Justin @ LivingTheFIghLife – Living The FIgh Life

Skills are Assets: Six Reasons to Do-It-Yourself

My dad was a “jack of all trades,” and there was little he couldn’t do himself. He made his own soap, handmade moccasins from a bear hide he tanned himself, reupholstered furniture, built a barn, a double-axle trailer (did all his own welding), laid bricks, rebuilt a carburetor, kept bees, added a bedroom and bath to our house (and did all his own plumbing and electrical), installed a wood-burning stove, and then built an entirely new house for his retirement years. During the high unemployment of the early 80s, my dad was laid off from the logging industry in our depressed rural county for over a year and a half, but he was able to do piecemeal handyman work, sell firewood, keep a garden, and hunt to keep food on our table until he was able to find steady employment again.

[Cover Photo Caption: Building a fence at one of our rental houses. Our landlord was so impressed he paid me $500 for the fence when we moved out!]

I was his (often involuntary) helper. I remember holding a light very still for what seemed like hours (but was probably only 20 minutes) in the freezing cold under the car at night while he repaired it. And though I was sometimes reluctant in these adventures, I absorbed a lot. His example taught me about self sufficiency and the importance of having a broad base of skills.

Sanding a tabletop — Helping my Dad build a table—he let me sand the top. He was always making something. (I loved that hat!)

Skills are assets. While they don’t show up on our net worth tracking spreadsheets (maybe they should?), they represent future value to us in terms of cost avoidance, self reliance, and accomplishment. Each time we learn a new skill and use it, we increase our net worth. So often we blindly just pay other people to do things for us that we could do ourselves and increase our skill-based assets. Here are six reasons for doing things ourselves instead of hiring out the job.

Reason 1: Skills save money (cost avoidance).

When we think about do-it-yourself (DIY), we often think about saving money. DIY is spending some of our time doing or making something instead of paying someone else a lot more to do it or make it for us. For example, when Launa and I bought our house in Virginia, we needed a shed for our bikes, lawnmower, and other tools. Instead of paying $6,000 for a new shed delivered to our house, my father-in-law (Pop) and I built one ourselves. For less than $800 in materials, I had a 8’x12’ shed (inside dimensions) with windows, a double-wide door, and attic space. If I counted the $1300 in net salary lost for the hours I spent building it (which I don’t, as I’ll explain later), I still saved almost $4,000!

Building a shed DIY — Building a shed with Pop. He helped me with many projects over the years (to include replacing my car’s timing chain belt and water pump in college when I was broke). As a mentor, he also taught me a lot about self reliance and self confidence.

My wife and I DIY our trip planning and we save a lot of money doing so. For example, when we hiked inn-to-inn along Hadrian’s Wall in England, we paid $1600 (56%) less than we would have if we booked the same trip through a popular tour operator. That’s good pay for about two days of work! But we also got a trip tailored to our exact preferences, we stayed closer to the wall some nights than the tour would have arranged, AND we gained a deep knowledge of the trail which enhanced our hike. We enjoyed similar savings by planning our trips along the Via Degli Dei in Italy, the Lycian Way in Türkiye, and the Archipelago Trail in Finland.

But DIY isn’t just about saving money. It provides numerous other benefits even in cases where it costs a little more than paying to have it done by someone else.

Reason 2: New skills keep us learning.

Life-long learning has a positive impact on our mental health and well being. Instead of spending our free time on passive activities like binging TV series, we can engage in activities that teach us new skills. DIY, baby!

DIY is project-based learning. Building that shed with Pop taught me a lot about construction. I learned how to frame out the walls, design the barn-style roof, install windows and doors, and shingle the roof. Little of that I knew how to do before we started, but we figured it out.

Over the years I have learned basic electrical and plumbing work, drywall repair, computer programming, personal finance, gardening, canning, and appliance repair to name just a few. The learning and problem solving inherent in DIY projects is great for my brain and provides an outlet for my creativity.

Building a tree house with Pop. This was a fun project to design and build together.

Reason 3: Learning skills instills self reliance.

While saving money is great, skills provide flexibility and value in a changing world. This idea was well expressed by Jacob Lund Fisker in his book Early Retirement Extreme, where a primary goal of his was to break free of the work-buy-work cycle and learn to do things himself. By having a multitude of skills, we can weather unpredictable changes in employment (like my Dad did), our health, prices, and the supply chain.

By being more self reliant, I don’t have to pay higher prices. I can skip a long wait for a car repair appointment or for a contractor to fit me in. I can get things done on my own timeline.

Canning jalapenos at home — My prized jalapeños—tasted much better than store bought. I learned to garden (I grew the jalapeños and dill), can and dehydrate foods, fish, and hunt. (Yes, that is a G&T to celebrate).

Reason 4: Skills save time (usually).

It might sound counterintuitive, but many times doing something yourself can save time over hiring someone else to do it. For example, when the side mirror on our car was broken off by a passing car, I could have called around for quotes, scheduled an appointment, drove the car across town to the shop and then either waited a few hours for the repair work to be completed or had my spouse pick me up and bring me back, THEN paid for the repair, drove home, AND worked 12.5 additional hours to pay the cost difference from doing the repair myself.

Instead, this is what I did: I quickly searched online for aftermarket parts, ordered the mirror to fit my car, reviewed the repair tutorial video provided by the parts website, bought the $11 door-cover-remover tool at the nearby auto parts store, and followed the video tutorial to replace the mirror and test it. It worked great! In a total of 2.5 hours I did myself what paying someone else would have taken 15 hours or more of my time. Even if, for example, my salary was twice the national average, it would still take 9 hours to pay for it! So while it might seem like paying someone else to do something for us will save time, it often takes more time than doing it ourselves—what I call “the tyranny of convenience.”

Not to mention, I was really proud of being able to do it myself which leads me to…

Reason 5: Skills reward us.

Repairing my refrigerator, building a shed, replacing a bathroom sink, and patching drywall is extremely rewarding. I enjoy the process of learning how to do something and then exercising those skills and seeing the tangible results. Every time I complete a DIY project I have a great sense of accomplishment and take pride in knowing that I was able to figure it out myself. As I write this post, just thinking back over the many projects I have completed fills me with joy. I don’t feel that joy when I pay someone else a lot of money to do the work for me.

DIY renovation of narrow kitchen pocket door into an archway before (left) and after (right). We enjoyed our kitchen and living room space far more with this change (and I suspect made our house more valuable).

Reason 6: Skills build self confidence.

On top of a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment I get from DIY projects, I also garner more self confidence. The more I am able to do myself, the more confident I am that I can tackle more complex projects. I didn’t start with building a shed. I started with hanging pictures and replacing furnace filters. Then I progressed to replacing door knobs and repairing lamps switches which progressed into minor drywall, electrical, and plumbing work. The more skills I learned, the more confident I became to tackle increasingly complex projects.

How can you build your DIY skill set?

DIY isn’t just house repairs or fixing your own car. It is doing anything that we might hire someone else to do for us to include taxes, investing, travel planning, rental property management, gardening, yard maintenance, and cooking. It can also be more abstract skills like walking or biking instead of taking an Uber, learning to exercise and eat well, or doing a home exchange instead of purchasing lodging on vacation. Here is a list of some DIY opportunities to help you brainstorm:

List of DIY opportunities — I ran out of room on the graphic before I ran out of DIY ideas!

What skills do you already have that you could expand on? What would you like to learn how to do? Identify easy opportunities that could be quick wins to build your confidence. Maybe start with mending a hole in your favorite shirt, sewing on a button, replacing your windshield wipers, or making pizzas at home (I love my wife’s homemade pizzas!). Don’t start with something too big like replacing the brake pads on your car, as you risk being overwhelmed and losing confidence.

Tap into available resources. Search online—there is a video, website, or interest group for every type of DIY project. The wealth of online help hasn’t failed me yet!Seek out a mentor. Local groups, friends, neighbors, and relatives can be great resources. I learned a lot from my Dad, my father-in-law (Pop), and friends on how to tackle different projects. If you want to brew your own beer, I suspect someone you know can help you get started.

Some tools you’ll need can be borrowed from your library or neighbor, and many tools can be rented, too. But even if you need to buy a tool, just one DIY project will normally cover the expense, and subsequent uses make it even more cost effective. Over the past 35 years I had built up a set of tools that I frequently used to complete my DIY projects, from basics like a hammer, multipurpose screwdriver, and drill to specialty items like canning equipment, a mitre saw, and a haircutting set (my wife has cut my hair since 2006).

Take pride and celebrate your DIY wins—and that includes when a project doesn’t go to plan. You are learning new things and building a skill set, even if you need a second (or third) try, or a little help this time to get it done. My wife and I are each other’s biggest fans and support and appreciate our DIY skills. Take photos before and after and share them online and with friends, co-workers, and family. The positive feedback is energizing!

Completed DIY shed — The finished shed that Pop and I built together. I’m very proud of this project! (Note my garden in front—another DIY project.)

Even after I downsized and no longer have a house, car, or many belongings, I still exercise my DIY skills. I help family and friends with projects at their houses or with financial planning. I sharpen knives at our long-stay accommodations and even do some minor repairs (I even built a bed frame for one host!).

DIY projects feel great, save money and time, help us learn things, be more self reliant and self confident, and help others.

How are you increasing your skill-based assets?

I built this frame for a long-stay AirBnB which took me about 3 hours (with the host’s approval and reimbursement for materials cost). It kept the mattress from sinking into the well of the bed frame (clearly not the right mattress for this frame). I slept much better afterwards!

The Tyranny of Convenience

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a machine that would save us the trouble of hanging up our clothes on a line to dry? No more waiting numerous hours, often overnight, before the clothes are dry and ready to fold and put away?

We could save that time with the right machine. All we’d have to do is take the bundle of wet clothes from the washing machine and plop it into this brilliant new machine, scrape out a small sock’s worth of lint from the previous load, close the door, choose from 12+ settings, and press start.

Dried clothes in 40 minutes—hot dog!

Well, that’s after I separated my cottons from my synthetics, from my delicates, from my (hypothetical) cashmere (which I have to line dry anyway). So they all couldn’t dry at the same time. But still…amazing idea, right?

I would need to drop $700 on this new-fangled machine and spend another $525-$750 annually on electricity. Plus an average of ~$60 per year on repairs, and then buy a replacement machine in 10-13 years. But what else would I do with $730 a year? At the average American’s $24 per hour net wage, that is only 30 hours of extra work per year—just 35 minutes per week. Nothing…right? Have I mentioned I would save 20 minutes hanging up my clothes to dry each week?

Don’t forget I would need to purchase replacement clothes much more frequently as that large clump of lint each load takes its toll—clothing fibers break down more quickly and my clothes get holes more quickly. But hey, that’s a great excuse to buy new stuff!

And I haven’t mentioned yet the ecological impact of building the machine, generating the electricity, and making the extra replacement clothing. But what would my kids and grandkids want with all those natural resources anyway? I saved 20 minutes!

Well, maybe electric clothes dryers aren’t the indispensable appliances of modern households I thought they were. The “convenience” they deliver comes at a high price—tyranny of convenience. But it’s not just dryers.

Over the decades we have been sold machine after machine with the promise to make our lives more convenient. From washers and dryers, to dishwashers, to microwaves, to cell phones, to robot vacuums. We’ve also been sold service after service, such as next-day (hour?) shopping delivery, food delivery, instant communication, music and entertainment services, and on and on.

Most conveniences come with a price. They often cost more money, but also cost us in terms of what we value—time, contentment, happiness, environmental impacts, self-reliance, and in-person human interactions.

Were we less happy in the 70’s before microwaves? Or in the 00’s before smartphones were in every pocket? We didn’t become less busy people with the addition of each convenience. How much of our newly freed-up time was spent earning the money to pay for these conveniences?

Do we work fewer hours now that we have a computer on every desk? I certainly didn’t, but instead of talking with people in person, I wrote and responded to emails. The convenience of my computer and email was at the cost of direct human interaction. The job still got done, but it was far less enjoyable.

So many aspects of our lives are driven by the allure of convenience, but at what cost?

Does online shopping save us time and money? Or do we actually buy more than we need on high-interest credit cards because it is so convenient?

Are the 15 minutes we save from picking-up our food from the restaurant worth the extra hour we have to work to pay for it? Is it worth the lukewarm and soggy product we so often receive?

Are food delivery robots worth the convenience? (Outside “convenience” store in Turku, Finland)

Conveniences often cost us more than we realize—a Faustian bargain.

“Faustian bargains are by their nature tragic or self-defeating for the person who makes them, because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.” — Encyclopedia Britannica (online)

Many conveniences cost more than the alternative, thereby requiring us to work longer hours to pay for them. Like my clothes dryer and food delivery examples, we try to buy back time by hiring a house cleaner or lawn service but often wind up working more hours to pay for it than the time we saved.

Many conveniences erode our self-sufficiency. Cooking, for example, is an important life skill. The convenience of eating out or buying preprepared, precooked, precut, preseasoned and prepackaged usually costs more, is often less healthy, and degrades our ability to nourish ourselves. This can be applied to laundry, cleaning, delivery, repairs, etc. Skills are assets and self-sufficiency builds our self-confidence.

Most take more resources to produce or deliver. Just drying my clothes on a simple clothesline, for example, takes far fewer of our Earth’s resources than a clothes dryer.

Many reduce our in-person human connections. We text instead of calling. We post instead of getting together in-person.

Some are actually inconvenient. Having my dentist, plumber, bank, and every business I have ever been a customer with (and many I haven’t), send me a DM or email to my phone at any time is very inconvenient.

Conveniences can also expose us to a litany of choices, which brings me to the tyranny of convenience’s evil step-sister…

The Tyranny of Choice

The convenience of having unlimited choices with convenient services such as Spotify, Amazon Prime, and food delivery services introduces the tyranny of choice where some options are good, but nearly unlimited options actually reduces our happiness. We want to listen to the perfect song, find the perfect movie for tonight, or eat something really delicious. And so we spend hours researching through endless options, weighing reviews, and comparing choices only to be less happy because our expectations were so high (it got a 4.8 with 389 reviews, so it must be great, right?). Analysis paralysis—ugh!

With so many choices in daily life, I find myself wanting fewer choices. I am happier when I have fewer media choices, when a menu has only 10 items, when a flight only has only 10-15 movies instead of 200. The more opportunities that confront us, the more opportunity costs we perceive in comparison to the choice we actually make and the less happy we tend to be with our choice (Scientific American, Dec 1, 2004).

Thinking about the conveniences we use.

Not all conveniences are problematic, and there are some ways to mitigate their negative impacts. Some save money and time and make life better and easier. Which conveniences are worth it and which ones are not will vary for each person. For me, a vacuum cleaner cleans my rugs and carpet better and quicker than I could without it, but I value the cost savings, self-reliance, and self-confidence I get from repairing my vacuum cleaner myself.

What I am suggesting is that we think about the conveniences that we rely on and evaluate them for how much they are truly adding to our lives. Then weighing that against how much they might be subtracting in costs (and hours needed to earn that money) as well as social, environmental, and other impacts.

I am not a fan of crunchy towels, but the costs of a clothes dryer far outweigh any benefits for me.

Drying clothes on a clothesline — If this gondolier’s family doesn’t need a dryer, neither do I (Venice, Italy)

8 Lessons I Have Learned After 5 Years as an Early Retiree

Five years ago, I took the leap to retire early—fifteen years before Social Security’s full-retirement age. I left my career as a civil servant at the Department of Defense at its peak—not just in terms of my highest compensation but also my greatest influence and status. And yet, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Since retiring early, my life has changed for the better—no regrets. Looking back on these past five years, here are eight things I learned about early retirement and myself:

[Post Photo Caption: Immersing myself in history at the Giza complex in Egypt as a full-time traveler]

Lesson 1: You don’t have to have your retirement figured out before you retire.

