What We Learned Traveling The World For 6 Years In Retirement

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are sharing with you what we've learned traveling the world fulltime for six years yeah we started this journey six years ago after our kids went off to school we actually held back for a year their freshman year of school uh to see what was going on and decided to finally sell our house and travel the world and you know after some thought we we really weren't sure we knew we had to sell our house because it was too big they were gone we weren't sure if we were going to just downsize or if we were going to go travel for a little while a lot of people have that thought and our thought was we'll go do it for at least a year and then a year has turned into six and we still haven't come back it's probably going to turn into uh 10 we just don't know um but we started out putting a few things in storage and then pretty quickly realized that was a mistake and uh got rid of that and ended up just getting rid of pretty much everything we own now to the point where everything we have with us is what we own except for one small box and we each have a suitcase and a backpack and that's basically what we get by on right now yeah I think initially our thought was to keep a few things because we were thinking about you know maybe coming back after a year or settling somewhere after a year we thought well we'll keep a few of our favorite things and then we'll just start our next place with that but then very quickly after just a few months of traveling we were like ooh this just seems like too much fun maybe we won't be coming back and then we realized you know we're paying for a storage unit we don't really need we don't need the stuff in it we can always get that stuff back so then we decided to just sell everything and that's when we started uh we were really free yeah all we have like you said are we each have a suitcase and we each have a backpack and the backpacks are generally just the equipment that we carry with us so that's uh one of the first things that we learned is that the less you have really the better off you are because it's really more about people and experiences it's not about stuff yeah we've we've spent a lot of time with stuff in fact the house we just sold was not the house we sold last was not the biggest house that was like a a sort of downsizing the house before that which was when our kids were like you know 10 to 15 years old that house was way too big and we accumulated so much stuff that it was It was kind of crazy how how much stuff was it took us like a month to get the stuff out of that basement and I know some of you are there where it's like you have so much stuff you don't even know what you have and that that was just kind of an overwhelming feeling but we we did all that you know we did the the thing where you just accumulate and that was fine we we liked that life we like doing it but then there became a time where it was like not having that stuff because your stuff does own you more than you own it and and it is costly to keep it going and you do at the end of the day realize you're working a lot more to Main maintain stuff cars houses that if you didn't have you wouldn't have to work so hard and at some point that switch flips and you go from how much can I get to how much can I get rid of because now I don't want to have to do the stuff that you know you're tired of that you get tired you do it gets old really fast and you find yourself all of a sudden like do I even want this you know when we started uh selling stuff in that last house that we downsized to there were still boxes that we never opened when we moved there we lived in that last house for uh around two years and there were still boxes that we never even opened and we were like why did we even move this box I don't even know what's in it you know like just sell it or donate it or whatever or give it away uh because what was the point of even moving this box over here yeah so that's our our start to our story we started this when we were like about 45 we're now just over 50 so uh 6 years and it has been a lot longer than we thought we were going to do it for but it really just makes sense and as long as it keeps making sense I think we'll keep doing it yeah for sure all right so the next thing that we learned is that you can do just about anything um it's incredible uh how confident you can become in you know kind of traveling a fulltime like this you learn so much along the way and you're like oh yeah let's just go for it like sometimes you can be hesitant about something new a new experience but when you've been doing this for a long time it you're a lot less hesitant I'm not saying confident is like overconfident but just like okay I think like I believe in myself I can do this yeah um and just okay let me go walk up to this machine and you know buy a ticket to the Metro sometimes that can be a little bit overwhelming in certain places and just like I don't know if the machine's going to be in English or even restaurants like in Japan you get you go to restaurants a lot of restaurants have U machines that you order from and a lot of times you'll have to try to figure out to change the language and things like that so just things like that will having those experiences you're like I can do anything because I did this and I think some of it is learning humility because you just don't take yourself as seriously as you used to and once you've been wrong enough times you're not too worried about you know messing up and and not doing something properly because someone will come along and show you how to do it if you're not doing it right and that's the humility that you have to to travel full-time because there's no way you could possibly know everything like we're in Japan right now and it's probably the hardest place as far as not messing up cultural nor Norms there's just so many cultural norms that you could never even think of and sometimes we're walking outside and we're like we probably just broke three cultural norms in the last five minutes because they're just too nice they're not going to tell us but uh you know this is the one where we've easily you know messed up the most uh things that we weren't sure how to do it yeah but like you said people are so gracious about it I remember the um one that really knocked me down quite a few notches was I thought I knew how to go grocery shopping I've been grocery shopping thousands of times probably in my life and I remember going to the grocery store in Bangkok Thailand for the first time and there um you get you have