Early Retirement Full Time Travel | What Your First Year Should Look Like

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we're talking about early retirement full-time travel what should your first year look like and that's a question we get a lot so you've just sold your house downsized and you're trying to figure out what to do we're here to give you a plan on what that should look like because you should not be just winging this and making it up as you go you should try to plan your whole first year out because there are some parameters that you want to hit at the end of that first year and be able to look back and say okay uh here's what we learned and if you haven't done the things you need to do you won't have really learned anything about yourself and about these places and then you won't know what to do the second year so you want to spend more time than you normally would when you travel in a place think one to two months because that's going to give you the best idea of what a place is like and how you do living there because the feelings that surface in you after three days or seven days are not the same feelings that surface after 45 days after 45 days and you're leaving after 45 days and you're like oh I don't want to leave then you'll know you love that place but if you leave a place after three days and you're like oh I didn't want to leave you may have stayed another seven days and then been like okay I am over this place which has happened to us a few times yes the things you thought were Charming on days one two and three are not Charming on days 14 16 17. exactly or days 20 29 and 30 you're just like oh when is our last day here we can go now yeah so definitely plan on spending at least a month everywhere you go for the most part uh maybe two second part about this is to live like a local and not in hotels you need to figure out what it's like to go to the grocery store and to cook and to do all those types of things and to actually live there yeah to actually live there that's the only way you're going to get a sense of if you like a place uh the third tip I have for that is that almost every Big City that we've been to has an expat area and that's going to be areas where we're American and so most cities have a place where different nationalities congregate sometimes it's just one area where all the you know westerners congregate sometimes it's broken up by what country you're from the Americans might be here the Australians might be here figure that out we're going to be having more content on that type of thing of where you should stay in each City but figure that out and I do recommend going to those areas first because it's going to give you a softer Landing absolutely I think it makes a huge difference um especially on some of the places that are going to be a little bit more exotic of sorts if you have never been to them before you need that soft Landing because they're it's going to be harsh up front and the soft Landing isn't actually going to help you get a better understanding of what it's like to live there right yeah because when you when you actually live there longer you're probably going to want to be in the type of environment that you're used to so the the apartment will be a western style apartment as opposed to a local style apartment and that can be a very difficult and different thing to get used to and again that may be fine for a few days but for two months three months four months that kind of stuff can start to wear on you yeah just little things like is the shower a western shower or is it a wet shower so you know in some apartments that you may rent if you're in a local area you turn the shower on the entire bathroom will get wet and the toilet everything if you're just not used to that you can just it can kind of mess you up after a little while if everything in the apartment is like that right the outdoor kitchen can be cute and charming and you know the first few days but after cooking out there in the heat for a whole month you're like oh I definitely do not want to do this all the time yeah so if you started in an expat area you'll be basically living in expat housing and you won't have that to contend with along with trying to adjust to the language and all the other stuff that you're trying to adjust to so I would definitely recommend that as far as where you should be focused on going a lot of people know what it's like to go to Mexico and if you've never been to Mexico you know you can definitely try going to that but the place that most people have not been that you really do need to go to is southeast Asia that's going to be Thailand Vietnam or Malaysia because by far they are the cheapest and best countries to live in as an early retiree uh they have that reputation for a good reason and if you don't go check those out in your first year you'll be doing all this planning without having all the information exactly you need to really know what's out there and give yourself you know a shot at a really amazing experience an amazing life in another country in Southeast Asia so much to offer so many different things in in each country has something completely different to offer there's a lot of choices and you really have to go check these out for yourself and just really kind of see what it feels like being there yeah and then as far as Europe goes that's another great place that you do need to check out I would definitely say you have to check out Italy Spain and Portugal again three countries that are going to be fairly economical to live in really good places for uh for you to be and big expat communities there to kind of lean on so of any countries I would I would check out those six uh maybe a month a piece and then after that if you do those six countries and you you'll know which ones you like and you'll like some better than the others and you'll have a really good idea of how then year two you'd like it to go exactly and you know so that takes up let's say you do a month in each of those so that's six months you've got the whole rest of the year it's a good time to add in some things like some fun things that you want to do some things uh maybe you know on your wish list of places that you'd love to visit or uh you know just bucket list experiences in certain places like we did Iceland and Norway so that we could see the Northern Lights those were expensive and not places we would consider living because of the expense we would totally live there if we could afford it but um but we put those on the list because we wanted to see the Northern Lights and so those were definitely on there or you know we did Pharaoh Islands just because wow like we've seen amazing pictures there we wanted to do some photography there so we put that on the list just amazing experiences add those to the list so that you can have those really you know kind of fun things that you've all always wanted to do and kind of check those off the list yeah we spent uh we spent three months basically making a list of everything we always wanted to do and you know one of the places we went to was Athens Greece and from there uh you always wanted to go to Santorini and so we went there from Greece and it was amazing but you know we didn't spend a month on Santorini because that would be ridiculously expensive we spent four nights I think and that's the kind of thing you do for those extra three months is you've worked your whole life and planned and been working for a long time to get to this place now you can reward yourself in this first year with a few months of doing those things that you always wanted to do but while you're doing those things a lot of people get carried away and they just do whatever they wanted to do for the entire year and they get to the end of the year and they're like okay what do we do now well you can't go back and live in Santorini for six months uh because that's way too expensive so if you haven't worked in these other uh early retirement friendly countries you'll kind of be lost and start to feel a sense of dread as you get to the end of your first year because you really won't have a direction of what your two is going to look like yeah and some things a little side note some things to consider obviously different countries have different visa requirements so make sure that you're taking note of that as you're making your plans for going to the different countries if you want to spend one or two months you could usually do one but not always be able to do two or you have to renew your Visa different kinds things like that so make sure you do that we do have a lot more information here on the channel about those types of things so make sure you check those videos out too yeah we really love that first year it was great because we we did do those things we went to Thailand we went to Europe but we did work in a lot of fun stuff and I I have no regrets about any of it it was was definitely the way to go yes that was super fun and you know you're going to spend a little bit more of your budget that first year too but because you went to these countries that you're going to check out of hopefully spending more time in or put into a rotation of how you spend your year then it's going to help to kind of even things out a little bit yeah kind of a softer blow so hopefully this is helpful to you guys do not forget to subscribe to the channel for much more like this any questions leave those down in the comments and we'll see you soon

Channel: Grounded Life Finances

Views: 1,944

Keywords: early retirement, full time travel, thailand, Italy, usa, vietnam, colombia, budget, retirement budget, retirement tips, how to retire early, should I retire early, is early retirement an option, how much do I need to retire early, top reasons why you should retire early, 3 reasons why you should retire early

Id: 35nSgCkUrkk

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023