My amazing wife, Katie, and I have been having a bit of a debate lately.

It centers around the concept of “slow travel” and whether we’re actually doing it.

We used to spend a lot of our travel time rushing from place to place. Airports, rental cars, hotel check-ins, repeat. That phase of life had a goal. We wanted to get our boys to all 50 states before they graduated, and we (almost) did it. It was fast, chaotic, and a lot of fun.  Now we are in a different phase of life and things are different. At least, they’re supposed to be.

What Is Slow Travel?

Generally speaking, slow travel is an approach to travel that emphasizes extended stays, local experiences, and a more relaxed pace instead of rushing through a checklist of destinations. (In other words, the opposite of what we did when we were knocking out all 50 states during our Summer breaks 🙂) In our version, we stay in an area for 3-6 months and explore potential locations for our forever home.

From a financial independence perspective, slow travel also makes a lot of sense for us. It replaces short, expensive trips with longer, more sustainable stays and substitutes everyday living in a new location for traditional vacations. It also lets us take advantage of geographic arbitrage, using the local cost of living to control our expenses.  In this model, at some point, the line between travel and normal life starts to blur.

That part has been working great for us so far.

Where It Gets Complicated

But what happens when you’re living somewhere for three to six months… and you want to take a trip?  Maybe I want to go to a conference.  Or we want to take a quick road trip. Maybe there’s a place we want to see, but have no interest in living in.  Are we betraying our “slow travel” ideals?

Probably Not

The more we’ve talked about it, the more it feels like a debate about semantics.  After all, it would be a little silly to let a definition stop us from doing something we want to do, especially after working so hard to create optionality in our lives.

Slow travel works well for us as a general approach. It helps us slow down, spend less, and actually experience the places we visit.

But it’s not going to stop us from:
• Taking a quick sightseeing trip when we just want an overview
• Visiting a more expensive place for a few days instead of a few months
• Or making a one-time trip somewhere we simply want to see

The Bottom Line

“Slow travel” is a useful framework for us, not a law.  “More what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules” 😉  In the end, financial independence isn’t supposed to limit your choices, but to give you more of them.