You really don’t. I wrote about this in my post on myths of early retirement, but it deserves some additional explanation as I received some feedback. When I retired, I had a general idea that I wanted to follow my curiosities and no longer spend the majority of my waking time and my physical and mental energy earning more money than I needed. When I left my full-time job, I had no idea that I would become a minimalist, find my dream job, quit that job, and travel the world full-time for two years and counting. I didn’t know how I or my retirement would evolve before I retired, and I didn’t need to know, yet. That knowledge unfolded.

When you or I retire, we don’t mysteriously become another person. Our minds don’t turn to mush and we are only saved by careful retirement preparation, planning, and practice. Instead, we wake up the next morning like we would on a long weekend or vacation (hopefully without an alarm) refreshed and ready to tackle the next chapter of our lives to include figuring out what that chapter will look like. I didn’t suddenly stop being a doer and lose any sense of my ability to learn things and get things done. Quite the opposite. I now had ample time and a full tank of physical and mental energy that until now I’d been applying toward work to apply toward figuring out retirement.

Before retirement, when I was physically and mentally exhausted working long hours at my job and fitting in my everyday life chores around that, was not the right time to try out new hobbies or make new retirement friends. Forcing a new hobby into my already busy life and precious little down time, particularly one that would benefit from daytime hours and my full energy, would have added to my stress and risk me resenting the new endeavor that I might otherwise enjoy.

It is OK to not know what you want to do in retirement. Leaving work frees up the time and energy to explore and try out new things and meet new people. I learned an enormous amount about myself after retirement because I had the time, energy, and resources to do so. We don’t have to have it all figured out in advance—we can leverage our time in retirement to do just that. Protect what little white space you have in your working life and know that retirement will provide ample time to decide what to do next.

Lesson 2: Stress testing your retirement plan works.

Stress testing my wife’s and my retirement plan has paid big dividends in how well we are enjoying our retirement. It made us both comfortable to retire early and brought comfort and confidence as our plans in retirement have evolved significantly over the last 5 years.

Stress testing isn’t just calculating our safe withdrawal rate that our investments would provide and comparing that to our known expenses. I also stress tested our retirement plan against unforeseen life changes that might derail our plan, such as one of us dying early, divorce, long-term care needs, or major health challenges. We also tested our plan against increased spending on family and favorite charities beyond our planned retirement spending levels.

Due to this stress testing, handling a surprise major health diagnosis a year into retirement didn’t derail our plans. Similarly, increasing our financial support of our family and donating more to causes we value hasn’t altered our plan. Stress testing our plan helped ensure our successful retirement. I provide more details on stress testing my retirement plan here.

Lesson 3: Trusting your retirement plan is key to enjoying retirement.

There is an important mental component to overcome when retiring early—fear. Fear that inflation will skyrocket, fear that the stock market will tank for an extended period, and fear that we missed planning for some unknown expense that will derail our retirement. I learned that this fear is unfounded. The 4% safe withdrawal rate that underpins financial independence is already very conservative and includes historical fluctuations in inflation. All of my double checking of spreadsheet formulas, running performance scenarios, and stress testing our plan made our plan even more solid. I had to remind myself that we have a lot of flexibility to adjust spending which creates options in our plan. My fear was self-imposed and unfounded, and by recognizing it, letting it go, and trusting my plan, I greatly increased my contentment with my choice to retire early.

Lesson 4: Work identity is a self-imposed weight.

Our identity is frequently intertwined with our jobs. In the US, asking what you do for a living is a common first question when meeting someone new. As a society, we put a lot of weight on our work and measure our importance by our titles. I was no different. I was proud to tell people I was an Air Force officer for 20 years, then a civilian director at the Pentagon after that.

So when I decided to retire early, I was worried about what I would tell people when they asked what I was going to do after leaving my job. A significant reason I decided to become a graduate student after retiring was to be able to tell people at my old job that I was going back to school full time, as they (and I) struggled to understand my decision to leave my hard-won director’s position. I thought “grad studies” carried a level of respect and fit within society’s paradigm of what I should be doing with my time. Telling people I was “retired” sounded less important and I assumed people would think less of me. But the truth is, all of the weight and importance of a work identity was self-imposed. When I let that go, I was better able to discover who I really was—what was most important to me.

When I left graduate school, I decided to own my early retirement and just tell people that I was retired. I discovered that people didn’t care (many were intrigued) and the importance of the title was really about my own judgment of myself.

Our identities should not be primarily defined by our jobs. My identity consists of many things. I am a husband, father, brother, son, and friend. I am a traveler, reader, hiker, minimalist, language learner, coach, student of history and of life, and writer. Who I am has changed over time and I will continue to evolve. By recognizing the power and weight we give to our job identity, we can put it into perspective with all of our other identities and help us mentally transition to early retirement more smoothly. The self-imposed weight of paid work titles no longer overshadows who I really am—a proud early retiree.

Letting go of my work title was challenging. — My official photo when I was promoted to Director of my office at the Pentagon. It was challenging to let go of my work identity when I retired early (but not challenging to let the suit and tie go!).

Lesson 5: Even with total time freedom, you have to focus on your top values.

Since retiring I have learned to focus on what I value most. I knew beforehand I needed to focus more on my health, so that one was easier. But it took more effort to identify what I wanted to do most with my newfound time freedom. I tried graduate school to pursue my love of history, cycling, gardening, and working my dream job educating service members on personal finance. I also wanted to travel more (a lot more) and spend more quality time with my family and friends. I wanted to improve my language skills, and read more. Trying to do all of these and keep up our house, cars, yard, and other commitments meant not doing any of them very well. I found that by slicing up my time with so many activities often derailed what was most important to me.

A big step in helping me refine what I valued most was minimalism. I began a two-and-a-half-year process of letting go of everything that was holding me back. Through that, I was able to identify my top five values and actively stop doing numbers 6 through 20 that were eating up my time and energy. I discovered that the more I traveled, the more I wanted to travel. I also didn’t want to repeat my mistake of not spending enough quality time with my dad before his Alzheimer’s worsened. As I shed my possessions my clarity of what I wanted to do came into focus—lots of slow travel, more quality time with family and friends, focus on my health, reading more, and improving my language skills and history knowledge.

By letting go of my full-time job and the physical possessions around my lower value interests, I was able to focus on what was most important to me. I know my values will change over time, but the process I learned, of identifying what I value most, will remain.

Time freedom enables us to spend quality time doing what we value most — Following my curiosity at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo—I spent all day there!

Lesson 6: It’s harder to transition to retirement if your partner still works.

Having time freedom as an early retiree was (is!) fantastic, but early on I didn’t have complete time flexibility as Launa (my wife and best friend) continued to work for two more years. Similarly, my other friends were working also. So, while I enjoyed riding my bike along empty trails, hiking when no one was around, visiting DC’s fabulous free museums mid-week, I didn’t get to share these experiences with my best friend and compound our memory dividends.

To mitigate this challenge, I pursued projects that helped fill my days and free up time when my wife and other friends were free. A key thing was doing shared chores like grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, car maintenance, and other errands during the day so when Launa was off work we could fully enjoy our evenings and weekends together. I spent my first year of retirement as a full-time graduate student. I completed most of my reading and writing during the day. I pivoted from grad school to personal finance coaching during my second year and worked in my dream job. But when my wife decided to retire early also, I was very motivated to align with her six months later when I quit my dream job.

For the last 2.5 years, retirement has been spectacular because we are enjoying it together with complete time freedom. While I certainly enjoyed my first 2.5 years of retirement, I was still tethered to the working world’s schedule. I learned that the benefits of early retirement can be more fully realized when your timing aligns with your partner.

Early retirement is better when your partner is also retired — Early retirement would not be nearly as sweet without my best friend to enjoy it with!

Lesson 7: Having complete time freedom is gold.

Not all time is equal. I recall when my work day was chopped into a hundred 5-minute periods responding to email, voicemails, and putting out the latest fires with leadership and my staff. Though I frequently worked long hours, I struggled to find time to tackle the most important tasks because they required hours of uninterrupted time to accomplish. I had the same amount of time each day, but it wasn’t effective time when it was chopped into small pieces and limited my options for what I was able to accomplish.

Time in daily life is similar. Four hours of free time broken into 15-minute chunks across several evenings after a long day of work is less useful than a four-hour block of uninterrupted time when I am well rested and focused. Trying to buy back our time in small increments, like hiring housekeeping or lawn care, rarely provides us valuable time to spend. Applying this to different financial independence paths (below), we can see different levels of time value.

Coast FIRE: Having enough invested early in life to be able to retire in your 60s (aka coast FIRE) is better than the traditional retirement path (slowly investing 10-15 percent every year until age 67) as coast FIRE offers more flexibility of work choices to include part-time opportunities. But you will still have to work to pay the bills until retirement, so your time is not fully your own.

Barista FIRE: Having your passive income cover some of your expenses and having to work part-time to cover the rest, such as working as a barista (aka barista FIRE) also provides more flexibility than the traditional retirement path, but work still controls a portion of your schedule and limits your time options.

Sabbaticals: Taking periodic sabbaticals, either within a job or between jobs, can provide some increased time flexibility, but it is limited by the length of the sabbatical and your financial situation. For example, you cannot commit to a 2-year volunteer opportunity if you only have 3 months off. Work sabbaticals often delay achieving full financial independence by spending early savings before it can compound.

Being fully financially independent with the ability to retire early (aka traditional FIRE) provides the most time flexibility. Every hour—every day—of retirement has every possibility. You decide (not your boss) what to do with your time. It wasn’t until both my wife and I achieved full financial independence that I realized how free my time was. We can now say yes to anything and our only time limitations are those we impose on ourselves—pure gold! Knowing how much more valuable my time is now, I wouldn’t do it any other way.

Lesson 8: My previous accomplishments reduced pressure to pursue big external goals in retirement.

I recognize that the earlier one retires the harder it might be to not continue working for pay to fulfill the human need for accomplishment. I worked 30 years full-time after college. Twenty years on active duty and ten years as a civil servant at the Pentagon. My jobs focused on service to military members and their families. I am proud of all I accomplished in the working world. Also during those 30 years, I served on the board of directors for two nonprofits, served as president of the neighborhood civic association, and coached recreational soccer for 25 seasons.

I share this because I no longer feel that strong desire to “make my mark” externally as I did when I was younger. I don’t need to “find my purpose” in early retirement. My need for purpose was fulfilled with accomplishment over those 30 years. I had long strived for external validation (promotions, awards, accolades, prestige) that my jobs readily provided. Looking back, I can see that one downside of this external focus is that I had prioritized it over taking good care of my health and spending more quality time with my family.

Now as an older early retiree (I retired at age 52), I feel freer to focus on myself and my family and friends. This was something I knew was missing, but I wasn’t able to take action until after I freed myself from the inertia and gravitational pull of the working world. I have learned to focus on what I value the most, no longer trying (and often failing) to squeeze in health and family around work commitments.

Accomplishments through life can help fulfill the desire for purpose in life — Presentation of a shadow box at my retirement from active duty — the Air Force provided many opportunities for fulfilling purpose and gaining a sense of accomplishment and recognition.

My first 5 years of early retirement have been great. I trusted my plan. I shed many societal pressures related to identity and accomplishment. I learned the value of time freedom and having someone to share it with. I learned about the power of minimalism in helping me focus on what I valued most. I let myself change and I look forward to continued evolution in the next five years of early retirement.

Happiness in Early Retirement Isn’t Rare

I enjoy the work published on No Sidebar. It is one of the few blogs I regularly follow and I have been honored to have a few of my pieces published there. It has a large reach and positive influence in the minimalism and simple living community. Recently, however, I felt I needed to provide another perspective on an article titled “10 Things We’re Told Will Bring Happiness—But Rarely Do” written and published by No Sidebar on August 27, 2025, which has a short but problematic section on early retirement. I hope that this response article allows readers to consider how early retirement and happiness are intricately connected.

The No Sidebar article lists some common things that don’t deliver on their promise of happiness. It begins:

“Many of the things we’ve been told will bring us joy end up draining our time, money, and energy instead. They can keep us chasing a version of life that’s shinier on the outside than it is satisfying on the inside. Happiness, it turns out, has less to do with what we own and more to do with how we live. Here are ten things our culture says will make us happy—yet rarely do.”

Then the article lists several things that, I agree, can be hollow ways to try to find happiness, such as a popular social media profile, pursuing the latest technology, and keeping up with everyone else. But then it goes on to include early retirement on that list as something that won’t bring happiness. It says:

“Retiring early sounds appealing—until you realize that meaning and purpose aren’t guaranteed by having more free time. Happiness often comes from work that matters to us, whether paid or volunteer. The key is less about escaping work and more about finding or creating work worth doing.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. Below I identify four implied assertions these passages make about early retirement, and provide my responses to each of them.

Implied assertion 1: Our culture promotes early retirement as something that will make us happy.

Our culture is actually sending a very different message—spend, spend, spend to be happy. In fact, this same article identifies the cultural pressures we face to buy the latest stuff (items 1, 2, 5, and 9), upgrade our stuff (item 7), and keep up with the Joneses (item 10). I agree: the cultural message to not retire early and keep making (and spending) as much money as possible is a strong one. Most mainstream tax advisors recommend saving just 10-15% of your income for retirement. At that rate, most people won’t be able to retire until their 60s. That’s not a strong cultural push for early retirement.

In addition to cultural messages against early retirement, there are structural barriers, too. According to the Life Insurance And Market Research Association (LIMRA) the vast majority of Americans (82%) retire after age 60 (see chart). This is not surprising since laws prevent us from collecting early Social Security until age 62, Medicare until age 65, and full Social Security until age 67. In addition, tax-deferred accounts like IRAs and 401Ks are generally penalized 10% for withdrawals before age 59.5.

It is unclear why the chart displays two “Age 50-54” groups

In short, early retirement is a counter-cultural, powerful way that many thoughtful people bring happiness into their lives. Very few people retire early because it requires pushing back on the cultural norm of spending most of our money on stuff, and instead, saving and investing a much larger percentage of our income than 10-15%. Those pursuing financial independence are buying their freedom out of our consumer culture machine.

Implied assertion 2: The time freedom gained from early retirement prevents us from easily finding purpose and meaning.

I am baffled by this one. The article implies that volunteer activities are somehow not part of early retirement. I disagree. Early retirees can and do an amazing amount of volunteer work in their communities and around the world because they are not tied down to a paid job.

While noble volunteer work is a great idea, it’s not the only way early retirees find meaning. That’s the point: they have time to explore and enjoy a vast array of meaning-making activities. Pursuing hobbies can bring meaning, reward, and joy. When I was working, my full-time job (though meaningful) was choking out what I valued most. I wanted to travel extensively, spend more quality time with my family and friends, read more, learn a language, take better care of my health, and add some whitespace in between these activities.

But my calendar showed a startling gap between what mattered most to me and how I actually spent my time. Our calendars don’t lie. They show us what we actually prioritize, not what we wish we prioritized. I quit my dream job (which was loaded with purpose and meaning) to pursue these higher priorities. I couldn’t be happier because I am following my values and my calendar now reflects these higher values. We don’t need to learn better time management to cut out the things we value to like quality family time so we can keep working; instead we need to challenge our culture that prioritizes work. Early retirement provides a way off of the work-earn-spend treadmill.

