1. THINGS ARE CHEAPER!
We retired a little over 3 years ago, and the moment we did our combined income was cut by roughly 60%! Had we stayed in America, I’m certain that we would’ve needed to “lower’ our lifestyle in order to afford our bills. It’s also very likely that at least one of us would’ve had to take a part time job just to make ends meet (and that’s even before inflation over the last 3 years is taken into consideration)!
Since moving overseas our retirement income has been more than adequate, not only to live on but to thrive! Many people think we must be rich because of all the places we’ve visited since leaving America. They might ask “how can we afford it?” But my question is, how could we have afforded not to?
We have a budget and we stick to it! We never go over the budget even though we don’t deny ourselves much of anything. We never worry about how many times we go out to eat or how many times we have it delivered. Buying groceries hasn’t been stressful for us either because in the countries we’ve spent time in, food prices haven’t gone up much at all in the last few years. The apartments and hotels (the vast majority of them) have been a lot nicer than anything we could afford in America! We’ve used just about every form of transportation there is over the last few years (we even went on a 16 day transatlantic cruise), yet at the end of virtually every month we have money from our budget left over!
There’s no way we could live like this in America on our budget. And that’s why this is the number one reason we love full time traveling! Our money goes substantially further than it would back home!
2. WE FEEL SAFER!
There’s no getting around saying this. Since we left the U.S., we feel a lot safer! In most countries that we’ve visited we feel totally safe walking wherever we want to go day or night. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in a huge city, or a small town or village, it feels safer than where we used to live in the U.S! We take normal precautions, like watching our personal items and not being careless, but in countries outside of the U.S., there simply aren’t gangs roaming the streets, or malls being closed early because of crime, or homelessness encampments and all that goes along with those. The homeless people we’ve encountered while traveling have been minimal, and by that I’m saying we may have encountered a grand total of about 30 homeless people throughout the countries we’ve visited in the last 2 1/2 years! Homelessness is simply not the problem that it is in the U.S. Safety is a big reason that we love full time traveling!
3. WE GET TO SEE NEAT THINGS!
I take a lot of photos! I save them all, and share most of them…so when I have a few minutes to look through them, I’m amazed at all the memories Michelle and I have made in the last 3 years. Quite frankly, we’ve seen a lot of neat things in our travels! I love sharing them with you on my website, and on social media. I want people to realize that certain perceptions you might have about countries outside the U.S. may not be totally accurate.
It’s a beautiful world out here, with lots of neat things to see. This is why it’s number 3 on our list!
4. WE MEET GREAT PEOPLE!
Because we travel, we’ve gotten to know some great people around the world! For me, a small town guy who grew up in Davidsville, Pennsylvania, (where there was and is still only one single stoplight) it’s amazing to me to think that I now know people in many different countries. For instance, I know an Ecuadorean lady in Manta. Her name is Stella and she’s a real estate agent. She helped Michelle and I find the right apartment when we knew absolutely nothing about Manta, Ecuador. She’s always been so nice to us and helpful! So if you ever travel to Manta, Ecuador…I know a nice lady (who speaks perfect English) who can find you the right place!
We also know a group of people who live in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. While most people think of Playa only as a vacation spot, these people spend most of their days caring for the 30-60 dogs who live at the local animal shelter. Our favorite memories from the time we were in Mexico were when we volunteered to walk dogs with this group, led by Warren and his wife Dayni. They are great people and if you ever find yourself in Playa Del Carmen, they can be found most days at Cebiam Sanctuary (their local dog shelter) leading and training the many volunteers who come to help.
We also know a very nice lady in Hoi An Vietnam named Nhu. She owns a restaurant with her husband in Hoi An ancient town and will always greet you with a smile, great food and friendly service! We’ve known her for over 4 years now and we consider her our friend.
Along the way, we’ve met so many friendly people who have helped us in so many ways. We’ve also met expats from all over the world. We may not always agree on everything, but one thing we all have in common is the desire to travel and to experience life outside the countries we grew up in. In fact, we know a couple named Don and Bernadette who are from Canada. We met them when we lived in Ecuador, and actually met up with them again when we all found ourselves in Chiang Mai, Thailand a year later! One of our favorite memories from that time was spending a few hours with them at a driving range, hitting buckets of golf balls. Michelle and I aren’t golfers, but Don and Bernadette are, so they were happy to help us (even though I’m sure we must have embarrassed them at least a few times by our wildly erratic golf swings!). I do remember thinking, “I’m in Chiang Mai, Thailand hitting golf balls with people from Canada. How cool is this?”
I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that we didn’t just “visit” different countries. We got to know people there and that’s been the best part about traveling! That’s why it’s number 4 on our list!
5. WE HAVE FREEDOM TO GO WHERE WE WANT!
We’ll admit it! We’ve changed our travel plans several times this year. Some of those changes were necessary due to an unexpected medical appointment to see a cardiologist for me, and others were simply because we felt like “changing things up” from what we had originally scheduled. In fact, we even made another change earlier today! Making travel plans can be stressful because there are a lot of moving parts. Visas need to be applied for, and dates for travel and accommodations need to match with what’s available and what’s in our budget. Unforeseen things can happen, like having a bad Airbnb experience, or finding we’ve traveled to a place that we simply don’t like as much as we’d hoped and want to move on earlier than planned. All of this is stressful. But it’s also fun!
We truly have the freedom to go wherever we want, whenever we want, and stay as long as our visa allows us! We also might see a place we want to travel to that we hadn’t thought of before and so we have the opportunity to make changes to our plans here and there to get to where we want to be! We’re not stuck in any one place for too long. If we have annoying neighbors which does happen sometimes, it’s only a short time before either they (or we) leave to go on to the next place. We’re not tied down by a house, or car or jobs, or anything of those things that keep people anchored to one place year after year.
We have freedom to move around and to experience the world! And that is one of our favorite things and why it’s number 5 on our list!
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! Please take a moment to leave a comment below and let me know what your top reason would be for traveling. I’d love to hear from you!
Safe travels everyone!!