How did we get here? The Journey and Reasons for Early Retirement

Hey there, Adrienne here.  Many people have been shocked that we can retire early, we did not get an inheritance, and we have been hit or miss with our savings over the years.  Our very wise Financial Advisor once told us that retirement is all about managing our expenses.  With this knowledge, we set out to figure out a way to live on less, so we could retire.

We have always had a sense of adventure and I have lived in several different countries since my college days.  From a very young age, I knew I wanted to travel and see the world.  As a family we lived in Kenya for a year as missionaries with the IMB.  We are excited about living in different cultures.

In 2024, I had 3 different surgeries on the same foot and I was home bound most of the year.  Needless to say, I was going stir crazy!  I felt my physical and mental health were in a serious decline and I knew I needed something different in life, as I looked at my future.  As I was home bound, I watched a lot of You Tube and found several people who were traveling full time.  Some were RVer’s here in the USA and some were moving from country to country on a frequent basis.  I was very intrigued and starting consuming information! 

I realized that controlling our expenses was all about our location.  I knew with healthcare costs being so high in the US that we probably could not make the RVing situation work.  So we started looking at the world to see what the cost of living would be in different locations.  We are extremely blessed to have earned US Dollars, which gives us a distinct advantage when traveling around the world.

Tim and I started developing a plan, we figured out how much we could spend each month and have mapped out our travels to balance high cost countries in Western Europe with other destinations that are more affordable.  Our plan is to start out in Mexico since it close to the US, its relatively affordable and we can get back to our adult children easily.  We plan to stay in a location for about a month at a time, as this greatly reduces our costs of accommodations.

We launch in May 2025 and we are excited to see if our planning and budgeting will work.  Please follow along with us on our journey.