Slow traveling to faraway places (which the article dismisses in item 3) and immersing ourselves in different cultures can broaden our perspectives, build goodwill, and help break down fears of immigrants and others who might look or speak differently than we do. I have learned so much as I travel. Meaning and purpose are everywhere, and having time freedom from early retirement has helped me find it.

As early retirees we have more time to volunteer. Here we are at Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang helping Laotian youths learn English—a key to increasing their financial opportunities.

Implied assertion 3: If you haven’t found meaning or purpose in your current work, you shouldn’t retire early, but instead find or create more meaningful work.

Easy to say, but harder to do. Most jobs already have some meaning. Restaurant workers are feeding people and providing a nice dining experience. Housekeepers ensure clean and sanitary places for people to sleep. Car mechanics are helping people get back on the road so they can get to work. Doctors are healing the sick. Lawyers are helping people understand their legal options. But that doesn’t mean those workers want to do that for 40+ years or that this level of meaning is providing the happiness they seek.

Financially successful poets are rare. Thousands (millions?) of blogs, podcasts, and vlogs don’t even cover their basic costs. Most authors don’t get paid for their writing, or not enough to make a living. Most athletes remain amateur. Most small businesses fail. Most people like me with history degrees (and many other degrees for that matter) don’t work in their chosen field but instead work doing something else that pays the bills. Dream jobs are elusive and often don’t present themselves until later in life or without having achieved some form of financial independence to make the leap.

Purpose and meaning are not the sole purview of the working world. I had a very rewarding job educating military service members on personal finance, but I was happy to let go of the staff meetings, office politics, time cards, bureaucratic processes, and hours and hours of annual mandatory training. As an early retiree I still help educate people on personal finance for free and as often as I want, without all of the baggage of working or running my own business. I don’t spend a second thinking about affiliate links, advertising, or selling any of my writing or training, because I don’t want to, and I don’t have to because I pursued financial independence and retired early.

Implied assertion 4: Early retirement rarely makes a person happy.

I am an early retiree. I retired 5 years ago at the age of 52 as did my wife, and we are very happy. I have attended several conferences and meetups within the early retirement community and I have met hundreds of early retirees. Of course troubles come into every life, but on the whole this is the happiest group of people I have ever known, and these people have found strong purpose and meaning in their lives. We have found contentment because we have decided how much money is enough in our lives. We stopped continually adding to the coffers and instead have bought time freedom and full flexibility to pursue what activities we value most.

Working does not make people happier than early retirement. Working for pay at something you find meaningful does not make you happier than doing something you find meaningful (for pay or not) in early retirement. To the contrary, the time freedom of early retirement opens far more possibilities than working does for pursuing the things that make you happy.

Early retirement provides time to have meaningful cross-cultural exchanges with people from around the world. My life is enriched because I travel slowly and learn as I go. Happiness is a nice byproduct.

Early retirement should not be characterized as devoid of purpose and meaning or lumped in as part of mainstream consumer culture. Quite the opposite—reaching full financial independence with the ability to retire early can mean decades of extra time to dedicate to what you value most in life. Sure, a small percentage of people will find (or create) a job that provides more meaning than anything else they could do with their time, and they will continue to do it even if they are financially independent. But for the rest of us who desire a counter-cultural approach, early retirement offers a path to meaning, purpose, and happiness.

[Post Cover Photo Caption: Early retirement has enabled me to have more quality time with family]

How the Sunk Cost Fallacy Impacts What We Own and Do

I once spent several hundred dollars on a high quality bike rack. It held four bikes, and there were four of us. It seemed like a great investment to increase our family biking time. But pretty quickly I found it was too unwieldy to use. I only used it twice and hated it both times. But instead of letting it go, I stored it and tripped over it in the basement for years even though I knew I would never use it again. I didn’t want to accept the sunk costs of this unfortunate purchase.

The sunk cost fallacy is our tendency to hold onto a purchase or continue with an endeavor we’ve invested money, effort, or time into—even if the current costs outweigh the benefits. I previously wrote about this business concept, but I wanted to expand on how this fallacy impacts what we personally own and why it can be difficult to let things go or do different things with our time. We should not allow the time or money we have previously invested to overly influence our future decisions about time and money.

We keep many things because we “paid good money” for them. I purchased the Seinfeld Series DVD box set for something like $120 when it first came out. Even though I made a digital copy of the show, I held onto the set because I believed I should get more than the garage sale price for it. But to recoup more I would need to take a nice photo, research what this item sold for recently ($25-$40), upload it onto a sales website, write a description, handle any inquiries, and then package it up and mail it to the purchaser. I might have made an additional $15-$30 (minus shipping) by doing all that, but I would never recover my $120 and I would end up sinking a lot of my time trying to get that money back. Instead, I accepted the sunk cost and put it in the garage sale—happy for someone to take it away for a few dollars.

Our possessions are most likely not worth near what we had paid for them in the store, and certainly not worth the extra resources required to recover the money sunk into them. I kept many things even though they were not a good fit, because honestly, I didn’t want to admit to my mistake and realize the loss by letting them go.

I have fallen into this fallacy on so many purchases. I can’t tell you all of the new or barely used items (clothes, cans of paints, collectibles, decor items, solvents, hardware, tools, kitchenware, and various other stuff) I kept only because I had sunk money into them and thought “someday” I could recover my investment. Once I accepted that they were expenses, not investments, and the money sunk into them was not coming back, it was easier to let them go.

The sunk cost fallacy often applies to non-refundable purchases. If we have non-refundable tickets to a show and then we miss the show at the last minute, the cost of that ticket is a sunk cost. But this sunk cost should not impact our decision whether we buy another ticket to the same show. I have to remind myself that purchases I made in the past should not prevent me from doing something different now or in the future, even if I can’t get my money back.

Sunk cost fallacy can apply to time, too.

The sunk cost fallacy can apply to things that we have sunk a lot of time into. Letting the sunk cost fallacy determine what we keep can negatively impact what we do with our time and add mental clutter. The weight of spending well over $1,000 on my electric guitar, amp, and hours of lessons was keeping me from moving on to higher priorities even though I knew I no longer prioritized learning to play the guitar.

I projected extra value on items that I spent a lot of time on. Items that I had frequently cleaned, maintained, organized, and stored assumed an extra weight of importance since I sunk my time into them. Our old board games that I loved playing like King Oil and Careers were not any more valuable because I had spent hours playing them in my childhood. The same goes for my old kitchenware, musical instruments, college papers, CDs and DVDs. This applies to projects as well. If it is time to sell our house, I shouldn’t let my time spent on numerous home projects and memories of raising our family there keep us in a house that no longer meets our needs today or in the future.

One of my favorite games as a kid — I thought it was worth “good” money as a “classic” game

Look out for sunk cost fallacy’s cousin, the endowment effect.

A related issue is the Endowment Effect, when we value things more just because we own them. We endow our physical possessions with extra value and meaning that we wouldn’t apply to the same items that we didn’t own. We keep many items just because they are ours. I had a lot of clothes like this.

To help me overcome this effect, I had to ask myself if I would pay money to buy that same item again. If this exact shirt was for sale at a store, would I buy it? When I realized that I wouldn’t, it made it easier to donate them. Just because we own it, doesn’t make something more valuable.

Avoid doubling down on bad decisions.

The sunk cost fallacy took control of my decisions when I made one of my worst investing mistakes—purchasing Boston Chicken stock.

In 1997, I purchased 1,000 shares of Boston Chicken (later known as Boston Market). Unfortunately, the company was cooking more than delicious chicken. Just weeks before I purchased the stock (and unbeknownst to me), the company revealed it was recycling money by loaning to its franchisees to build new restaurants, masking its true, troubling financial picture—huge debt.

Boston Chicken soon filed for bankruptcy. I quickly understood that I had made a bad investment decision, but I was afraid to sell and lock in my losses. By letting my desire to recoup my initial investment (at this point a sunk cost) drive my decision, I experienced even greater losses. I watched that stock drop from around $5 per share to pennies as the company financially collapsed. By repeatedly not selling week after week as it plummeted, I let my sunk cost from one bad decision drive more bad decisions.

If we make a bad decision, understanding the sunk cost fallacy helps to see it for what it is, own the mistake and get out of it, resisting the urge to double-down because of a fear of losing what we have invested so far. We should cut our losses and redirect our future resources to something better.

Even good decisions can become susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy.

Sometimes decisions are good in the moment, but they can trap us in the sunk cost fallacy later. For example many of us, me included, earned a degree in a field that we didn’t end up working in (mine was history). Spending money and time getting a particular degree is a sunk cost. If the job opportunities that present themselves are in different fields or we decide we want to do something different, we should not let those sunk educational costs prevent us from going in a different direction.

I was able to set aside the weight of my sunk costs (time, knowledge, and commitment to the organization) and quit my dream job to instead pursue what I valued more—travel, more quality time with family and friends, my health, and following my curiosities to include learning more about human history.

Decisions in the past, even good ones, that we put a lot of money and time into can sometimes cause us to limit our options. We need to recognize that these are sunk costs and consider other opportunities even if it means setting these previous investments aside.

Is there something you’re currently keeping or spending time on, and you’re doing so because of the time or money you already have invested? If so, consider stepping back and evaluating if sunk cost fallacy is preventing you from decluttering or managing your time. Recognize that the time and money already spent is gone, but we can make a fresh start with how we spend these valuable resources going forward.

What If One of Us Dies? Stress Testing Our Early Retirement Plan

Several prominent early retirees have shared their challenges with life-changing events to include divorces, major medical surprises, and death of a spouse. While these events have a low chance of occurring for most early retirees, the impact of these events could derail our retirement plans. Some early retirees had to return to full-time employment as their passive income no longer covered their expenses. But others had a strong enough financial picture to weather the significant cut in net worth from a divorce, loss of a pension from a spouse’s death, major medical expenses, or unplanned expenses from life changes like getting married and having children. To minimize the impact of unplanned events on our retirement plans, we need to stress test our plans before we retire. While we can’t (and shouldn’t) plan for every possible scenario, having a good idea of our financial options will help us sleep better as we take the leap into early retirement.

Using our current expenses to figure out our financial independence number is a great place to start. As we get closer to achieving financial independence though, we need to refine our projections to account for projected expenses in retirement. The earlier you retire, the harder it will be to get a good handle on these expenses over time. Stress testing for common unplanned events will help.

Before I quit my job and retired early 5 years ago, I first figured out the safe withdrawal rate from our investments and what that would provide in combination with real estate income, pensions, and Social Security (I found this tool by Karsten Jeske at his Early Retirement Now blog to be very helpful in this regard). After that, I ran numerous scenarios to test if my and my wife’s retirement plan would handle major life changes. We needed to know if our retirement would be torpedoed if one of us died unexpectedly early, we got a divorce, had a major health challenge, or other major change in our lives. I had a good estimate of what our projected income would be and knew it would cover our projected known expenses, to include inflation. But I still needed to see how a major unplanned event might impact our plan.

For each of the scenarios below, I conservatively adjusted income and expenses, and assessed how well our adjusted income covered the adjusted expenses. Then I graded how well our financial plan would hold up for each with “Excellent,” “Good,” “Live with some risk,” or “Failing” (e.g., postpone retirement and keep saving). My scenarios are aimed at capturing 80% of worst case scenarios. Trying to cover the rarest and most catastrophic of situations, particularly for medical expenses, would prevent us from ever retiring, and I’m not interested in living with that level of fear.

While every person’s situation is different, hopefully my thought process for stress testing our plan through several scenarios will help you better evaluate your own retirement plan.

Early death of either spouse

We wanted to make sure that if one of us passed away that the other person would be financially sound. For joint accounts, if one spouse passes away then the other spouse will generally retain full ownership of the accounts. In our case, if my wife died, all of our assets would remain with me as I am her beneficiary. However, if I died, my military pension and VA disability benefits would disappear as Launa and I smartly turned down the military’s Survivor Benefit Plan. Because of this we made sure we had enough passive income from investments, real estate, and maximum social security to cover her projected expenses. We also bought a term life-insurance that would cover our primary house mortgage to hedge against my early death before we had enough invested. If I died tomorrow, she would be financially set because she is individually financially independent. Grade: Excellent.

Divorce

Launa and I have been married for 35 years and going strong, but we still needed to stress test our plan for this unlikely possibility. If you have combined finances as we do, it can be easier to achieve a shared FI number together primarily due to shared expenses. But if the portion of assets and income each person would get after a divorce won’t cover each person’s expected individual expenses, then the FI plan won’t fully support a divorce. For us, we ensured that each of us was separately financially independent before retiring. Divorce can get complicated, especially if lawyers get involved, but for our stress test, we compared splitting our assets down the middle (including my military pension) with projected expenses for us both being single. While our single lifestyles wouldn’t be as well-funded as we currently have sharing expenses, we would both remain financially independent without needing to return to work. Grade: Excellent.

Our son’s first trip to the dentist–luckily nothing major

Major medical issue

With the high-cost of medical care, even with insurance, a major medical issue can cost a lot of money. These are hard to plan for and the costs can be astronomical. Assessing family medical history and understanding the limits of your medical insurance will help identify what type of deductible and cost shares you may be responsible for. As with my safe withdrawal rate, planning for 100% coverage of all possible situations is not worth it for us. Reading Annie Duke’s book Thinking In Bets really helped me prevent letting fear of a worst case scenario drive my decisions, not just for medical situations, but for our retirement and other life situations. Because Launa and I have military healthcare, our costs are currently capped and our retirement plan includes funding for the insurance and cost-sharing amounts. Grade: Excellent

Long term care

Long term care (LTC) is the boogie man of retirement planning. Insurance companies are happy to sell me LTC insurance at an exorbitant rate that generally increases significantly the older (and closer) I get to actually needing care. Insurance is a money-making business and they use highly refined actuarial analysis to determine the costs so that they reduce their exposure to claims and maximize profits. Much like financial independence, we have options when it comes to LTC. For example, when my aunt, who lived in Florida, needed nursing home care in 2020, she was accepted into a beautiful home in Georgia for 1/3 of the price that any comparable nursing home in Florida would cost. Her daughters shopped around and saved a fortune. We plan to age in place as long as possible. Since we will not be traveling by then, we plan to spend our travel money to hire a caregiver to assist in our home with daily non-medical care as needed, minimizing the amount of time we would need a full-time care facility.

I also have LTC coverage through Veterans Affairs, so I can fall back on that if my condition is too difficult for Launa to handle. Bottomline, we decided to self-insure instead of buying costly LTC insurance. While the cost of LTC could be exorbitant, we plan to be flexible in our options and, barring a divorce, our dual financial independence plan gives us extra financial flexibility. Grade: Live with some risk (we can sleep at night)

Being sued

We carry auto liability insurance for the rare times we drive and liability insurance on our two rental properties. Even so, we are still exposed to a possible lawsuit if someone is injured on our properties or if we are in a car accident. While IRA and tax-deferred accounts are generally safe from such lawsuits, our rental properties and other accounts aren’t. To help protect our financial future from this possibility, we purchased umbrella insurance to cover the total value of our vulnerable assets. In addition to the financial coverage, we also get a team of lawyers from our insurance company in our corner helping us fight against any suits. Umbrella insurance was surprisingly affordable and worth every penny. Grade: Good

Other scenarios

There are many other possible events that could have a big impact on our early retirement plan such as support for aging parents, unplanned kids’ expenses, and increased charity donations.

