Author Archives: earlyexitopenroad

Making Connections on the Road: A Santa Fe Update

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One of the goals we set when we started our slomadic adventure was to find ways to maintain our existing relationships while also meeting new people along the way. We’ve discovered that this is easier said than done. It’s one thing to visit a new city, explore the sights, and enjoy the freedom of being somewhere different. It’s another to build relationships when you know you’ll be moving on in a few months.

I’ve written before about some of the challenges, but now that we’re about two-thirds of the way through our stay in Santa Fe, I thought it might be worth checking in on how we’re doing. As it turns out, we’ve had some successes, a few missed opportunities, and at least one approach to meeting people that I don’t think we can reasonably turn into a repeatable strategy…

Family Visits

Much like our previous stays in Omaha and Myrtle Beach, we’ve been fortunate to have family come visit us in Santa Fe. My mother and our youngest son both spent some time here, giving us an opportunity to show them around our temporary home. We visited some of the traditional tourist attractions, explored the surrounding area, and enjoyed spending time together.

One of the unexpected benefits of our lifestyle has been the opportunity to host family in different parts of the country. Instead of always getting together at our house in Texas, we get to introduce them to new places and share some of the experiences we’ve been having. And, of course, it’s nice to have familiar faces around when you’re living somewhere new.

Toastmasters

One of the more deliberate things I’ve done in Santa Fe is start attending local Toastmasters meetings. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Toastmasters is an organization focused on developing public speaking, communication, and leadership skills through structured meetings and practice.

Public speaking isn’t something I’m particularly afraid of. After all, I’ve made much of my living standing in front of groups of people for the past several decades. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. I like the structured format of the meetings, the feedback, and the idea that even something you’ve been doing for years is worth continuing to work on.

There’s also a social benefit. It’s an established organization with people who are interested in learning and improving, which seems like a pretty good starting point for meeting interesting people. And because Toastmasters has clubs all over the country, I should be able to continue participating wherever we find ourselves next. I like the possibility of having a familiar activity waiting for me in each new city.

ChooseFI Meetups

We’ve also continued looking for opportunities to connect with people in the financial independence community. I attended one ChooseFI meetup in Santa Fe, although I managed to miss two others in Albuquerque. So my participation record isn’t exactly perfect.

The local groups don’t seem quite as active as some of the ones we’ve encountered elsewhere. I’m not sure whether that’s a function of population density, local culture, or just the particular people involved in organizing the groups. Still, I enjoy having the option. We’ve met some interesting people through ChooseFI over the years, and it’s nice to know that there’s a built-in community of people with at least one shared interest in many of the places we visit. Of course, knowing a group exists and actually showing up are two different things. That’s something I still need to work on.

Catching Up With Colleagues

One of the more successful approaches has been taking advantage of the fact that I work with consultants who are scattered around the country.

Since several of us have been working on projects in New Mexico, I’ve made a point of reaching out when I know someone will be traveling through the area. I’ve offered to meet for dinner, grab a drink, or just spend some time catching up. So far, I’ve managed to get together with four colleagues during their travels.

I’ve always found it challenging to maintain relationships with people I work with remotely or only see occasionally at conferences and school visits. We may collaborate regularly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we get much time to talk about anything beyond the work itself. Being based in Santa Fe for several months has given me a convenient opportunity to change that. Rather than trying to coordinate another trip, I can simply meet up with people when their work brings them nearby.

These aren’t necessarily new friendships, but they are relationships worth maintaining.

Connections That Start Somewhere Else

We’ve also had some success meeting people in person whom we originally connected with through other activities. Katie attended FinCon in Palm Springs, where she met people from places like Denver and Kansas City. Some of them were planning trips to Santa Fe, so we arranged to meet for dinner when they were in town. Katie also spent another day hanging out with them later during their visit.

I like this model because it doesn’t require us to find all our new relationships within the city where we’re currently living. We can meet people at conferences, events, or through online communities and then take advantage of opportunities to get together as our travels overlap. In some ways, our mobility makes those connections easier rather than harder.

And then there’s probably the strangest example.

Katie (who is normally pretty introverted) struck up a conversation with a woman outside a restaurant bathroom. It turned out that she was another nomad, and the two of them had quite a bit in common. They’ve since met virtually a few times and continued getting to know each other. I’m not sure that hanging around restaurant bathrooms hoping to meet interesting strangers is a particularly sustainable networking strategy, but apparently it can work?