to have a a person an ass an attendant weigh your um your fruits and vegetables in the fruit and vegetable Department in the produce before you bring it to the checkout why did didn't know that because I didn't see the person standing there so I bought all like a whole basket full of fruits and vegetables and I got to it was a busy time too when we were there I got to the register and it was my turn I put all the stuff on there and the girl the cashier tried to tell me something but I was like I don't know what she's saying and there were literally at least 10 people in line behind me and I was like oh my gosh what's happening she started taking all the fruits and vegetables and putting them into a basket and I was like am I not allowed to buy them like I didn't understand what was going on well then that's when I realized that she was she took them all over to the produce section got them all weighed and tagged and then brought them back and rung them up and I thought for sure the people behind me are going to be really angry and I very discreetly tried to turn around to say like I'm sorry and literally nobody looked concerned at all they just kind of stood there maybe a couple people switched lines but for the most part no one was upset and I was like oh my gosh I can't even believe this but like that's the type of situation that you're like okay I'm extremely humbled by the situation um of an experience that you're so used to you know yeah just two days ago we were eating restaurant here in Japan in a ramen restaurant and we go to sit down we've been to this one before even so the first time we were there we couldn't figure out how to make the machine work cuz it was all in Japanese but we we got through that and and then we couldn't figure out how to pay because it didn't take cards we were trying to stick our card in had to have cash so we got through that well this time we went we did all that perfectly then we went and sat at the table and then the guy came out and he pointed at the table and he did like a 30 to 45 second little monologue about the table and we were like we have no idea what you're saying and he had no idea what we were saying and so he just kind of pointed at the table a couple times said a few more things and then took our little receipt and walked away and I was like I don't know he could be saying you've picked the best table in the world he could be saying this table is built on a sinkhole and it's going to drop in 10 minutes I don't know but like he didn't seem like too concerned but it was just one of those things like I have actually no idea what's happening here and then about 10 minutes later he brought the food and left it so we figured it was okay but uh you do learn humility like you just don't you just there's just so many things you're just not going to know yeah absolutely and we still don't know why why he was pointing at the table we'll never we never did figure it out and now we're in a different city so now we will never know we'll never know what happened um the next one is about friends and this is something we get asked about a lot um just keeping in touch with you know friends and family but the friends that you're going to make while you're traveling like this full-time are are like life friends you know and not just like meeting other expats or other you know westerners that are traveling like you but also meeting locals that we become friends with as well it's been absolutely amazing um the experiences that we've had making these friends and it's so great because they're like little communities that we leave everywhere that we go and when we come back those little communities are still there so it's just really it's just really a a cool and unique experience yeah there's tons of people that we meet and it is it is great it's we probably have better friend groups now than we did before we started traveling so it's just something that we're super thankful for uh next one is that you do learn to go with the flow because there's going to be issues that come up kind of like the the ramen restaurant place it's like not everything is going to go as smoothly as as at home because you're you're not used to it and so and and it's a little the the custom may be different but you will figure it out and generally everywhere in the world people are super helpful to help you figure it out once you figure it out and then you come back the next time you'll you'll generally not have any problems at all yeah absolutely uh there's been situations were like uh one time we were sitting at a gate um in an in the airport I think it was actually here in Japan we were were sitting in an airport gate and uh the weather was just being crazy and our flight kept getting delayed and delayed um and then the next thing we know uh they made an announcement in Japanese and everybody in our gate just got up and walked away and we were like what's happening why did everybody just leave so we just picked up our things and we followed them well apparently it was a gate change but it was never translated so it was only said in Japanese and we were like we don't know what's happening so we ended up changing Gates and you know everything was a little bit different cuz it was a completely different type of gate that we were going to be going through um so there was another like you know uh Security check that we had to do at this gate or whatever but you just learned to do that just kind of chuckle and that's exactly what we did we just kind of laughed about it and we were just like let's just go with the flow on it don't know what's going on yeah we were in Dubai several years ago and I was getting on the Metro cuz Alie was SI so I'd gone out to get us some food or something and I was getting on the Metro at night on the way back to the hotel had my food getting on there was like this really crowded car and then the one next to it I noticed was not crowded so like let me go over the not crowded one so I walk into this car and it's just women in the car and finally one of them says to me sir this is just the women's car in Dubai and I was like oh okay I've made made a pretty big mistake here haven't I and so they they were like it's okay you can stay uh just you know just know that there are women's cars so they they clearly knew that I had made a mistake and they were pretty friendly but uh so it was you know we don't have that in America we don't have women's cars on the uh on the MARTA in Atlanta you know so it's like I never even considered that there would be a women's only car but there is which is pretty cool so just know that if you're out and about in