If you are single, getting married could have a big impact on your finances both positive and negative. Similarly, having a child after early retirement will impact your financial plan. Over time our priorities tend to shift. We may not want to get married or have kids now, but that could change. In our case, our desire to give more gifts (to family and to charity) has grown over the past few years that we hadn’t considered when we started our financial journey 30+ years ago.

When looking to retire early, think through the possible life changes and what amount of financial support will result. Having a child could mean more healthcare costs, possible college support, and other expenses like childcare, braces, and club sports. Building those expenses into your financial plan will ensure a higher level of success for early retirement.

Our first of two. We had little idea how much we would need to handle our kids child care, medical, dental, school activities, clothes, sports, and college — worth every penny!

Launa and I increased our planned expenses to include financial support for my mom. This increased our FI number and delayed our retirement, but we are glad to assist with her quality of life. For our kids, we had it fairly easy since our kids were both off to college when we retired. We had set aside money for their college tuition (both were inflation protected) so we weren’t surprised by the cost and they both graduated without college debt.

Our retirement budget also included money for our kids to travel with us each year (part of our nomadic travel plan), some generous gifts for them, our family, and charity, and the ability to financially assist our kids if they requested help. Much of this was made possible because our dual financial independence plan gave us extra financial flexibility. Grade: Good

We can’t let fear keep us from enjoying our early retirement. We don’t need to solve for 100% of potential problems. By stress testing our financial plan to solve for at least 80% of the most likely financial derailing scenarios, we can feel assured in ourselves and let go of the anxiety that is keeping us stuck in the “one more year” syndrome and preventing us from taking the joyous leap into early retirement.

10 Things I Have Learned From Two Years Of Slow-Traveling The World Full-time

Launa and I celebrated our second anniversary of nomadic travel this month. It has been an incredible life experience so far with so much more to see and do in the world. After letting go of 98% of our possessions and turning our house into our second rental unit, we embarked on a full-time nomadic life in July of 2023. This anniversary feels like a good moment to take a look at some of our statistics and reflect on all we’ve experienced and what I have learned so far.

[Post cover photo: Our first day traveling full-time, West Virginia, US, July 2023]

Though we travel slowly most of the time, we have slept in 159 different beds during these two years (31 of those during inn-to-inn hikes on Italy’s Via Degli Dei and Turkiye’s Lycian Way. We have logged over 8 million steps ( about 3150 miles) and, as part of that, hiked over 500 miles. We spent 34% of our travel time in the US visiting family and friends and the remaining 66% visiting other countries. Those countries were Bulgaria, Greece, Morocco, Spain, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Italy, Turkiye, and the UK (where we are right now).

A breakdown of what type of accommodation we stayed in over the last two years. [Note: “guest houses” was cut off in “Camping/cabins/gu…” label]

Based on my values and how I strive to travel, here are 9 lessons and 1 observation I have learned from traveling full time:

1. Pack whitespace.

While we travel with only a carry-on and a backpack, I have found that whitespace, both physical and temporal, is very important in my traveling. Even though I travel slowly, I still pack and unpack a lot. Not completely filling my two bags to capacity makes the packing/unpacking quick and easy. Having some free space means I don’t have to be overly precise with my packing, and as a result I’m less concerned about what’s in my bags. I don’t have to constantly question the worth of each item I own because space is tight. Everything fits easily and that makes travel days more enjoyable.

I also pack some temporal whitespace for my travels. Minimalism has helped me add space between things, but also time between tasks. I have learned to leave plenty of time for each thing I want to do and extra time in between. In Japan, this concept is called yutori. Yutori translates to “spaciousness” or “room to breathe” and goes beyond just physical space, encompassing mental, emotional, and temporal space as well. The idea is simple: by creating intentional gaps in your schedules (and mind), you allow yourself the freedom to think, create, and recharge. Yutori encourages us to resist the urge to fill every moment with activity and instead embrace periods of stillness. It goes against the modern emphasis on constant productivity and multitasking, offering a different approach that prioritizes well-being. Added time to get to the airport, added time between activities, and giving myself plenty of time to stretch, read, and enjoy a cup of tea (or other refreshing beverage) has been essential to my well-being.

2. Live a traveling life, not an endless vacation.

Upon hearing that I travel full-time many people observe “it must be great to always be on vacation.” It is true that on many days my wife and I visit a famous ruin, temple, museum or other touristy spot. However, many days we read, do laundry, shop for groceries, write, plan and book future travel, or just take a walk in the neighborhood we are in. We still need to live our daily lives and we quickly tire when we pick up the touring pace. We have found that staying at least a month in one location (i.e., a single accommodation) is a good target. Between these month-long stays we have spurts of busier travel as we transition from one place to another. Traveling slowly is our secret sauce to avoiding burnout and keeping our travels affordable.

Left/Top: Making homemade pasta with our son and partner. Right/Bottom: Enjoying a homemade Christmas dinner with our daughter (she cooked!) in Sevilla, Spain.

3. Recognize that the faster the travel pace, the more travel planning is required.

It came as a surprise to me, but even though I travel slowly, I spend a good amount of my days researching and booking our upcoming travel and obtaining necessary visas. It takes time to decide where to travel to and even more time to find quality affordable accommodations and transportation. Once we know what we want to book and when, I spend hours actually completing all of the bookings. The more frequently we move places, the more this workload is multiplied. By traveling slowly I have more time to enjoy each destination and my daily life.

4. Limit time spent on the next destination

When I vacationed in my past life, I spent a lot of time planning in advance the sites to see each day at our upcoming vacation spots and brushing up on the local language, history, and culture. I had time at home before the vacation to do this. But as a full-time traveler, I don’t want to spend my time in one country thinking about what I am going to do day-to-day in the next country or learning new language phrases when I am currently using a different language. This degrades my enjoyment of the place I am currently in. Understanding a few things like transportation to the next place, basic accommodations when we arrive, and an occasional show or festival tickets that benefit from advance purchase, I research what to do in a country when I am in that country. Slow traveling enables this as I have extra days built in for planning our explorations. If we learn about a weekly event, we know that we will have several opportunities to enjoy it before we move on. This enables me to more fully enjoy the place I am in and live in the moment and not always be looking toward what’s ahead.

5. Choose less famous and less busy over famous and overrun.

The crushing crowds prevented the contemplative atmosphere that the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine in Kyoto, Japan was intended for.

I was disappointed after visiting the famous UNESCO World Heritage site Kinkaku-ji Temple (a.k.a.Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto, Japan. The crowd was an endless line of people jostling for a picture. The stream of tourists were kept on a narrow roped path and could not stray from the set route. We were not allowed to enter any of the buildings at the temple complex and 30 or so minutes after we entered, we were spit back out at the large tour bus parking area. I learned little from the visit and only learned about the history of the temple later, online. I had a similar experience at the super popular Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine that was so crowded that we physically had trouble moving around. In contrast, I visited the far less popular Ninna-Ji Temple (also UNESCO designated) just a short public bus ride away. I felt like I entered old Japan—immersed in a historical and meditative environment. With far fewer crowds, we entered several buildings and lingered in the gardens and courtyards, rang the bells, sat on the benches, listened to unique music recorded there, and took photos easily without other people in the background. I felt immersed and contemplative. Going to less popular destinations (or during less popular seasons) is more rewarding than fighting the crush of crowds.

No crowds at UNESCO listed Ninna-Ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan not far from the overly-popular Kinkaku-ji Temple (a.k.a.Golden Pavilion) and Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine. It was super easy to get a nice photo and enjoy the meditative surroundings making it far more enjoyable.

6. Take public transportation.

Immersing in the local culture is very important to me. Most tourist transportation options (e.g., airplanes, tour buses, private boats, and cruise ships) insulate tourists from the day-to-day lives of the locals and tend only to show a curated perspective on the place being visited. I have found that taking public transportation provides a fabulous (and less expensive) window into the local culture. We sat on the floorboards of a small public boat transporting dozens of locals and a load of cargo from Labuan Bajo to Komodo Island in Indonesia. We learned so much about the pace of life in the small village and the economic dynamics between it and its nearest city. It was invaluable. We have had similar cultural experiences with local buses in Oaxaca, Chania, Hanoi, Sapporo, and Marrakech, the subway in Mexico City, and the trains in Morocco, Italy, and Indonesia. We travel local whenever we can.

Public boat to Komodo Island. It was slow, inexpensive, and one of the best cultural experiences of my 2 years of travel. So much kindness from our fellow passengers!

7. Trust that people are kind and places are safe.

I have found people around the world to be generous and kind. While we have met an occasional salesperson trying to make an extra buck in a transaction, the vast majority of people we meet go out of their way to welcome us and help us enjoy their beautiful country. Many times we have been offered helpful directions. At a chestnut festival on Crete, we were adopted by an elderly Greek man who explained in broken English what was going on with the stage presentations. In Bulgaria, a grocery store owner gave my wife an orange to welcome her to the neighborhood. There are so many examples of this kind of big heartedness.

When we decided to spend two and a half months in Mexico, many of my relatives expressed their worry for our safety. Unfortunately, the rare crime against a visitor gets way too much publicity. In my experience I found Mexico to feel very safe. I felt safe walking at night in Mexico City, Oaxaca, and several other cities. I felt completely safe riding public buses and subways. In earnest, I have never felt unsafe anywhere I have visited around the world.

8. Stay connected with family and friends.

One of the hardest parts of full-time travel has been keeping up with close friends and family. This is important to me. So while travel is one of my top values, increasing quality time with friends and family is also important. To balance the two, we travel back to the US every 3 to 6 months and spend at least 1 to 2 months making the rounds. We visit our son and partner in Richmond, VA and our close friends in Arlington, VA, then we spend time in the Pacific Northwest visiting our daughter and her boyfriend in Oregon, my mom and sisters in northern Idaho, and Launa’s family on the Olympic peninsula while fitting in some visits with old friends in the area. I was so heartened when my mom expressed how great it was to see us so much more compared to when we worked full time—success!

When we are on the road, we schedule weekly calls with my mom, Launa’s parents, and our two children and periodic calls with other relatives and some of our closest friends. We fund our kids to come visit us on the road at least once a year, and we have met up with friends in Vietnam, Oaxaca, and Mexico City. All of this has helped us maintain our close relationships.

I know many people who are single and travel full-time solo. Some are extroverts and easily meet friends on the road, while others are introverts and more easily enjoy time alone. Though I am an introvert, I don’t like to be alone for long stretches of time. I need to be around close friends and family. A key part of my traveling success has been having my closest friend of almost 38 years with me—Launa. Traveling full-time with someone requires spending A LOT of time together. Fortunately, our interests and traveling styles overlap and compliment each other. This made our decision to travel full-time much easier and a key reason why we are still enjoying this life. We definitely need our alone time which we carve out during our travels, but for me, having my best friend share this adventure has been the core to making this traveling life not only work, but become some of the happiest times of my life.

Having my best friend as my travel partner has been gold! (Love you Launa!)

9. Keep a routine.

Getting quality sleep, stretching, and exercising every day as well as eating a vegetarian diet are just a few things I have found challenging to maintain on the road. (Although to be fair, I found it challenging to fit these in when I was working full-time, too!). Each location offers challenges to maintaining my daily routine. Travel days and time zone shifts, as well as occasionally getting up early to visit a popular site before the hordes descend upon it, often throw off my sleep and daily routine. Digestive difficulties are my frequent companions as my diet changes from place to place. By traveling slowly, though, I am able to reestablish my routines, work out, and seek out healthier (e.g., vegetarian) food options. This consistency has been key to maintaining my mental and physical well-being.

…And 1 observation: It’s Less Expensive Than Many People Think

When people in the US hear that we travel the world full-time, they often mention how expensive it must be. The US is one of the most expensive places to live and travel to in the world. In my experience, lodging, food, and transportation in the US have been far more expensive than every place we have visited so far including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Greece, Italy and the UK. It isn’t even close. Even with airfare to different countries added in, we spend on average less each month than when we were living a happy frugal life in a suburb of DC. Most places don’t expect tips and already include taxes in their prices. We don’t travel like “2-week millionaires”—spending an inordinate sum in a short period to maximize limited vacation time. Travel is a lot more expensive when trying to pack in a whole country (or many countries) in just a few days. Transportation costs a lot more (e.g., if there’s no time to wait for a bus, you pay 20 times more for an Uber), as does eating out more (instead of cooking in), paying peak prices for summer and holiday period travel, and higher-cost short-stay accommodations.

In contrast, having more time to travel (and traveling slowly as a result) and flexibility on where I travel (not just to expensive cities like Paris, London, and Tokyo), I have found that I can keep my expenses within just about any budget level. By renting out our house long-term, we only pay for lodging once per night—that makes our budget go further and increases our destination options. By renting places for at least 28 days we have enjoyed monthly discounts of up to 60% on popular accommodation platforms.

I have learned a lot about myself becoming a minimalist and traveling nomadically over the last two years. I found more life satisfaction by shifting from the elusive pursuit of happiness to the achievable pursuit of contentment. I don’t try to skim by the world to reach a high country count or to claim I “saw” something. Instead, I focus on experiencing the places I do visit more deeply—going below the surface as much as I can.

We each have different travel styles and preferences and your priorities will most likely be different than mine. Even so, if you are considering extended travel, I hope you have found something useful in these insights.

These 10 things I’ve learned from my nomadic travels have improved my enjoyment of travel and, I think, kept me from travel burnout. I look forward to the next two years of travel!

In the UK for our two-year travel anniversary.

How Frugality Made My Life Happier

My wife (a public school teacher) and I (a government employee) both achieved financial independence and retired at the age of 52, or 15 years before Social Security’s full retirement age. Coming when we are still able-bodied and relatively healthy, that 15 years represents a lot of time to follow our curiosities.

[This article was published in Simplify Magazine (June 2025). FYI a lifetime subscription to Simplify Magazine is just $20—not bad!]

For us, financial independence has meant no longer working full time, letting go of 98% of our belongings, and traveling the world full time for the last two years. (I’m writing this from Fethiye, Türkiye as we are about to embark on a 240-mile hike along the Lycian Way.)

The reason I often hear that people don’t want to pursue full financial independence (i.e., having the ability to retire early) is that they don’t want to live a life of deprivation and unhappiness to get there. We didn’t, and you don’t have to either.

Pursuing financial independence isn’t a race. We don’t have to work two side hustles in addition to our full-time jobs, or eat only rice and beans, or forgo all vacations to achieve financial independence. People following these extremes often garner public attention for retiring before age 30, and while those may have been the right choices for their journey, for others such extremes may result in regrets. Lives of acute deprivation on the way to financial independence do not need to be the model for the rest of us.

Getting to financial independence did require us to practice the skill of frugality. It required avoiding debt, spending less than we earned, and investing the difference. And it took time—30 years to be exact—but it didn’t require a life of deprivation or sacrificing our happiness along the way. Quite the contrary. We thoroughly enjoyed those years of raising our two kids, coaching soccer, camping, hiking, reading, working, gardening, hanging with our family and friends, and some memorable international traveling.

No regrets. And it’s frugality that got us here.

Frugality is not synonymous with deprivation or unhappiness. Frugality is the skill of being economical with money—making value-based decisions that balance our future goals (early retirement for us) with the quality of our daily life.

In today’s society, we are barraged by constant comparisons with our friends and neighbors on social media and by savvy marketing companies convincing us to spend more. We are pressured to spend all of our income (and more) to live a “happy” life. But we don’t have to.

It may sound counterintuitive (especially with the marketing world trying to convince us otherwise), but I have found that spending more does not lead to increased happiness, while spending less frequently does lead to more happiness. How could that be?