So How Are We Doing?

Looking back over the past couple of months, I think we’re doing better than I might have guessed.

We’re staying connected with family, maintaining relationships with friends and colleagues, and making some new connections through organizations, conferences, and occasionally completely random encounters.

What we haven’t really done is develop a large circle of local friends in Santa Fe. But I’m beginning to think that’s not necessarily the best way to measure our success. When you’re only living somewhere for a few months, it may make more sense to think about building a network of relationships that extends across different places. Some of those people we’ll see regularly, others occasionally, and some we’ll mostly stay in touch with online.

I’d still like to get better about attending local events and following through on opportunities to meet people. Toastmasters seems particularly promising because it’s something I can carry with me from one city to the next. But for now, I’m pleased with the progress. We’re meeting interesting people, maintaining important relationships, and finding new ways to connect as we travel.

And if all else fails, apparently Katie can just wait outside restrooms to strike up a conversation with random people 🙂

Working From “Home” as a Nomad

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When I was working full time I usually had an office at school, where I could be productive without intruding on home family time.  For example, I wrote a big chunk of my dissertation in my office at Lady Bird Johnson Middle School from 5:30-7:00 before the demands of the school day started up.

Now that I am retired and no longer have a separate work location, even though a lot of my part time consulting work happens face-to-face with clients, there is still plenty to do before and after those visits. Reports have to be written, presentations prepared, interviews organized, emails answered, and expense reports submitted. When we owned a house, most of that happened in my home office. I had a comfortable chair, bookshelves full of resources, good lighting, a green screen for Zoom calls, and everything else I needed within reach.

As we travel around the country, duplicating that setup in every temporary home isn’t really feasible. Instead, I’ve found that my workspace generally falls into three categories, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Working in the Rental

The most obvious option is simply working wherever we’re living.  In our tiny condo in Myrtle Beach, this was a challenge.  Clearing off the one table we had and plopping my work in the middle of what was basically one long room was an annoyance to Katie at times.

Sometimes this works really well, though. Our Santa Fe apartment has a second bedroom with an adjustable desk. At 6’6″, I appreciate being able to raise the desk instead of spending several hours hunched over furniture designed for normal-sized humans. It also improves the camera angle for Zoom calls. Add dependable internet and easy access to beverages and snacks, and it’s a pretty good setup.

Of course, easy access to everything at home can also be a distraction. Sometimes I find it hard to concentrate on work when I could be going for a hike, exploring Santa Fe, or using the apartment complex amenities we’re already paying for.

As I mentioned earlier, working from home can also be a distraction for everyone else. Our son Drew has claimed that when Katie or I are on a Zoom call, he can hear us so clearly from the other side of the house that the client probably doesn’t need the internet. 🙂 There is also something that just feels wrong about sitting at a desk all day when one of the reasons we’re living in different places is to actually experience them.

Working From the Road

The second option is getting work done while I’m already traveling for a consulting job.

The advantage is that I don’t feel like I’m missing much. At this point, I’m pretty jaded about spending evenings in low-level business hotels. If I can finish a report when I am alone in a Fairfield Inn in Clovis instead of spending Saturday morning doing it in Santa Fe when I could be spending time with Katie, that’s a win.

One problem is that most hotel rooms aren’t particularly good offices. Lighting can be terrible, chairs uncomfortable, and desks an afterthought. More importantly, after spending an entire day being “on” while visiting schools, interviewing people, and driving, I don’t always have the mental energy to write reports or prepare presentations. God forbid I try to do something creative.

It gets even more complicated if Katie is traveling with me. The types of hotel rooms I stay in are small, and to put it mildly, Katie and I have different sleep schedules. Typing away on a laptop or participating in a Zoom call while your spouse is trying to sleep isn’t ideal for either person.

Still, hotel time is time I’ve already given to work travel, so when I have the energy, I try to use it.

Finding a Home Away From Home

The third option may be becoming my favorite: finding somewhere near our rental that I can designate as a place to work.  I used to chuckle at the people I saw in public places “working” on their laptops.  I thought it was a cry for attention like “look at me being busy and important while I sit in Starbucks being oh so serious on my laptop!”  Those people might have been on to something , though…

Omaha was perfect for this. The downtown library was about a block from our apartment and had study rooms I could reserve. I could walk two minutes, shut myself in a quiet room, get a couple of hours of focused work done, and then walk home. It gave me some of the separation between work and home that I used to get from having a dedicated office.

