as to where to retire? We are New Zealand citizens, originally from India and have lived and worked in Singapore, New Zealand, and the USA. We absolutely loved living in New Zealand. We have the traveling spirit and the fun loving attitude! However, working circumstances and the difficulty in finding jobs and the downturn in the economy during our stay in NZ in 1999, forced us to move on and we ended up in the USA. Settling down in the USA was not easy, we were over 40 years old. We struggled initially and were able to settle down in a few years to make a living.  Having lived in different countries is an education in itself. It has trained us to adjust to any situation.

Traveling and working in different countries and having no ties to any one country as a preference is sometimes a dilemma! We have been traveling now for two years.  Read our stories.  We have designed a certain criteria in our minds of what we would like in a place to retire eventually when we are ready. A city with great weather, good local transport, an airport close by, good medical facilities as we are getting older and will need them at some stage.  We also have criteria for our future abode but that I will discuss another time.  We would love to be close to friends and family. But both our friends and family are spread all over the world! So started our search for this place that we might eventually settle down. This also became a great reason to travel to various places and see them from a local perspective. Our motto is "Think Global Live Local". Home has always been where we, my husband and I, are together , the world is our oyster.

In the meantime, we have decided to travel with our suitcases and live like locals in different places to experience the world and try to identify where we might eventually end up. It's been two years and we have lived and enjoyed many cities and made new "extraordinary" ordinary friends. Our nomadic life is envied by many. We stay a minimum of one month in each location to get a feel and culture of the place. We rent one or two bedroom furnished apartments which are within our budget that preserves our nest egg. Sometimes they are very comfortable and other times we could have done better. But we accept what we get and live in the apartment like it is our home for that duration. We have been using the various websites to find these apartments like Homeaway, VRBO, Airbnb and others. We try as far as possible to use local transport. There is always an advantage to that, we don't need to park a car anywhere.

We get asked one more question. How much does this lifestyle cost?  Our answer: You have to make that decision. Everyone's lifestyles are different. There is a lot of give and take in this way of life.  But everyone should try to keep close to their needs in life as possible. You cannot give up everything.   You should try to live the way you lived in your own home. Of course, there are adjustments that have to be accepted.

The decision to retire is made more difficult if you have children,  in our case our son lives in Seattle and to be close to him would mean accepting the harsh winter conditions. Also the fact is that children find their own areas of work and in the current work environment may have to move to other locations to further their careers. So binding oneself down to live where your children live is out of the question.

So, again it means, our search continues to find a place to call home once the hands and feet get tired of travel. In the meantime, we will enjoy our home free life and look forward to the next destination!