3 Reasons Frugality Leads to Happiness

Reason 1: Happiness is primarily derived from family, friends, nature, health, learning, and helping others, not from spending a lot more money.

This isn’t just my opinion. There is extensive happiness research supporting this dynamic.

I have increased my long-term happiness without spending a lot of money.

My best memories with my family involve family game nights with homemade pizzas, pancakes on Sunday mornings, camping and hiking together in the woods, home exchanges to great destinations with travel rewards points paying for most of the airfare, and reading great books from the library out loud together.

My best times with my friends were potluck parties and hanging out in our backyards around a fire pit, or going camping and hiking together. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but when I do, I have a lot more fun watching a movie at home free through my public library or renting it for less online. In contrast, I find it a lot less fun and interactive with my friends to spend $16+ per person to go to a movie theater that is so loud I need to wear earplugs and where I can’t chat or take any breaks.

My wife and I love taking extended fitness walks. We used to live near a creek where our walks allowed us to see deer and birds and lots of other people walking, jogging, and biking. We enjoy the benefits of nature and increase our happiness without spending a penny. As we now travel the world, it is rare that we can’t find some close-by place to spend time in nature.

Happiness is rarely about the stuff we buy or the amount we spend, but about the time we spend with family, friends, learning, and helping others. I didn’t need to spend a ton of money going to restaurants or staying at hotels to increase my happiness. I found that when I spend a lot of money on a meal out or other expensive endeavor, I am often less happy because my expectations were higher and I was underwhelmed. While we all have felt a jolt of pleasure from buying something new, we need to recognize and separate sustained happiness from these fleeting moments of enjoyment.

Reason 2: We can often get or do essentially the same things for a fraction of the cost.

Frugality is the superpower of financial independence. It is the core that enables us to create margin that we can use to pay off debt, save, and invest.

Cutting back on spending does not mean we have to live a life of deprivation—far from it! My favorite cutbacks enable me to save money while still enjoying the same or close to the same goods or services as others around me who are spending more. These are the “invisible” cutbacks—those that, with just a little effort, are barely noticeable.

Here are examples from our experience:

Taking great trips using home exchanges (free lodging and eat-in food costs) and leveraging travel reward points for low-cost airfare.

Going camping with our family instead of paying for high-priced hotels and eating out. (This doesn’t mean we never stayed in a hotel—when we infrequently did, we enjoyed it more.)

Cooking delicious meals at home and enjoying them at our dining table, on the deck, or on a picnic. This works well for groups of friends too.

When we do go out to eat, agreeing to enjoy an alcoholic beverage together at home afterward. Cheers to an affordable glass of wine!

Arranging free pet sitters through an online platform instead of paying for pet care.

Making high-quality coffee at home and putting it in a reusable travel mug instead of buying disposable cups of expensive coffee on the go (cheaper—and better for the environment).

Getting free books (physical, digital, and audio) and movies (physical and digital) from the library and not buying or renting them.

“Cutting” the cable cord and negotiating lower rates on internet-only service.

Asking my wife to cut my hair instead of spending the time and money to go to a barbershop. I’ve enjoyed free haircuts since 2005!

Switching to a low-cost cell phone carrier.

Repairing my appliances using YouTube videos and inexpensive parts ordered online and getting a great sense of accomplishment!

Keeping and maintaining our cars, phones, computers, etc., for their useful life and avoiding the constant upgrade cycle that companies hope to lure us into.

With a little intentionality, my wife and I were able to save a lot of money over time and buy our early retirement. Most of the examples above required some of my time or a small compromise in what I am doing, or both, to save money. But doing so did, in fact, make me happier. I have found that the times I did spend more mostly only provided a fleeting amount of joy. But living frugally has been, and continues to be, a constant source of enjoyment and contentment. It makes me happy to get good value for a lot less money. I can live a middle-class life, while spending much less than many middle-class Americans, by making some simple adjustments.

It makes me happy to break free of the external marketing and peer-pressure forces that drive so much of our consumer behavior. By examining and questioning these forces, I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I don’t need an upgrade. I don’t need the latest fashion trend. I don’t need to impress others with what I own, do, or wear. I can wait to watch a movie or read a book. I can be happy, because my happiness is not dependent on spending more money.

Reason 3: We are happier when we have less of both stuff and commitments.

Separating our identity from our stuff enables us to pursue happiness in less expensive ways (actually, I pursue contentment instead). As my wife and I sold, gave away, or otherwise disposed of 98% of our personal belongings, I became a different person.

By getting rid of my musical instruments, canning equipment, lawn care equipment, cars, house, tools, old files, and collections, I released myself from numerous commitments and freed up enormous time and resources.

I jettisoned my lower-priority personas of musician, canner, gardener, homeowner, etc., to focus on what I truly valued and what made me happier and content. Now I’m more aware of the alluring promises of new personas through purchases, and I don’t buy that stuff anymore. I travel more, spend more quality time with family and friends, take care of my health, read more, and follow my curiosity. I do all this at a slower pace, adding more white space in my calendar. I am a different, more content person. Minimalism changed who I am for the better!

I saved a lot of time and money by letting go of the possessions and commitments of these lower-priority endeavors, and my happiness increased because I was able to focus on what I valued the most.

Frugal and Loving It

We should not conflate frugality with deprivation or unhappiness. Those seeking financial independence and early retirement can live happy and fulfilling lives while also saving a much larger percentage of their income than many people who are caught up in mainstream spending.

As modern-day philosopher Naval Ravikant explains, “Money doesn’t buy happiness—it buys freedom.”

It is a skill to be frugal—to determine and then stick to how much spending is enough. Enough to live a life of contentment and joy, enough to reach long-term goals like the freedom of early retirement.

Spending less does not mean less happiness. In fact, it can mean more.

A Hidden Gem: Ely, UK

I avoid writing about the many places we enjoy as full-time nomads, not because they are not interesting, but because there is already so much being written about popular places to visit. I try to focus my posts on topics that are different from the norm, usually personal finance and minimalism, but today it is a place to visit. The quaint city of Ely in the county of Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom is far enough off the beaten path and such a lovely place worth visiting that I would like to share it with you.

Launa and I were lucky enough to live in Ely for two and a half years in the mid-nineties when we were stationed at nearby US military bases. We fell in love with Ely. We returned this month, over 28 years later, for a relaxing 3-day visit, and we were reminded why this is such a great place.

We took the hour-long train ride from London’s King’s Cross station and stayed on the River Great Ouse at the Riverside Inn. (In the nineties, this was a pub called the Boathouse which served delicious pan-fried lamb chops with mint sauce.) On this visit, we accidentally chose the busiest weekend of the year with both the folk festival and home and garden show going on, but even so, it wasn’t overrun.

If you are like me and look for remarkable sites with a lot of local culture while avoiding major crowds, then Ely is your place. Here are my main reasons why you should consider a 2-3 day visit to Ely as part of your UK holiday.

The Ely Cathedral

I know. You are probably thinking “not another church that looks like all the others.” After innumerable churches and cathedrals visited, I also find myself reluctant to visit a place primarily because of a church. But the Ely Cathedral is not just any church, or any cathedral for that matter. It is a unique gem.

*From the west end with the unique Galilee porch main entry. I’m by a cannon from the Crimean War gifted from Queen Victoria to Ely.*

The Ely Cathedral was built in 1109 AD on the top of the Isle of Ely, the highest point in the East Anglican fens. While it is not the largest, longest, or tallest cathedral in the UK, it ranks high on all measures. But what sets Ely apart is its octagon tower which can be seen for 20 miles on a clear day or night (it is illuminated at night). This engineering marvel was built in the 15th century to replace a fallen Norman tower. The builders removed the old interior supports and transferred weight of the new octagon lantern-shaped tower to the outside supports, creating a much larger interior opening and a gravity-defying, spectacular tower above. The cathedral boasts the largest Lady Chapel in the UK, the third longest nave, and some of the best preserved carved choir stalls in the country. Due to its location at the highest point in the surrounding fen lands and the small city surrounding it, the building can be easily seen from near and far. Be sure to take a guided tour of the main church AND take a tour of the Octagon tower where you go up into the structure and see the eight massive (60+ ft) wooden pillars of the main octagon, and the supporting beams that shift the weight to the outside supports.

Left: The octagon tower from the outside. The lady chapel is on the left. Right: Inside below the octagon tower (my camera didn’t do it justice!).

Other Worthwhile Tourist Sites

Oliver Cromwell’s Family Home: After enjoying the cathedral, visit the Oliver Cromwell House nearby where the controversial Lord Protector once lived. The kitchen dates to 1205 and the home has been restored to look as it did during Cromwell’s life. It provides a history of the civil war and Cromwell’s time leading the commonwealth.

*Family home of Oliver Cromwell acquired in the 1630’s (St. Mary’s Church on the left)*

Ely Museum: A perfectly sized museum in the old city jail that details the history of the fens and Ely. I enjoyed learning about how the fens were drained using Dutch engineering, much as they did in the Netherlands.

Stained Glass Museum: Located inside the Ely Cathedral, this worthwhile museum displays an array of historical and contemporary stained glass from around the UK and a few pieces beyond. I was amazed to find a Kahinde Wiley piece on display (I had recently admired his work at the Virginia Museum of Art in Richmond, VA and at the Seattle Art Museum).

Left: Peasant figure (c. 1340-1349) from the Ely Lady Chapel. It is rare to have a peasant in stained glass, but likely why it survived the destruction of religious iconography during the Reformation. Right Image: Kehinde Wiley’s “Saint Adelaide” (2014). Wiley designed the work and had it made by the Skloart glass studio in the Czech Republic.

Local Culture

Ely’s culture scene hits above its weight class. It boasts a thrice weekly market, several fairs and events during the year, and runs the local Ely cinema in the historical Maltings building on the river front (where we took in a movie with a pint in hand). The high street is pedestrian-only during market days and the city has numerous restaurants and pubs to enjoy a delicious bite. I recommend the Almonry Restaurant and Tea Room located in a 13th century undercroft with a lovely terrace.

The city center is connected to the waterfront by a park corridor with a walking path from the Porta gate along the cathedral walls, through Cherry Hill Park and Jubilee Gardens. The Ely riverside boasts several restaurants and pubs—we enjoyed a pint (or two) at the Cutter Inn. Enjoy a stroll along the waterfront admiring the narrowboats, swans, and geese. We walked the public pathways along the river to see some of the lush marshes along the canal that is home to numerous bird species. Take a 30-minute tour along the canal in a narrowboat to see the beauty of the willow trees and marsh edges from the water.

From top left to bottom right: 1. Narrowboat at Ely waterfront 2. River front at dusk 3. Ely’s namesake the river eel 4. Walking a public footpath at sunset 5. The Cutter Inn along the river 6. Morris dancers during folk festival 7. View from our window at the Riverside Inn 8. The cathedral is ever present around town 9. Waterside walk 10. View from path between the High Street and the river front

The people of Ely are very kind and open. Everywhere we went we were engaged in great conversations—this was probably the best part of our visit. We enjoyed so many great encounters at the local pub, the cinema, on our nature walk, and around the cathedral.

I’m not an experienced travel writer, but I hope I have sparked your interest in visiting Ely. Even if you want to split your time between Cambridge and Ely, I recommend staying in Ely and taking the 15-minute train into Cambridge for a day trip (Kings College Chapel is worth a visit). In my travels, I have found that famous sites are far less amazing when they are overrun with visitors, while the lesser, but still amazing, sites can be phenomenal when you have them to yourself. Ely has yet to be discovered by the wider world—now is a great time to see it before it makes a popular “best places to visit” list and it is no longer a hidden gem. Cheers!

*The train station was just a quarter mile to our inn on the river front*

Can You Buy Back Your Time?

“I hate cleaning!”

“I wish I didn’t have to spend my precious time off mowing the lawn.”

“I don’t have time to cook, let’s eat out again”

These are common refrains to justify spending money to outsource our daily chores in an effort to protect a few hours of down time. But can we truly buy back our time? And if so, is it worth it? If we’re pursuing financial independence (FI), what does this kind of time buy-back mean for our FI number and the time until we reach FI? I’ve asked myself this question a lot over the years. In the past, I’ve hired a twice a month housekeeper, and I’ve hired both kids and professionals at various times to mow my lawn in an effort to free myself from these routine chores. Let’s take a closer look at how much time I actually bought back.

Higher Expenses Now Will Delay Achieving Financial Independence

This article is primarily for those who have not achieved full FI (i.e., you have the financial ability to retire early—to have complete time flexibility). If you have already achieved full FI, then only my discussion on opportunity costs and time efficiency apply.

The formula to achieve full FI is pretty straightforward—you need enough passive income from investments, real estate, or pension to cover your expenses. In simplest terms: the higher my expenses, the longer it will take me to achieve FI, especially if I plan to keep the expense of a housekeeper or lawn care after achieving FI.

Using the commonly accepted 4% rule of thumb, we need 25 times our expenses in investments to achieve FI (this is called our FI number). Roughly speaking, adding a $100 a month expense will require an additional $30K to our FI number. If I hired a housekeeper to clean my house every two weeks for $120 (inexpensive for the DC area), then I would prevent $260 average per month of after-tax money from being invested and compounding toward my FI number.

That would add $78K to my FI number! At a 100K gross salary, subtracting Federal and state income tax plus Social Security and Medicare taxes, I would need to work an additional year to save that amount of after-tax money. That will include more time spent getting ready for work and commuting that year, making my per hour wage even less.

Buying back small increments of time now will require me to pay it back later by having to work more hours. You might be thinking “But I make $48 per hour, and the lawn guy only charges me $30 an hour, so I will gain back time.” Maybe. Let’s take a closer look at what our time is actually worth.

How much is my time worth?

Before deciding if it is worth trying to buy back our time, we need to first understand how much our time is worth, so we have a number to compare with the cost of hiring someone. That will help clarify if it’s worth the extra time we would need to work to pay for hiring out our chores. It is not as simple as looking at our gross hourly wage.

If our salary is $100,000 per year (gross), then a simple division of 52 weeks in the year and 40 hours per week gets me to the figure of $48 per hour. This is a gross number and doesn’t include the reductions for income tax (federal and state) or social security and Medicare taxes.

Let’s say we are in the 22% marginal federal income tax bracket (my spouse works also). Add to that the 6.2% combined social security and Medicare tax (entrepreneurs also pay the employer amount), and 5% state income tax (this will vary by state), then our actual net pay after taxes for each hour is about $32 per hour net. That is one-third less than that $48 gross! And a whole lot closer to what the lawn guy is charging.

But wait…this doesn’t account for the other costs of work—time and transportation costs getting to work, expected donations to coworker birthdays, showers and socials, potential higher costs for work clothes and eating lunch at work, etc. Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez provide a good method for understanding the true cost of working in their excellent book Your Money or Your Life. Often, we overestimate how much we truly earn from work and underestimate the true cost of our expenses.

The $260 monthly cleaning fee would require that I work at least an additional 8.1 hours each month to cover the cost ($260 divided by $32). Can I clean my house each month faster than 8.1 hours? Yes, I can! And by doing so, I can let that $260 per month compound in my investments and help me buy my complete time freedom much earlier. If I earned twice as much per hour or more, then it would take many fewer hours of working to cover the costs.

Many of us work a set 40-hour week without the choice to work overtime, so we couldn’t decide to work an extra 8.1 hours each month at our regular job. Instead, we would need to defer our retirement date by approximately a year (again, assuming we made $100K gross annually), or work a side-hustle. Most side-hustles earn less than our regular job, so we would actually be losing time each month trying to pay someone to do the cleaning or lawn mowing work for us—not a great bargain!