I haven’t found an equivalent in Santa Fe yet. The closest library is in a busy tourist area, parking can be challenging, and there aren’t private study rooms. The common areas also seem to serve a lot of different community needs (like shelter for the unhoused population), so it didn’t seem conducive to concentrated work. Santa Fe’s does have a new Barnes & Noble. I love bookstores and this one is new and airy with quite a bit of workspace and a café where I can grab a hot drink. There aren’t private rooms, but there is at least a general expectation of quiet. I’ve worked there once already, and I suspect I’ll go back again.

Part of moving somewhere new is figuring out these little pieces of daily life. Where do we exercise? Where do we buy groceries? Where can I sit with a laptop for a couple of hours and actually accomplish something?

The Portable Office

One thing I’ve learned from this experiment is that leaving a traditional house doesn’t eliminate the boring parts of life. Even without work, there are still bills to pay, insurance to deal with, banking to manage.  Add in the back side of consulting work like writing summary reports, creating presentations, and filling out expense reports (that somehow refuse to magically complete themselves) and it takes up more time than you would think. Sadly, living in an interesting place doesn’t mean that every Tuesday afternoon can be spent hiking.

What has changed is that I no longer have one permanent place where all of that happens. My office might be a spare bedroom in Santa Fe this month, a hotel desk in Carlsbad next week, or a library study room in whatever city comes next. I’m still experimenting with the right balance. Sometimes I want the comfort and convenience of working from the apartment. Sometimes I’d rather use otherwise boring hotel time. And sometimes I need to physically leave “home” and go somewhere that tells my brain, “Focus, dummy!  You’re here to work.”

Working from home is a little different when “home” changes every few months.  Apparently, my commute does too. 🙂

How Much Did Our First 24 Hours in Santa Fe Cost?

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Last year, I broke down what our first 24 hours cost in Omaha, Nebraska. A few months later, we ran the numbers again after moving into our condo in Myrtle Beach. Now we’ve moved into stop number three: Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Same experiment. Different city. And I’m not sure, but maybe we’re actually getting better at this. 🙂

Lodging

In Omaha, we paid $1,500 per month for a furnished two-bedroom apartment with utilities included, or about $50 per day.

Myrtle Beach was also $1,500, but a 7% tax brought the actual cost to $1,605, or about $53.50 per day.

Santa Fe is a definite step up at $2,000 per month, or about $67 per day.

We intentionally paid a little more this time because the apartment checked more of our boxes. It has a full-size kitchen, is well furnished, and has a really nice workout room, pool, and hot tub area. After two previous stops, we’re getting a better idea of which amenities we actually use and which ones just look good in a rental listing.

Exercise

This has been different in every city.  In Omaha, we joined the downtown YMCA almost immediately. It was inexpensive, within walking distance, and had a lap pool. In Myrtle Beach, we initially skipped the gym and walked on the beach. We eventually pieced together a combination of the condo fitness room, local recreation centers, and outdoor exercise.

Santa Fe may be the easiest solution yet because we’re already paying for it.

The apartment has a good fitness room and pool, and we’re planning to combine those with frequent hikes. There is also a well-reviewed recreation center with a larger pool that I may use occasionally for lap swimming, but it was closed for annual maintenance when we arrived.  We will explore that later…

For day one, at least, exercise cost us $0 beyond what was already included in our rent.

Library

The library became part of our routine almost immediately in Omaha because we could walk to it. We didn’t use the library nearly as much in Myrtle Beach because it wasn’t as convenient, and I suspect Santa Fe may be similar.

There are several library options that I plan to explore, but none is particularly close to our apartment. After a couple of moves, we’ve learned that everything doesn’t need to be figured out during the first 24 hours.

Cost so far: $0.

Household Goods & Groceries

This is where I’m really beginning to see the benefit of experience and of intentional spending.

Our Omaha apartment was pretty well equipped, but we still bought some basics. Myrtle Beach was clearly designed for short-term vacation rentals, so we spent $59 just adding things like a pantry shelf, shoe rack, and floor mat.

Santa Fe is easily the best-equipped apartment of the three.

Our landlord has been awesome and very hands-on, and we haven’t found ourselves making repeated trips to the store for shower rings, shelves, doorstops, kitchen equipment, and all the other little things that add up when you’re trying to turn a vacation rental into a home.