Dubai as a man you know the these are little things there's no way you can learn them all except for to make the mistake have the locals tell you and then you you'll figure it out but they've always been no one's ever yelled at us or been mad about anything yeah I think that's the big thing is that they know that you didn't do that on purpose they understand that you've made a mistake but it wasn't like you know in a malicious way and I think once they realize that which is usually instantly um I mean obviously he looked innocent enough with a bag of food try to go back to the hotel for us to eat um they were gracious enough to say it's okay just you know sit over here in the corner and we'll be over here kind of thing um but it's just uh you just have to really be accepting of the fact that those things will um happen um the the next thing is just appreciating the little things yeah um just so many situations where this comes up right yeah exactly just observing locals and doing things that are different than how you would normally do them it's just it's a fun way to go through your day and to just it's like stop and smell the roses but you really do stop and appreciate doing little things like oh I was able to order here and I got exactly what I wanted that was pretty good yeah and just kind of uh you know watching the locals in the area too and the way that they live their lives too and just comparing that um to your experiences and just what you can learn from that situation as well just a lot of things like that uh just kind of letting your senses guide you even you know like o I smell something good and it's lunchtime let me see if I could find uh this place to eat and then it's like oo this is amazing like even eating meals um when you're abroad can be a really um incredible experience and you think to yourself well it's just eating how exciting is eating but when you're eating something from a place in that place it really is something else you know it's like you really do kind of use all of your senses when that happens and it's it's a it's an interesting feeling a really good feeling yeah and I I do find too that the conversations you have with people even if you don't understand understand them are more meaningful uh in some places because like at home you just like people say to you like if you're in a store or something how you doing good how are you good you know nobody really cares um but when you're abroad and people ask you stuff they actually do care and the conversation like if you like we're in Japan right now and if if someone you buy something from a store at the end if you say thank you in Japanese they will just like light up their their whole face they'll be like oh you know Japanese I'm like no I don't know that word but I only learned that they they really do they really do like it and uh you know it's just a more meaningful and actual conversation you're just so used to going through the motions of pleasantries but when the pleasantries are not like normal to you and you have to think what the pleasant thing to say is then the person knows you had to put some effort into that it it is more meaningful yeah absolutely all right the next thing is thinking outside the box um and not just our own box but boxes someplace else too like there's other ways to do things and you're like oh I didn't realize that you know that's a thing that's a unique thing even things like uh you know signals and having countdowns in traffic and knowing when to cross the road and and even just things like that um just seeing things through different eyes and just being um just being open to the opportunities that are outside of the box yeah and just just experiencing things in a different way and sometimes you'll like those things more like um here you know in Japan things are much more orderly and I have found that I I do like that like it's very the orderly it's very orderly in Thailand too like you're going to get on the train the BTS system everyone just gets in a line to the side to the two sides people get off the train then the people get on the train there's no pushing running shoving it's just super civilized and I find that to be nice and then I get back home and it's just like all right Mad Dash for the for the entrance so yeah I think it's Unique in that we were actually talking about this the other day uh Japan is is like there's a lot of sounds that go with actions um like sounds for crossing the street or sounds when the Metro or train doors are about to close or a sound when they're going to make an announcement and you should listen and I feel I like the other day I found myself not even looking up at the signal to cross the crosswalk I was just looking down at my phone and when I heard the sound I started Crossing I didn't even look up um I just started crossing the road and I thought oh I've they've trained me like I'm just kind of doing what what what they're doing here and it's like that's outside the box I would never think to do something like that um you know like at home or whatever so that's something like that just different um as well a lesson learned for sure and I think the the last one that we want to talk about here is that at the end of the day we're all the same um when you see parents in other countries with their kids they want the same same thing for their kids that we wanted and want for our kids um you know people want the same things everywhere around the world is kind of the thing that unites us you know yeah we were in the train station yesterday watching families come through and they're also on the same Struggle Bus that we were on as parents like two kids they're trying to push one and feed them and they have all these bags and it's like it's parenting is the same everywhere life is the same everywhere there's little difference but we all go through the same things and we have an understanding uh and you can just appreciate people and what they've been through what they're accomplishing and just all the great things going on around you yeah so hopefully you've uh learned a little something along with us as well over our last six years of full-time travel if you have any questions leave those Below in the comments and we hope to see you guys next time

Channel: Grounded Life Finances

Views: 9,331

Keywords: early retirement, what we learned traveling the world full time, full time travel, senior nomads, digital nomad, full time travel over 50, can you travel full time over 50, what good is it to travel full time, what do expats learn, grounded life travel

Id: VOYi_lIylP8

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024