How much time does it take us to do the chore we want to outsource?

To make an accurate financial decision, we need to have a realistic estimate of the average time it takes to do the same work (e.g., the cleaning a housekeeper would do, or mowing and edging the lawn). For housecleaning, we need to dust, vacuum carpets, sweep hardwood floors, scrub two bathrooms and kitchen, and change and wash the sheets. All of which would take me three hours (your time may vary). Mowing the lawn requires gassing up the mower, pushing it around the yard, and pulling out the electric trimmer to complete the edging. All of which takes me about 45 minutes each week during the spring and fall seasons. But it isn’t as simple as comparing the cost with just the time it requires to do the chore itself. We need to include the time it takes us to manage the hired contractor.

How much does it really cost to hire someone?

In addition to the time needed to earn the money to pay for these added expenses, it also takes time to schedule the service, straighten the house so the cleaner can vacuum or make the beds etc., write the check (or get the cash), provide the mower, cleaning supplies, or other items, and fix/address any subpar work. All this adds up. Is it worth it?

Am I truly getting back the time it would take me to do it?

To find out how much time we are actually saving, we take the amount of time it takes us to do the chore and subtract:

Any additional time we need to work at our job to pay for it using our net pay minus any costs of working.
The average amount of time needed to hire and manage someone (scheduling, quality control, payment, etc.)
The portion of time we could use to multitask during the chore. (I listen to audio books and podcasts, so doing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, or doing laundry doesn’t take away from my time since I’m multitasking while listening).

So, assuming the financial calculations work and you can spend less time working at your job to hire the house cleaner or lawn care company, are you truly getting back quality time?

As I mentioned earlier, this is fundamentally a decision about extending your working time to afford these higher expenses. Will the extra 40 minutes a week “saved” mowing the lawn be spent doing something you enjoy more than the complete freedom we have after achieving financial independence and no longer need to work?

Will the cleaning or mowing service occur during your prime weekend or evening time (since that may be when the kid can mow your lawn or the cleaners can clean your house). Will you have to leave while they are working? If you remain at the house, you still have to deal with vacuum cleaner or lawn mower noise that may impact the quality of the time saved. This becomes even more difficult if you work from home and have less flexibility in scheduling these noisy chores.

Opportunity Cost: not all time off is created equal

Consider the opportunity cost of investing the money instead, retiring earlier and having extra time that is fully usable. Getting an extra hour or two a week won’t enable more travel in your life, achieving other bucket list items, or following where your interests lead, but getting to FI earlier will.

Once I achieved FI and retired early, every possibility for my time became open to me. I was able to get rid of my possessions and travel the world full-time. I not only don’t have to mow my lawn or clean my house, but also I no longer have to schedule anyone else to do it for me, or quality check their work, or avoid the house while they are there.

An hour when I have achieved full FI (combined with the rest of my hours) is more flexible, and I argue more valuable, than a random hour dispersed throughout a work week that is difficult to capture and combine with other free time. So often that purchased time gets lost in our hectic schedule and quickly filled by our endless list of other tasks.

What about the Intangibles?

I get it that some chores are just not enjoyable, even if we also listen to a book or podcast while we do them. So, for those few chores that we truly dislike (cleaning a bathtub and shower curtain is in that category for me), then it may be worth spending some retirement capital on that chore now, even if it delays our actual FI date by a little—but we should make that choice with eyes wide open.

In contrast, many chores are satisfying. I find lawn care and gardening to be meditative and something that gives me great satisfaction when I am done. The yard always looks (and smells) nice after mowing and trimming and I feel great getting the exercise. My beer afterwards always tastes better than if I’d hired out the work.

What about the quality of work? Hiring someone does not necessarily mean that the work being done will be high quality. I have found that most kids in the neighborhood hired to mow and trim usually do an OK job, but in most cases not to the level that I would do myself (e.g., blow and/or pick-up the grass clippings from the sidewalks and driveway, avoid grass clumps, mowing on a day that the grass is dry, etc.).

Similarly, I have found house cleaners do not understand how I like to clean the kitchen. For example, I scrape the dishes and load them well-spaced in the dishwasher so they clean better and I don’t put wood items (knives and cutting boards) or Teflon cookware in the dishwasher. I was often redoing their work in the kitchen.

So Can You Buy Back Your Time?

In a nutshell, not really, unless you are a very high-income earner making multiples above the $100K salary range. For us average salary earners (US median household income is ~$81K per year), it is fundamentally a trade (possibly a loss) of our future time freedom for small bits of time now. For me, when I was still in my house, I let the housekeeper go after a couple years trial (becoming a minimalist helped reduce my cleaning!) and I chose to mow my own lawn. This approach can also be applied to other times we hire someone to do work we could do instead like cooking (Launa and I saved a fortune eating meals at home instead of eating out).

Whether the financial calculations work or don’t work for you, there may be other factors that impact your decision to hire out the work. In the end it is a personal choice—run the true numbers, analyze the quality of time “purchased,” and compare it with opportunity costs now and in the future.

Our decision to purchase an extra year of early retirement instead of house cleaning was right for us! (Hadrian’s Gate Antalya, Turkiye)

Guarding The Gate: How I Stay a Minimalist

Becoming a minimalist takes a lot of introspection. Identifying what you value the very most and letting go of the rest is hard work. Asking yourself tough questions to separate the objects you own from the emotions, marketing pressures, perceived value, and other forces that drive what we buy and own. Likewise, I’ve found that staying a minimalist doesn’t happen on its own––I have to stay focused on my values to avoid falling back into the collect-purge cycle.

For decades I spent countless hours each year organizing, culling, and disposing of (selling in a garage sale or donating) loads of excess stuff that had accumulated since the last purge. Then I’d rinse and repeat the following year. My master organizing or annual spring cleaning efforts didn’t make me a minimalist, but changing my relationship with stuff did. I became a minimalist in March of 2022––about 15 months before my wife and I downsized 98% of our physical possessions and became full-time nomads.

But how do we maintain our newfound freedom? By setting up systems and methods to prevent new items from re-filling the spaces we have worked so hard to empty. Here are my strategies for how I remain a minimalist and guard my metaphorical “front gate” preventing unwanted stuff from creeping back into my life.

I stopped shopping.

Shopping as entertainment is no longer a part of my life. Sure, I still buy an item like a shirt or shoes when I need to, but I don’t browse just to see what savvy marketers are trying to get me to buy. Instead I read, visit museums, enjoy lengthy nature walks, and lots more. There is so much to do and see without needing to go into a mall, big box store, or antique shop for entertainment. As I travel full-time, I am constantly confronted with shopping opportunities. So many museums, amusement rides, and other tourist sites channel me into their gift shops in hopes I will leave with some trinkets, whether lovely hand-crafted local items or lower-quality items imported from elsewhere. I am barraged at airports, along the streets of quaint downtowns, and sometimes on trains and buses. When a market of locally produced crafts is integrated into a historic street or festival (which is frequent), I stroll, hands behind my back, and admire their handy work––but I keep moving, looking for the food or drink stalls with a delicious local flavor to enjoy instead. Grilled corn is a favorite of mine. As I encounter the various shopping situations around the world, I remind myself of my values and buy only things that support them closely. My souvenirs are my photos and memories made, which are easily portable and I can enjoy their dividends anywhere, again and again.

I buy consumables instead of trinkets — enjoying Mexican corn in Mazatlan

I shared my minimalist values with family, friends and co-workers.

Gift giving is ingrained in our society. I enjoy giving gifts, so I can’t expect my friends and family to refrain from giving me gifts. I do politely let relatives and friends know I value experiences (eating out, visiting a museum, and travel) and consumables (homemade cookies or a bottle of craft gin) over physical possessions. I let them know about my efforts to downsize and that I value having less physical things in my life. If asked what I would like for my birthday or Christmas I no longer give the modest “oh, you don’t have to give me anything” non-answer. Instead, I help them by giving options: a gift card to a favorite restaurant, tickets to a museum, concert or sporting event, their famous pineapple upside down cake, or even something physical that I truly do need at that moment like a replacement shirt. I also model my values by giving gifts that are experiences and consumables unless I know exactly what physical object they need. While I have received a couple of gifts over the last few years where I needed to find them a new home, overall my family and friends have been gracious in recognizing and supporting my minimalist values with their gift giving.

I’m armed with responses to help turn down unwanted gifts.

As my wife and I travel, well meaning people offer us gifts. Our hiking guide to the top of Mount Fansipan surprised us with commemorative medals for completing the tough hike to the top of Vietnam’s highest peak. We thanked him profusely for carrying them up the mountain on our behalf, took a picture with them, and then politely returned the medals letting him know that “We travel light,” and “Sorry, we have very small suitcases,” and asking if the still-new medals could be given to other hikers. He totally understood and returned them to his backpack for the next hikers he guided up the mountain. In addition to a persistent “no thank you,” these simple phrases have helped us avoid most offered gifts. Giving a simple reason for why I am unable to accept an unwanted gift often helps the gift-giver accept my choice to pass on the gift.

We returned the medals to our guide so they could be given to other hikers who may wish to have them.

I don’t let unwanted objects enter my daily routine.

For gifts of physical objects that I can’t dissuade someone from giving, I quickly find a new home for them and don’t let them become a part of my life. Just because someone gave me something does not mean I have to imbue it with emotion and sentiment. Their love for me, and mine for them, are separate from the gift itself. It is the thought that counts, not the physical object. For Christmas last year I was given a ball cap with one of my favorite college team’s logo on it. I enjoy watching that team play, but I don’t wear ball caps. But a close friend who loves that team and wears ball caps was happy to have it.

I’m wary of accepting gift bags or other “freebies.” While free stuff often feels like getting value and speaks to that inner poor college student in me, it usually doesn’t align with my top values and can quickly take up valuable space in my life. Freebies are never truly free as every object we own comes with an IOU of effort to organize, clean, and eventually dispose of it. At a recent personal finance conference I attended, I let them know in advance that I didn’t need the conference T-shirt even though it was included in the registration. Even though it was a fun T-shirt for an organization I support, I just didn’t need it. We can turn down freebies and not allow them to re-clutter our lives.

This applies to things we buy that for one reason or another don’t work as well as we thought. Finding the right clothes for full-time travel took some calibrating. For example, I replaced two cotton shirts (my long-time preference) with quick-dry synthetic shirts that I thought would travel better. But I quickly learned that merino wool shirts were the best travel clothes for me. So instead of letting the two nearly new synthetic shirts take up space in my suitcase or storage, I donated them. I saved space, both physical and mental, and let someone else find value in them.

This wallet I bought in Sa Pa, Vietnam replaced my worn out wallet my daughter gave me in 2016.

I recognize marketing strategies and resist them.

Don’t “collect all five!” And a diamond bracelet isn’t actually the only way to express devotion to a significant other. We are barraged by clever and powerful marketing tactics designed to make us feel like we have to own a product to be part of the crowd, feel complete, or avoid missing out. Recognizing these forces can help us build our immunity to them. When dumped into a gift shop after visiting a tourist attraction, I remind myself that this is by design, and that I am not obligated to look at their wares let alone buy anything. I don’t linger, I head for the exit as planned, and I enjoy the next part of my day.

This goes for online marking strategies, too. Minimizing our exposure to ads will help us resist buying stuff we don’t need. I recommend using an ad blocker on your browser. When Google stopped supporting the uBlock Origin extension, I switched to Firefox (which offers more privacy anyway). I switched from Google search to DuckDuckGo and I get a lot less ads. I also use a VPN with an ad blocker. Bottom line––using ad blockers really helps!

Guarding the gate requires some vigilance. But having systems in place to reduce exposure to our buy-buy-buy culture, declining gifts or steering potential gift givers toward what you value most, and not letting unwanted new items enter our daily routine can avoid the life-consuming collect-purge cycle and support a life of contentment. With some proactive strategies, we can maintain and continue to reap the life-changing benefits of the minimalist life.

At the nightly street market in Luang Prabang. I spent my money at the food stalls.

Understanding Your Personal Inflation Rate

Thinking about inflation? Me, too. With recent increases in government tariffs on foreign goods, the specter of higher inflation has increased, and the potential impact on your expenses may be a worry. But the impacts of inflation are not always bad—or as bad as we may think. Inflation is demonized because we tend to notice higher prices for gas or groceries on a regular basis, but we tend not to notice when prices stay neutral or go down, or when our income goes up.

When it comes to personal finance, inflation is an unavoidable economic reality. Time passes, prices rise and the purchasing power of your dollar goes down, right? Well, yes and no. Truly understanding the impact of inflation on your future requires a closer look. It can be tempting to write off high inflation rates as something you can’t control, but refining your understanding of inflation in general and your personal inflation rate in particular can help you make better financial decisions.

Inflation doesn’t necessarily mean we will suffer a loss of buying power. We all have our own inflation rate. If the overall US inflation rate increases from its target of 2 percent to, say, 7 percent, your personal inflation rate could be significantly lower than the national numbers. We can influence how inflation affects us personally by how we manage our money.

Before we take a closer look—what is inflation?

More than simply an increase in prices, inflation is an overall price level increase for, generally, all goods and services in the economy. The government tracks inflation through its Consumer Price Index (CPI) which measures the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. On average, the Federal Reserve aims for an inflation rate of 2% per year for long-term price stability and maximum employment. Just as overly high rates of inflation can strain consumers, a too low inflation rate can cause interest rates to decline and make it more difficult to recover from an economic downturn.

Inflation can be good, bad, or neutral for your wallet.

We are most familiar with the “bad” side of inflation. Prices on healthcare and education, for example, have increased faster than the median income over the last couple of decades. After the pandemic, many companies took advantage of temporary inflationary pressures such as delays in supply chains and pent-up consumer demand (coupled with increased savings) to dramatically increase prices (or reduce product sizes—referred to as “shrinkflation”), and their profits. But even when inflation is low, if we keep significant money under the mattress or in a low (below inflation) interest-bearing checking account, we will lose buying power over time.

Shrinkflation can be maddening! (Photo Credit: Retail Dogma)

If rising inflation rates have you concerned about the value of your money, considering the “good” side of inflation can help. In fact, there are some cases in which inflation can actually increase your buying power.

Owning real estate with a low fixed-rate mortgage (which many Americans took advantage of when interest rates were historically low) provides an example of the good side of inflation for our finances. My wife and I purchased a home in 2012 with a 3.25% fixed rate mortgage. While my taxes and insurance have increased since then (mostly because my home value increased) my principal and interest—the majority of the mortgage payment—stayed exactly the same. Over the past 13 years, my monthly payment increased by an average of just 1.08% per year—way below the housing inflation rate over that same period. Even with increased maintenance costs and utility price increases, my overall housing costs were well below the published inflation rate.

We can also benefit from rising house prices (aka housing inflation). We own a fraction of our houses while we’re paying off the mortgage, but we keep all increases in home value when we sell them. For example, if I put 20% down ($100K) on a $500K home, and the home increases in value by 4% during the year, then my investment increases—not just by $4K (4% of the $100K down payment), but by $20K (4% of the full value of the house at $500K). This compounds year after year, so a 4% increase the following year would be on $520K, and so on.

Incomes tend to rise over time, due in large part to inflation.

While my mortgage payment grew slowly, my income greatly increased from inflationary pressures. Most years as a government employee, I received a cost of living pay increase and often a merit-based pay increase and/or promotion. Similarly, my wife’s teacher salary increased significantly over the same period. My monthly military pension used to be a couple hundred dollars more than my monthly mortgage payments in 2012, but in 2025 it is a couple thousand more each month thanks to compounding cost-of-living adjustments to offset inflation. My buying power has increased because my income has increased far beyond my routine expenses for food, housing, and transportation.