Our one significant household purchase was a $50 mattress topper. The bed was a little softer than we prefer, and since we’re going to sleep on it every night for the next few months, $50 seemed like a reasonable investment in sleep quality. 🙂

Groceries were a different story. $278

Seems like a lot, but we intentionally spent more stocking the refrigerator and pantry because one of our goals for Santa Fe is to cook at home more often.

We ate out A LOT in Myrtle Beach. We could blame the tiny kitchen, and it certainly didn’t help, but eating at a restaurant once a day isn’t particularly good for either your pocketbook or your waistline. Our Santa Fe apartment has a full-size, well-equipped kitchen, so we’re trying something different. Instead of spending money buying equipment to make the apartment functional, we spent it filling the kitchen with food so we’ll actually use it.

I’m not sure all of that should count as a travel expense. We’d be buying groceries if we never left our traditional house. Still, stocking an empty refrigerator and pantry makes that first grocery trip considerably more expensive than a normal week.

Dinner

Despite our grand plans to cook more, we didn’t start on night one. 🙂

After moving in, unpacking, and shopping, we were tired. We found a local restaurant about a mile from the apartment and near the Plaza, largely because it had a patio and we could sit outside.

In August.

Coming from Texas, that still feels like a luxury.

Katie had the fried chicken special, I had a local beef burger, and dinner was $45.

We’ll be back.

Santa Fe Day One Total

So far, our first-day expenses look like this:

OmahaMyrtle BeachSanta Fe
Lodging, daily equivalent$50$53.50$67
Household goods$121$59$50
Groceries$52$72$278
Exercise$75$0$0
Library$0$0$0
Dinner$37$24$45
Total$345$203.50$440

The numbers aren’t completely apples-to-apples, particularly since groceries and dinner are expenses we’d have anywhere, but that’s also part of what makes tracking this interesting.

What Are We Learning?

After three moves, I think we’re becoming better shoppers for our temporary homes.

In Omaha, location and walkability were huge advantages. We could walk to the YMCA and library and had plenty of space.

Myrtle Beach gave us an oceanfront lifestyle, but the condo was designed more for a week’s vacation than several months of normal living. We had to create storage, improvise in the kitchen, and drive more often.

Santa Fe costs more, but we’re paying for things that will actually reduce other expenses over time. A good fitness room and pool reduce the need for a gym membership. A full-size kitchen should make eating at home easier. Better furnishings mean fewer trips to Walmart to solve little problems.

That may be the biggest lesson from our third move.

The cheapest apartment isn’t necessarily the cheapest place to live.

We’re also getting better at recognizing the difference between aspirational amenities and things that actually support the way we live. A fancy amenity that we never use isn’t worth much. A decent kitchen, comfortable bed, and convenient place to exercise affect us almost every day.

Omaha taught us the value of walkability.

Myrtle Beach taught us how much the design of an apartment can shape our habits.

Santa Fe may teach us that paying a little more for the right place can actually be money well spent.

Three cities in, we’re still collecting data, but at least we don’t have to buy another shoe rack. 🙂

Creating New Relationships as Nomads

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One of the biggest challenges of living as a nomad is relationships.

I’ve already written about some of the things we do to maintain our existing relationships. Phone calls, texts, visits home, and having friends and family come stay with us all help. But maintaining friendships is only part of the challenge.

The difficulty of making friends as an adult is already a cliche.  But how do you make new friends when you are moving every 3-6  months?  We’re still figuring that one out.

Church

One of the most common suggestions we’ve heard is to find a church.  Built in community, planned social events, and opportunities to give back.  There is a slight problem with that strategy for me. I’m not religious at all. 🙂

Still, Katie and I attended a Unitarian Universalist church while we were living in Omaha, and it wasn’t the worst experience.   We found a welcoming community, met a few interesting people, and Katie made at least one friend she has continued to stay in contact with since we left Nebraska.

That’s really what we’re looking for. We don’t necessarily need to build an entirely new social circle every time we move. Making one or two real connections in a place would be a success.

Volunteering

Another suggestion we hear frequently is volunteering. This one makes perfect sense in theory. Find an organization or cause you care about, contribute some time, and meet people while doing something useful.

We just haven’t had much luck actually making it happen yet. I’m still doing occasional paid consulting work, so when I’m not working, I’m not always eager to replace it with another obligation. We’re also only living in each location for a few months, and I want to have time to explore while we’re there.

