Chris and I watch a lot of videos on YouTube
about people who have sold everything they have to travel the world or to live as expats in foreign
countries. And at first we thought we wanted that too. And then we thought about it a little more
and we realized that is not quite what we wanted. Chris and I have taken early retirement so that
we can travel the world, spend more time with family and friends, and take on projects that
are meaningful to us. When Chris and I first took early retirement I thought that we were
going to travel the world fulltime. I was really enamored with the idea of selling everything and
traveling the world with just my backpack. But then I realized that if we did that we would
have a hard time with our two other goals of spending more time with the people we care about
and of working on projects that are meaningful to us. We can work on some projects remotely while we
travel but we can't do that with everything. Like for example Chris and I volunteer as emergency
responders in disaster situations like fires and floods. Maybe one day we'll be able to do that
internationally but right now all of our call outs rely on the fact that we're based in Vancouver.
We would have a really hard time doing in-person volunteer activities if we're never in the same
place twice. It took us a little bit of time to figure it out but we eventually realized that
full-time travel just wasn't for us. But we didn't want to give up on our dream of traveling the
world in a more relaxed way. We still wanted to be able to really get to know a place and take in the
local lifestyle so we decided on a slow long-term travel approach where we can live in another
place like an expat but without the hassle of moving to a new country. We can go to a new place
for a month or more and spend time getting to know the area beyond what you might see if you're just
on a quick tourist visit. And we can do this for about half the year. This lets us balance our
passion for travel while still spending lots of time with our family and working on our projects.
We're actually more imitating a snowbird lifestyle which is what we call Canadians that head south
to the US and Mexico for the winter. Though with our plans we travel anywhere in the world. We
travel to a city and rent a furnished apartment for a month or more. And we take the time to rent
a place that has a few comforts we're looking for like a proper desk and office chair and fast
internet. And if the apartment is missing a few things we want like a good frying pan we buy
one. Doing this is a bit of an added expense but it's worth it to us to be comfortable in our
home for the month. And because we're renting for a full month it's usually quite a bit cheaper
than paying a nightly rate as our rentals often fall under different rules than shorter tourist
accommodations. We get to know the local cafes, go to expat events like trivia nights,
get a one-month membership to a local gym, and figure out our favorite grocery stores and
markets. We do touristy stuff too and sometimes we even take off for an overnight side trip,
but most of our days are spent following a local routine. And we can still work on our projects
that can be done remotely. But when we're done traveling we spend the other half of our year in
our home base of Vancouver British Columbia. One of the things I love about coming home is that
I can go back to all my favorite fitness classes and restaurants. And because I'm gone for half the
year every time I come back it feels new and novel and I never really get bored with my routine.
Logistically though to support our long-term travel we keep a pretty low maintenance home in
Vancouver. We live in a condo and that is a lot easier to take care of than a full house and yard.
I do have a few house plants but I have somebody who comes in and waters them and looks at the
condo while we're away. The first time we went on a long-term trip I asked one of my friends to
look after our plants but it didn't seem fair to her to keep asking her to look after our condo
while we're away because we travel so much. So now I hire somebody to do it. And it works out
really well that we have a condo where we can just get up and leave at any point because as
volunteer emergency responders we can get a call to go to a flood or a wildfire situation
at any point and we just want to be able to to get up and leave. We also have to think about
things like mail and filing taxes while we're traveling because for some reason we always seem
to be a away during tax season. And being able to bank while we're away from home is a big thing
too. When we travel we usually get a local cell number. If you're planning on doing this too
it's really important to make sure you have ways of authenticating yourself with your bank
and other online services that doesn't require you to have access codes that are sent via text
message to your cell number back home. Here's another big advantage to us maintaining a home
in Canada: Because we're Canadian we qualify for health insurance assuming we live here for
half the year. By maintaining our residency we can keep our Canadian health care coverage.
We still need to buy medical coverage for our travels but it is a lot cheaper because we have
the base Canadian coverage. Combining long-term travel with maintaining a footprint in our home
country has worked very well for us and we think that it makes more sense than going the full
expat route or traveling full-time completely. It took us a while to figure out what was
right for us. We hope this video helps you figure out what's best for you. Thanks for
watching and we'll see you in the next one!