But what about retirees who are on a fixed income?

Social Security and most pensions, as well as real estate and income from smart investments (e.g., low-cost broad-based index funds) are inflation adjusted, meaning their buying power remains steady despite inflation. As prices rise, so do these income sources. In 2022, Social Security was increased by 8.7%, equal to the government’s calculated inflation rate. So, while there is a slight lag, Social Security keeps pace with inflation. The same is true for most pensions.

Similarly, if you have real estate rental income, the monthly rent is increased to keep pace with housing inflation and, since the principal and interest of the mortgage is fixed, this income can exceed your increases in rental expenses over the same period of time.

Over time, average returns on investments such as stocks and bonds tend to outpace inflation and can give us more buying power, not less. If we follow best practices for investing and take annual safe withdrawals from investments that are inflation adjusted each year, then our investment income in retirement will keep up with inflation.

My Personal Inflation Rate—Some Examples

By understanding the components of governmental inflation rate calculations, we can identify how our personal inflation rate differs—in my case, my personal inflation rate is usually lower, while my income is usually higher.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) calculates the CPI annually. It determines spending categories (housing, transportation, food, etc.), weighs those categories based on what the average American spends in each, and finally identifies inflation in each category (see BLS CPI weighting chart).

In 2023, increased housing expenses across the nation represented 44.6% of that year’s inflation rate of 4.1%. Housing is usually a household’s biggest expense, but if we have a low fixed-rate mortgage, our housing costs are likely to rise slower than for people who rent. Why? Because the CPI is calculated using average rent increases for renters and “imputed rent” (an estimate of what one would pay to rent the house they own) for home owners. Imputed rent is calculated using actual rents of comparable homes in the area. So, the housing inflation rate is fundamentally based on increases in rents.

Thanks to the fixed portion of mortgages (principal and interest), housing inflation for homeowners tends to be lower than that of renters over time. For example, my housing cost (mortgage plus maintenance) increased by 2.42% from 2021 to 2022, but average rent prices increased by about 6% nationwide in the same time period. That means that my personal inflation rate for housing was less than half of the national rate.

Each person spends differently than the “average” person. For example, if you don’t have any education expenses in the last year, then your weight would be zero in that category. But even if you do, some institutions offer tuition guarantees, which lock in your tuition costs for every year of attendance. Choosing a college or university with a tuition guarantee is one way to neutralize the impact of inflation on our education spending. Both our now grown children went to universities with tuition guarantees, eliminating the impact of ongoing inflation in the education category from our personal inflation rate.

In the healthcare category, a personal inflation rate can vary greatly from the average in the CPI. For example, my wife and I have military and veterans’ healthcare benefits, so we spend a lot less than the average American on healthcare. Our insurance premiums are lower as are our out-of-pocket medical expenses. As a result, inflation in the healthcare category is weighted a lot lower for us (2.5%) than the 7.8% for the average American. Once again, our personal inflation rate is different from the national numbers.

In addition, my wife and I embraced minimalism. We no longer buy as many goods such as apparel or decor as many Americans. We avoid upgrades of our cell phones and electronics, and we don’t drive cars as much. In fact, we have been car-free for the last two years as full-time nomads. (But even when we did have cars, our transportation represented 4% of our budget, not the 17.2% used by the CPI.) These minimalist choices made big differences in our personal inflation rate across many categories.

While the examples from my life may not be practical for every financial situation or lifestyle, they illustrate how accounting for inflation is more than just budgeting extra for groceries each year. When we focus on what we value most and let the rest go, we also have a hedge against many of inflation’s “bad” effects. By living an unconventional life and controlling expenses, often buying less expensive alternatives, we have gained a lot of control over our personal inflation rate.

Perhaps best of all, we don’t have to panic when we hear the latest scary national inflation rate in the news, because we’ve thought through our personal inflation rate, and we know the difference.

Inflation is a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to derail your financial journey. In some cases, it could even be a help.

Post cover photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Six Myths of Financial Independence and Early Retirement

Since my early retirement in 2020, I have noticed several misunderstandings about pursuing financial independence (FI) and retiring early that are frequently perpetuated by FI content creators and their guests. Here are six common myths regarding pursuing full FI and early retirement. While some of these might be true for some individuals or in very specific cases, they become myths when touted as general truths. It is time to debunk several:

1. I have to keep working because I couldn’t just sit on the beach (or couch) all day.

This work or do-nothing binary has got to go! It is frequently used to justify continuing to work when someone is fully financially independent and doesn’t need the money. The truth is––a life without paid work can be equally, if not more, fulfilling. I’m a proud early retiree and I rarely spend time on the beach sipping fruity drinks or sitting on my couch eating Cheetos. My life is well-balanced with full-time travel, quality time with friends and family, getting plenty of sleep and taking care of my health, hiking, reading, and learning––all with white space to breathe and just be. It has led to a life of contentment I never had when working 40-50 hours per week, to include when I worked my dream job. There are thousands of interesting hobbies to pursue that make for a happy and contented life. By not working, my time is mine to control and I love it!

2. I don’t want to pursue full financial independence with the ability to retire early, as I don’t want to live a life of deprivation or unhappiness to get there.

Frugality is the superpower of FI. Cutting back on spending does not mean that we have to live a life of deprivation or unhappiness––just the opposite. You don’t have to eat only beans and rice, sleep on a friend’s couch, or some other extreme deprivation. My favorite cutbacks enable me to save money while still enjoying the same or close-to-the-same goods or services. These are the “invisible” cutbacks––those that are not noticeable or barely noticeable with a little intentionality (Brad Barret, host of the ChooseFI podcast, frequently echoes this sentiment). I have found that happiness is usually found in time spent with family and friends, time in nature, and learning––most of which can be done without spending a lot of money. As modern-day philosopher Naval Ravikant explains, “Money doesn’t buy happiness – it buys freedom.”

3. Renting is financially better than buying.

For a short term, this is generally true, but for a long-term (~7+ years) buying a comparable home on a fixed rate mortgage and renting it to yourself is usually the better financial decision. This is primarily due to the power of inflation. Over time rents increase at a far higher rate than home mortgage payments and maintenance costs combined. In addition, the owner gets to keep all of the home’s valuation growth despite only owning a fraction of the home. You can find a detailed financial analysis with spreadsheets in this rent vs buy post. When making a rent vs buy decision, run the numbers over at least 10 years. Financial advisors rarely advise investing in the stock market for less than a 10-year horizon. Likewise, we should not invest in buying a house unless we achieve a better result than if we rented. If you can’t do that, rent.

4. You must know what you will do with a specific plan for retirement before you retire or you’ll find yourself with nothing going on and you’ll get depressed.

Spending time before retirement when I was physically and mentally exhausted working long-hours at my job and fitting in my every-day life chores around that, was not the right time to try out new hobbies or make new retirement friends. Forcing a new hobby into my already busy life, particularly one that would benefit from daytime hours and my full energy, would have added to my burnout and risk me resenting the new endeavor that I might otherwise enjoy. It is completely OK to not know what you want to do in retirement. Leaving work frees up an enormous amount of time and mental energy to explore and try out new things and meet new people. When I retired, I went to graduate school to study history for a year, then I pursued personal financial consulting, then I worked my dream job but quit after a year to travel full time (and this will eventually change again). I learned an enormous amount about myself after retirement because I had the time and resources to do so. I became a minimalist that changed who I am, started writing, and improved my Spanish. The key is that we don’t have to have it all figured out in advance. Protect what little white space you have in your life when you are working and know that retirement will provide ample time to decide what to do next.

5. Pursuing full FI and early retirement is a race.

It’s not, but I’m surprised at how often I hear it implied. Reaching FI actually takes time and is achieved at your own pace. Even with an impressive 44% savings rate it should take about 20 years. My wife and I, due mostly to poor investing, took 30 years after college to reach FI and we retired 15 years early. If you take longer or shorter it is OK. It is your journey based on your life. It is not a race with anyone as achieving FI is often dependent on how much you make in your chosen field of work and your life’s particular situation. While some may be happy spending their free time working side-hustles to earn more money, I didn’t, and you don’t have to either. Follow your own path. It took 19 years before my salary broke 6 figures and my wife’s salary as a public school teacher never did, but we are both separately fully FI. It just took frugality, investing, and time.

6. The “middle” is boring.

I have heard people who are on the path to financial independence claim that the middle is boring. Meaning that after they have worked out a solid savings rate, optimized their spending, and automated their finances, that life becomes boring while they are waiting to reach early retirement which, as previously mentioned, takes many years. What? Boring? The middle IS life! This is the time to make and cash in on memory dividends. This was the time I enjoyed weekly family game nights, pancakes on Sunday mornings, frequent local camping trips, time reading books aloud together as a family, and taking memorable inexpensive vacations using home exchanges and travel points. This was the time I achieved a sense of accomplishment in my professional life. This was the time I coached my daughter’s soccer team for 13 years. This was the time I went for evening walks with my wife along the trails in our neighborhood. Sure, the time freedom I have in retirement is AMAZING, but I wouldn’t trade away any of the “middle.” Working doesn’t make the middle boring. Boredom is a mindset and we decide whether we are bored or not––minimalism can help.

There are many paths to reach financial independence and early retirement. Your path is your own, but it doesn’t have to be a race, it doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t have to be a life of deprivation and unhappiness. Quite the contrary––it can be great! Life in early retirement is amazing, so unless working is truly what you value most, I recommend actually retiring when you get there. So many possibilities await you.

Tips for Hiking the Lycian Way Inn-to-Inn

Launa and I just completed hiking 243 miles (per her Fitbit) over 26 days along the Lycian Way (Likya Yolu in Turkish). Four of those days were “adventure” days where we visited ancient ruins and other sites. This is on top of hiking 100 miles from Bologna to Florence along the Via Degli Dei the week before (whew!).

As you might guess, we love inn-to-inn hikes and our adventure hiking the Lycian way (roughly from Fethiye to Antalya Turkiye) has been the pinnacle so far! The trail is challenging—we estimate ascending ~55,000 feet of elevation and descending about the same. The trail was often rocky with loose scree making the footing challenging. The views of the Mediterranean and the mountains were breathtaking and the scenery varied along the route. We hiked the route without camping gear limiting our options for accommodations but also limiting the weight in our packs.

Lycian rock tombs from 5th century BC — the ancient ruins were amazing!

Here are my tips for hiking this trail inn-to-inn (click here for our complete guide to a DIY inn-to-inn Lycian Way hiking trip complete with our detailed itinerary):

Hike from west to east and in April and early May.

We started from Fethiye, Turkiye on April 11 and we would not want it any hotter (or much colder). Waiting to start until May or beyond will be much hotter and water will become more difficult to come by AND the resort towns will have far more tourists, increasing prices and limiting lodging availability. There were reports of snow in the higher elevations from the eastern (Antalya) side a week before we started, but by the time we got to the highest point (3 weeks later), the temperature was perfect for hiking (~55F). Plus, the plethora of spring wild flowers and humming honey bees were icing on the cake.

You don’t need to book rooms far in advance.

We are planners and we didn’t want to risk not having a room available. But starting in April before the main tourist season along the coast, every lodge had plenty of space. In fact, we were the only lodgers at a few of our lodgings. We discovered that what looked like limited options online was due to some places being closed until late March and early April. My wife still thinks having all the lodging planned out was a good thing, but if I were hiking it again, I would instead make reservations a day or two in advance and give ourselves more flexibility (if I hiked in April, any later and I would be more concerned at the main beach-side towns). If language is a barrier, we could ask our lodging host to reserve rooms on our behalf. (Note, you can use Booking.com for lodging in Turkiye—but only from outside the country. Once in Turkiye, Booking.com won’t work (though the app let me look at my current bookings).

This was a simple inn but the hosts were so kind and generous

Take the alternative route through Sidyma.

The Sidyma ruins were our first Lycian tombs we visited along the trail. While they are not the most famous, they were fun to see. And stay at Fatma’s Sidyma Homes! This was our best cultural interaction and best dinner (and second best breakfast) along the trail. While the rooms are small with a shared bathroom, Fatma is a fabulous host and her place has a wonderful view of the valley and snow-capped mountains in the distance. There is also a good chance that Kate Clow, the founder of the trail will join you for breakfast as she lives nearby and is good friends with Fatma. We gained a new appreciation for the trail talking with Kate.

With Kate Clow, Lycian Way founder, and Fatma, owner of Sidyma Homes

Carry a stone in your pocket.

Aggressive dogs are a concern along the trail, more so in towns where they are guarding their property and less trained. The dogs guarding goats were wary of us, but the shepherds did a good job of controlling them. We gave all the dogs a wide berth. The handful of dogs who attempted to leave their property and come at us were quickly deterred when they saw us bend over and pick up a stone and act like we were going to throw it. This action stopped 98% of the dogs in their tracks (we even had a couple lay down or turn sideways to us). I needed to toss a couple warning throws to get the attention of the other 2% but I never had to seriously throw a stone at a dog. The reason I recommend carrying a stone vs just picking one up on the spot, is when you are in towns on paved roads, stones might be hard to come by when you need one the most. Odds are you will end your hike with the same stone you started with, as I did.

My stone — a helpful companion for 243 miles

Bring hiking poles.

There are many benefits from hiking with hiking poles, but in particular to the Lycian Way I found them invaluable when coming down steep slippery sections, helping me push up steep inclines, and fending off some prickly bushes that would poke through my lightweight pants. They may have also deterred a few dogs and would be my defense if a dog did ignore my stone-throwing gesture.

Buy beers at the market.

I enjoyed a nice barley pop at the end of each day when I could. Most places (but not all) would sell me a beer at a premium (200 TL = ~$5.25), but with a little foresight, I would scope out the local markets and buy a beer to enjoy that evening from $1.50 to $2.50 apiece. We would also pick up lunch supplies as we enjoyed eating a picnic lunch on the trail—usually peanuts, crackers, and an orange.

Enjoying the view with a cold beer from the nearby market after a day of hiking

Build in time for chai (Turkish tea).

Enjoying the generous hospitality of the Turkish people was one of the best parts of our hike. There are many locals along the trail who have set up small stands to sell fruit, juice, chai, snacks, and food like gozleme (delicious Turkish pancakes). I enjoyed days when I built in some extra time in the day to allow me to stop in and enjoy some chai and gozleme. Likewise, I was sad on days when we had to skip the stop and keep hiking to get to our inn before it got too late.

We slowed down and enjoyed Turkish Chai provided by our host after a day of hiking

Careful which ATM you use.

Most ATMs in the towns along the trail charge an exorbitant 10% fee–yikes! Try to locate a bank machine that only charges the standard couple of dollars for withdrawals. There were several places along the way that only took cash (most would take Euros or dollars), so having some cash on you is essential.

Skip the taxis and ride the dolmus (or hitchhike).

As in so many locations, Taxis are way overpriced in Turkiye. But no worries, the local buses and minibuses (dolmus) are easy to ride. Just flag one down (they will often honk to see if you are interested) and ask the driver if they are going the way you are (if it is not clear from the sign in the front window). If they are not, they will explain when and where to catch the one you need. They are inexpensive and fun experiences (and often quite efficient). We decided to skip from Demre to Karaoz because lodging was hard to find on this stretch, so we hopped on a bus in Demre to Kumluca and then grabbed a dolmus to Karaoz and was dropped off in front of our accommodations. A dolmus is a fun part of the adventure. We didn’t hitchhike, but several fellow hikers shared their success in doing so and how friendly the locals were and next time we would hitchhike to avoid a couple of lengthy stretches before and after Xanthos.