Katie has a slightly different problem. Even when we’re based in one city, we still travel quite a bit. She doesn’t want to commit to volunteering every Tuesday morning, for example, if she knows we’re going to be gone half the Tuesdays we’re there.

I understand that. Volunteering may make more sense during a later stage of our lives when we’re staying in places longer and have more predictable schedules. For now, it hasn’t been the answer.

Finding Our People

The approach that probably appeals most to me is finding people who are interested in the same things we are. Sometimes that happens locally. In Omaha, I connected with some guys at the gym and the local ChooseFI financial independence group.  I met several people I’ve stayed in touch with since we left.

But I’m starting to wonder if being nomadic actually gives us another, better, option.

For most of human history, your social circle was largely determined by geography. You knew the people who lived near you, worked with you, went to church with you, or had kids in the same schools. Go back far enough and there was a pretty good chance you even found your spouse from among the people who grew up within a few miles of you.

Modern life has changed that. The internet makes it possible to find people anywhere who share your interests, values, hobbies, or even weird little obsessions (not that Katie and I have any of those, but still). Personally, I have always believed that it’s possible to maintain a relationship virtually. I’m less convinced that you can create a meaningful relationship that way. At some point, I think you need to spend some actual time together.

Being nomadic gives us an interesting advantage. We can go where those people are.

Earlier this year, Katie and I traveled to Colorado Springs to present at CampFI, where we spent a weekend surrounded by people interested in financial independence and life optimization. Right now, Katie is in Palm Springs for FinCon, combining time with her extended family with another opportunity to meet people from the digital creation and personal finance communities.

Those aren’t accidental relationships based on who happens to live next door. We’re deliberately putting ourselves in places where we’re likely to meet people with whom we already have something in common.

Maybe that’s one of the opportunities I hadn’t fully considered when we started living this way. Nomadic life can make it harder to build traditional local friendships, but mobility also expands the definition of “local.” We don’t necessarily have to find our people wherever we happen to be living.  Sometimes we can travel to find them. 🙂

Is It Worth the Effort?

This is the part I’m still wrestling with.

Making friends takes time. You have to find people, show up repeatedly, learn about each other, and gradually develop a relationship. That’s hard enough when you live somewhere permanently, but it’s even harder when you arrive knowing that you’ll probably be leaving in three or four months.

Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth putting that much effort into building a local relationship when the clock is already ticking. So far, though, I think the answer is yes.

Some of the people we’ve met have become friends we’ve stayed in contact with after moving on. Others have simply been people we enjoyed spending time with for a few months. Even those shorter relationships have made our stays better. Local people have pointed us toward restaurants, hikes, stores, events, and places we never would have discovered on our own.

More importantly, they make a new city feel a little less like a place we’re visiting and a little more like a place where we’re actually living. I don’t think we’re ever going to recreate the kind of social network that comes from living (and working) in the same community for twenty years. And maybe that’s not the goal.

Perhaps the goal is simply to keep showing up. Try the church. Go to the meetup. Walk into the Toastmasters meeting where you don’t know anybody. Accept that some connections will last a few weeks and others might last for years.

We’re still figuring this part of nomadic life out. But if we’re going to live in a place for several months, I don’t want to spend the entire time surrounded only by strangers. Even temporary homes can use a few friends. 🙂

Flying to the Movies?

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Last week I flew from Dallas to Colorado Springs to… see a movie.

I’ll start by acknowledging the privilege and frivolity involved here. The idea of flying to another state, spending the night, watching a movie, and then turning around and flying home sounds pretty ridiculous on its face.

So why did I do it?

Chasing Another Companion Pass

The Southwest Companion Pass has been called one of the best deals in the travel hacking world, and for Katie and me it has certainly lived up to that reputation. One or the other of us has had a pass for most of the past ten years, and we have probably gotten more than 100 free flights from it.

I’ve never tried very hard to calculate how much money we “saved” because that isn’t really how we used it. Many of those were trips we never would have taken if we had needed to buy a second ticket. The Companion Pass gave us the freedom to take more trips, add a weekend somewhere, or have Katie tag along when I was already traveling for work.

Looking ahead, though, I’m not sure it will continue to be as valuable for us. I’m flying less for work, which means fewer opportunities to bring Katie along on a reimbursed ticket, and changes to Southwest and the associated Chase credit card programs have made earning the pass more difficult and using it less attractive.

That made a recent Southwest promotion interesting. The rules were pretty simple. Register for the promotion, book a qualifying round trip or two one-way flights by August 6, and complete the travel by November 18. In return, I could earn a promotional Companion Pass valid from January 5 through March 3, 2027.

The math seemed pretty straightforward. If I could complete a relatively inexpensive trip now and save more than that amount on Katie’s flights next year, I would come out ahead.

We already have several trips in mind for early 2027, including Hawaii, so finding more than $200 of value from the pass shouldn’t be difficult.

Now I just needed somewhere to go.

The Mileage Run

I started by looking for a simple mileage run from Dallas Love Field. Houston? Austin? Lubbock? Fly somewhere, turn around, and come home.

Unfortunately, last-minute fares on the shortest routes were higher than I expected.

Then I found Colorado Springs.

I could fly there for about $250 and come straight home, but if I stayed overnight and returned the next day, the airfare dropped to about $200. Normally the cost of a hotel would wipe out the savings, but I had a free-night certificate that was about to expire anyway.

Suddenly, I had an overnight trip to Colorado Springs.

Now I just needed something to do.

Wait… There’s an IMAX Theater?

Katie and I had just visited Colorado Springs, so I wasn’t particularly interested in repeating the tourist stops we had done a few weeks earlier. It was also really hot, and with less than a day to acclimate to the altitude, a long hike didn’t sound particularly appealing.

Then I remembered something a local had told me during our previous visit.

Colorado Springs has one of only 26 theaters in the United States capable of showing movies in 70mm IMAX. Dallas has one too, but tickets for The Odyssey had been sold out for months. Our son managed to get one, but he was sitting in the corner of the front row for a 2:30 AM showing!

On a whim, I checked Colorado Springs. Plenty of seats. Apparently, when you live next to mountains, hiking trails, and the Garden of the Gods, sitting inside a movie theater isn’t quite as exciting. 🙂

For my purposes, though, it was perfect.

So What Did This Actually Cost?

Here was the damage:

  • Round-trip flight from Dallas to Colorado Springs: $200
  • Hotel: free with an expiring certificate
  • Lyft between the airport, hotel, and theater: $39, minus a $10 Sapphire Reserve credit
  • Movie ticket: $25

That put my out-of-pocket cost at about $254.

In exchange, I earned a promotional Companion Pass that I should be able to use for several flights during the first two months of 2027. Based on the trips we are considering, I estimate that Katie’s tickets during that period could easily cost $1,500 to $1,800.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I “made” $1,500 by going to a movie. We have to actually take those flights for the savings to be real, and there was still a very real $254 charged to our credit  card this week.

But I like my odds. 🙂

Was This Really About Saving Money?

I am certainly not recommending that everyone start flying to other states to see movies in the name of financial responsibility.

There were other factors at play.

It is August in Texas. Temperatures are routinely over 100 degrees, school has started again, and even our local pool has reduced its hours. I had been home for a while and was getting restless waiting for our Fall travels to start.

So I spent $254, got a quick adventure, used a hotel certificate before it expired, saw a movie in a format I couldn’t easily see at home, and potentially unlocked $1,500 or more of future travel.

That seems like a pretty good trade to me.

It also illustrates a few things I enjoy about financial independence and travel hacking. One is simple arbitrage. Sometimes spending a little money today creates an opportunity to save considerably more later. Another is learning how the programs you use actually work and looking for opportunities around the edges. Promotions, points, credits, certificates, and loyalty programs can be stacked together in ways that create some pretty interesting possibilities.

Most importantly, though, financial independence has given us the freedom to occasionally do something just because it sounds fun.

Years ago, taking a random overnight trip in the middle of the week would have required vacation days, schedule juggling, and probably more justification than I was willing to give it. Today, I can see an interesting opportunity, do the math, check my calendar, and occasionally say, “Why not?”

Was flying to Colorado Springs to see a movie necessary?

Absolutely not.

Was it the most efficient possible use of $254?

Probably not that either.

But I had a great little adventure, and if Katie ends up flying to Hawaii for free because of it, I suspect I’ll feel even better about the decision. 🙂

Why We’re Still Choosing to Rent

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Too often, when people think about housing costs, they only look at the mortgage payment. In reality, the cost of owning a home is much broader. It includes principal and interest, property taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance and repairs, HOA fees, and the opportunity cost of having so much money tied up in a single asset.