Canyon above Kabak — one of my favorite days of hiking

Go now before it becomes too popular.

As with so many great places to visit, they can become popular and overrun driving up prices and often causing places to adapt local culture to tourist preferences. Turkiye appears to be one of those places that is rapidly developing. If you are interested in hiking the Lycian Way before it becomes too commercialized, I recommend you hike it sooner rather than later.

There are a couple of challenging sections which makes this a fabulous hike (I’m in Goynuk Canyon here)

I hope these tips help you enjoy a great hike along the Lycian Way!

Here is a clip of our hiking theme song recorded on our last day of hiking — a riff on the chorus of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” We cracked ourselves up making up different lyrics to many songs, but this one seemed to stick. (Note, this does include a cuss word.)

I also recommend you subscribe to my wife’s virtual postcards at LaunaAtLarge@Substack.com to follow along with our travel adventures. Also check out more of our other hiking and travel adventures at Field Trip Notebook.

A Detailed Guide To DIY Scanning Your Old Photos

So, you have a lot of old photos scattered in boxes and old albums in your basement and attic. If you agree with my case to scan your old photos yourself and you decided to skip an overpriced photo scanning service and help cash in on your memory dividends this article is for you. You’ve taken on a big job, but a very rewarding one—I think you will love the results. As my wife and I embraced minimalism and downsized our personal possessions by 98% in preparation to become full-time nomads, we digitized all our old photos and then discarded the old hard copies. We couldn’t be happier with our decision!

Below are the detailed steps we followed (and valuable lessons we learned) while culling our approximately 10,000 hard copy photos down to 7,000, scanning them, and integrating them into our digital photo collection. In addition to finally dealing with our decades of hard copy photos, we culled and organized our unwieldy digital photos, making our final combined, refined, and organized collection complete and easy to enjoy. I hope this will help you as you tackle your own photo scanning project. If you have questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.

Decide on a photo software solution to manage your digital photo collection.

We decided to use Google Photos. We were already using it and liked the search and facial recognition features. It was the easiest for us. There are likely other programs that will work as well or better (Reddit may be a good place to get recommendations).

Buy a photo scanner.

We purchased the FastFoto FF-680W Wireless High-speed Photo Scanning System for about $600. It worked beautifully for the scale of our project. The process outlined in this post is based on using this particular scanner. Another scanner may require a slightly different process. Here is what I liked about it:

It allowed me to insert up to 36 photos in the scanner feed slot at once, and more than one group of photos could be scanned into the same batch. [For this article, I use “group” to mean a stack of up to 36 photos (max allowed by the scanner), and I use “batch” to mean all of the groups scanned at once under the same month and year and file name.]
FastFoto software allowed me to add the month and year to the photo file metadata. This ability is critical to the usability of the final collection; some scanners out there do not have this function.
Scans at 300 dpi (dots per inch), 600 dpi (standard), and 1200 dpi. I used 600 dpi for most of the photos.
Allowed wireless scanning, so I didn’t need to wrestle with a cord between my laptop and computer.
Worked well with my Macbook Air laptop. (I can’t speak for PCs, but the scanner software supported both.)

Gather your Photos.

Gathering as many hard copy photos as possible before starting will help avoid surprises of finding more later,and increase the efficiency of the scanning process.

Gather all albums, scrapbooks, loose print photos in boxes, unique photos from frames, etc. We found photos in our files, between pages of books, with our kids’ school artwork, among work papers, in frames, and in the backs of drawers. We were dramatically downsizing, and we were surprised at where photos appeared.
Also gather all your “loose” electronic photos: emailed photos, thumbdrives, photos in messages, etc.and pull them into your photo management software to create a complete collection.

Cull Your Photos (to include digital).

Cull your digital collection first. Since we embraced digital photography, we all began taking tons of photos—perhaps seven of the same sunset, twelve of the same soccer team holding up their trophies. We intended to select the best one to keep, but time passes, lives are busy, and the digital photos piled up. In our case, there were thousands of digital photos that needed to go. Do this first, and make sure the “loose” photos you’re keeping from emails or old thumb drives are integrated chronologically. Once you’ve got the digital collection in shape, it won’t be as daunting to add the thousands of newly scanned hard copy photos.

To avoid scanning unnecessary photos (and later having to cull them or sort through them online), throw away the photos that are duplicates (or near duplicates) and that don’t provide a meaningful memory jogger of the people or event being documented. Similar photos of the same thing (e.g., my wife and I each took hundreds of photos of Egyptian hieroglyphics) can overwhelm an event and make it difficult to find the photos you care about and that truly capture the location or event.
This can be done as part of your organizing effort described below. We culled as we carefully removed photos from old albums and organized them into scannable groups.
Culling our photos (digital and hard copy) was part of our decluttering process. Just as having too many physical possessions can be overwhelming, too many photos of the same event can be as well.

Organize your hard copy photos for scanning.

This step represented a lion’s share of the work in the project. We set out the photos as we organized them on a long table.

Carefully remove photos from albums, scrapbooks, frames, etc.
Remove as much residue from the back as possible (dried glue, bits of paper, and adhesive). Be fastidious about this to minimize rejections in the scanner.
Organize them on your table in chronological order, photo side down, in groups of up to 36 (the maximum the scanner will handle at once). We set 30 as our target to be safe as it is easy to scan more than one group at a time.
On the backside of the groups (the side facing up) label each group using a small Post-It with the month and year (additionally label with event and location when possible—optional, but helps in future searches), and the number of photos in the group (to help verify that all were scanned). For example “Oct 1997, Purdue graduation, Indiana, 34” or “Dec 1998, Yucatan, Mexico, 36.”
Each group of photos was laid partially on the previous group but with the Post-it still visible to conserve space since we had so many photos.
Photos in each group should be generally organized by photo size and turned so the photos enter the scanner in the same direction. We turned all the vertical photos so the top faced the left.
If there are major size differences in the photos in a group, then they need to be pulled out and scanned as a separate group. For example, if you have an 8×10 of a graduation, scan it as a separate group in the batch.

Set-up your scanner.

The scanner has a setting for dpi. You may wish to scan a few photos at different dpi to experiment and see what you feel is the right balance between quality of photo and size of digital file. (I used 600 dpi for most of our photos).
You also need to decide if you want the scanner to automatically adjust for red-eye and/or color. I found these adjustments to be hit or miss, so I just scanned the photos as they were without these adjustments.
I found the wireless feature to be nice as I didn’t have to have a cord connecting my laptop with the scanner.

Scan your photos

Pick up a single group of photos, setting the Post-It label nearby for reference. Lightly fan the photos in case there is still a tiny bit of leftover glue/residue that can cause a jam, then put the group in the scanner.
Select the month and year in the software and add a file name description. I tried to include the general location that represented the majority of photos in the batch.
Select the file location for the scanned files to be saved to. I created a “Scanned Photos” folder. Once the file is selected, the software will default to that location unless you change it. See “Managing scanned photo files” below for more details.
Reduce the size of your batches for better chronological and location results in the metadata. This takes more time and effort, but it’s worth it for the usability of your final collection. For example, in some months we did several interesting things—visited family over Christmas in Washington DC, took a trip to Mexico. If I select December 1998 and then add a file name “Washington DC Mexico Others” then the photo files will be named “1998_December_DC Mexico Others_XXXX” [the last is the unique number each photo is given in the batch like 0001, 0002, etc.]. Then when I search for “Mexico” in Google Photos, all of the pictures in this batch (to include the DC photos and any others) will return in the search results. To avoid this, I would need to separate out the Mexico photos into a separate batch for that same month. This is more work, but you get better results.
Select the scan photos button.
Keep an eye on the photos being scanned, especially if there are unusual shapes or ones with residue on them, to watch for double scans or catch jams.
Once the group is through, check the count on the software with the Post-it note total. If they don’t match you will need to review the photos to see if one or more didn’t scan. See below for trouble-shooting scanning problems.
Add the next group you want in the same batch (i.e., same month, year, and file description) into the scanner feed. The software will ask if there are more photos to scan – select “yes” if you do. Select “no” if you don’t, to end scanning that batch.
Once I completed a batch, the FastFoto software would show me a thumbnail of the photos scanned. I used the rotation function to correct any rotation mistakes to ensure that the photo file had the correct rotation (The software does pretty well with rotation, but it misses some).
The software saves the batch into a separate folder under the folder you designate using the date and name you provided for the batch (e.g., “1998_December_DC Mexico Others”).
Since the newly created scanning files were so large (some were 16MB each), I didn’t want them to eat up all of my Google Photos cloud storage and I wanted to more easily access the files using whatever connection my phone might have, so I added a process to make the files smaller before transferring them to Google Photos (see “Managing scanned photo files” below). You may decide differently.
Repeat the scanning process for the next batch and the next until you’ve got through them all.
Important Note: once you start making date changes and photo edits in the photo management software after you finish scanning (not the scanner software), those changes are not included in the photo file metadata and will likely be lost if you later change software programs. That is why scanning by month and year, adding a useful filename, and fixing the rotation during the scanning process will give you better results. The more you fix afterwards in the software, the more work you stand to lose by switching software programs.

How We Handled Ancestor Photos (dates unknown).

We had several albums and many frames with old family photos from the 1800s, most of which we didn’t know the exact dates (or even what year).
Instead of trying to pick the dates, we created batches that were in general chronological order and then picked an old year (e.g., 1930) that would catch our attention in Google Photos and pre-date the rest of our collection from our own lives.
We then scanned in batches using different months to separate out the batches. The oldest batch was January, 1930, the next was February, 1930. We didn’t need beyond December, but we could have continued with January, 1931.
For my historic family photos, we used 1930. For my wife’s historic family photos, we used 1935. This way they could be easily found and not intermingled.
We entered notes on many of the old photos into our photo management software so we could be reminded of who the picture was of and other pertinent details. Several of my wife’s family photos had a date on the back, so she entered that date into the notes on the photo. She didn’t use that date in Google Photos, though—she kept it in “1935” so they were all together, easy to find and enjoy.

One of dozens of framed old family photos we scanned into our collection. Now they won’t deteriorate further from light exposure.

How We Handled School Photos

Most of our photos of our kids are digital, but we did have a nice 8×10 hard copy of each year of their school photos to scan in. We valued being able to go from the Kindergarten to Senior picture and see how they grew and matured in just 13 pictures.
To be able to do this digitally, we decided to scan them in as a single batch. Once the batch was scanned in, we then put them into a single album (for easy viewing) and then modified the dates in the software to align with the start of each school year and to integrate with our digital collection.
An alternative would have been scanning each one as a separate batch (of one photo) and using the month and year the photo was taken in the scanner software. Then we could have found each one in our photos and put them in a single album.

Troubleshooting tips for scanner and scanning

Overall, the scanner worked well for clean, traditional photos, but since many photos (about 15%) were from scrapbooks, were unusually sized, or had sticky residue from the photo albums, I needed to provide some extra care to get them scanned.
Photos with a lot of paper or glue made the scanner think that two photos were going through at once and it would stop and give an error. I retrieved the offending photo and then fed it through in the same batch again. If that didn’t work, then I would try again rotating the photo when placing it in the scanner feed (i.e., different side or upside down)—this usually did the trick.
The sticky residue would occasionally cause the scanner to indicate that it needed to be cleaned. The scanner came with a soft cloth for wiping the scanner clean. Don’t ignore the warning—doing so could cause the scanned files to have vertical lines on them caused by the adhesive “dirt” on the scanner glass. It cleaned off easily and reset.
For small photos like wallets or booth photos that wouldn’t fit on the two rollers in the feed slot, I would tape two related photos together or tape one to a thin piece of white card stock (which I could crop out later).
For photos that had been cut into unusual shapes, I inserted them along the straightest line. For a couple I gently glued them to a piece of white paper, but the scanner often thought this was two photos at a time. With patience, though, I eventually got almost every unusually shaped photo to scan.
For old Polaroid style photos that were thicker and had slight air pockets (which the scanner would reject as too thick), I cut out the top layer photo and scanned the photo by itself.
In the end we took a photo of 5 photos that just wouldn’t scan but we didn’t want to be without. Not bad for scanning 7,000 photos!

This scrapbook photo was lightly glued onto thin white paper and scanned through.

Managing scanned photo files

After I had scanned about 1,000 photos, I would rename the “Scanned Photos” file to “Scanned Photos Jan 1973-Dec 1978” (or whatever date range fit the photos) and then create a new folder called “Scanned Photos” in the same place as where I previously had it so the FastFoto software would still default to it as I scanned more photos. I did this as I didn’t want to take a chance of having a single folder get corrupted and losing all of my work.
I also took the time to adjust the size of the scanned photo files after each batch (so I wouldn’t lose track). You could decide to adjust them all at once, but I liked getting photos to the finish line as I went and seeing that they arrived into Google Photos looking good before scanning them all.
Here is the photo file size reduction process I used with my Macbook Air:
- Opened newly created photo folder in Finder.
- Selected all of the photos.
- Under the File menu in Finder, I selected “Open With” and then selected “Preview.”
- Once all of the photos in the batch opened in Preview I selected then all in Preview.
- Under the File menu in Preview, I selected “Export Selected Images…”
- I then selected “Show Options” at the bottom.
- I used the file quality slider to reduce the photo file size and save the resulting files into a new folder called “Upload to Google Photos.” I noticed that adjusting the slider just a hair from the right made the file much smaller but kept good quality.
- Make sure your destination folder is your “Upload to Google Photos” folder
- Once the photo files are exported from Preview be sure to close preview so it doesn’t include the previous batch in with the new batch and cause duplicates.
- After I resized all of the photos in the folders of the “Scanned Photos Jan 1973-Dec 1978” folder into the Upload to Google Photos folder, I then renamed the Upload to Google Photos folder to “Upload to Google Photos Jan 1973-Dec 1978” (or whatever date range fit the photos) and then create a new folder called “Upload to Google Photos” in the same place as where I previously had it so Preview would default to it on the next round.
- I did keep a copy of all original scanned photo files on a separate external hard drive just in case I needed them for some reason.

Storing Back-ups Before Throwing Away The Originals.

We really did throw away all those hard copy photos. We wondered if we’d really be able to do it, but after ensuring they were truly scanned and safe, we found it wasn’t that hard to do—in fact, it was a very rewarding part of the process to let it all go. We freed up all that physical space but had much better access to our photos than we’d ever had in the past. Here was our process for ensuring we had them digitally stored and backed up:

Before we discarded our physical photos, I did a spot check to make sure the newly scanned files were showing up in Google Photos.
I downloaded a copy of the whole collection from Google Photos and stored it on an external hard drive with a few other keepsakes in a climate-controlled storage room.
My son downloaded a separate copy of the full collection from Google Photos onto his server (he’s a computer guy with a redundant hard-drive array).
We now have three separate copies of our photo collection, located in three different places (the cloud, Washington State, and Virginia) so a fire or a cloud crash wouldn’t destroy our photo collection.
I update these back-ups from Google Photos every 6 to 12 months with our latest photos. We continue to live abundant lives and take a lot of photos—and continue to cull them!

I hope this guide is helpful as you tackle your photo scanning project. While it was a lot of work, it was worth every minute of effort as we frequently enjoy and share our old photos with family and friends and cash in on our memory dividends! Let me know how it’s going with your scanning project in the comments, and feel free to ask questions—I’m happy to help out as much as I can.