On a typical $300,000 home, those annual carrying costs can easily be more than $50,000 and look something like this:

CategoryAnnual Cost
Mortgage (Principal & Interest)$18,000
Property Taxes$5,000
Homeowners Insurance$2,500
Utilities$8,400
Maintenance & Repairs$6,000
HOA Fees$1,200
Opportunity Cost of Equity~$12,000

(For the purpose of looking at our own situation, I’m going to ignore the opportunity cost. Yes, our house has almost doubled in value since we bought it, but we purchased it back in 2001. Once inflation is taken into account, the appreciation is barely keeping up with inflation.) Anyway, here are our actual monthly housing costs from when we chose to pay off the house to last year..

Category20192025
Mortgage & Interest$950$0
Property Taxes$400$600
Insurance$150$300
Utilities$400$700
Maintenance & Repairs$300$600
Total$2,200$2,200

After paying off our mortgage, our housing costs were…

…exactly the same.

Within five years, increases in taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance have completely absorbed the savings from the eliminating principal and interest payment. The “cost to carry” a house just keeps climbing and there is no relief in sight. 

Now, if we wanted to stay in the same four-bedroom suburban Dallas house forever, ownership would almost certainly still beat renting. Landlords want to make a profit, after all. But that’s not the comparison we’re making.  It is not apples to apples, but apples to grapes. We’re comparing a house we no longer need with a lifestyle we actually want.

Katie and I don’t need four bedrooms. We don’t need a yard to maintain, proximity to schools, or a garage full of stuff. We don’t even need (or want) to stay in the same place year-round. By downsizing, taking advantage of geographic arbitrage, and remaining flexible enough to move when rents rise or our interests change, we’ve been able to build a lifestyle that costs less while giving us experiences we value more.

Some people push back on our decision to rent, and I get it.  For many, homeownership represents stability, permanence, and security. Some of our best friends are perfectly happy to nest in the same house they’ve lived in for decades, surrounded by memories and possessions, until they are wheeled out (hopefully many years from now).

There’s nothing wrong with that.  For them.

For us, though, the opportunity to wake up overlooking downtown Omaha one season and the Atlantic Ocean the next isn’t a compromise or a way to save money. It’s exactly what we were hoping for. Having the freedom to explore different communities and different ways of living isn’t a bug in our plan. It’s one of its biggest features. 🙂

The Takeaway

I think homeownership is often oversold as a path to wealth.. It can be a good tool for forced savings, but it isn’t the only path to financial success, and it isn’t automatically the right answer for every stage of life.

Our priorities have changed. We value flexibility over permanence, experiences over square footage, and optionality over accumulation. Renting while we slow travel lets us experiment with different communities, avoid unexpected maintenance headaches, and adjust our plans whenever life changes.

Will we own another home someday? Maybe. But after this first year on the road, we’re more convinced than ever that renting isn’t a temporary compromise while we figure things out.  For us, it’s exactly the lifestyle we’ve been trying to buy all along.

The Pillars of Financial Independence

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I just finished listening to a ChooseFI podcast where Brad Barrett and Jackie Cummings Koski went back to the basics of Financial Independence and it made me reflect on my own FI journey. I’ve been listening to ChooseFI since it first started almost ten years ago, and the idea of the “pillars of FI,” or the basic principles that, if embraced, will inevitably lead to financial independence really resonated with me on my path to early retirement.

The FI community doesn’t use the language of these pillars as much anymore, but it stuck with me. Over the years, Katie and I have tried each of these pillars out with varying degrees of success. Today’s podcast conversation prompted me to take stock and reflect: which ones actually made the biggest difference for us?

1. Low-Cost Index Fund Investing

Instead of trying to beat the market, we stuck with broad, low-fee index funds. This alone saved us a fortune. Early on, I got suckered into a high-fee annuity that bled me dry with commissions and surrender charges. Switching to index funds like VTSAX completely changed our trajectory.  Our nest egg would be only a fraction of what it is today if we hadn’t gotten smarter about this one.

2. Affordable Housing

Housing is usually the biggest expense, so keeping it under control matters. Many in the FI world “house hack,” but being a landlord never appealed to me (One of the reasons we are traveling now is so I don’t have to take care of my own home, much less one that renters are living in 🙂).  Our version of this pillar was simple: we bought an older starter home when we got married and resisted the urge to upgrade along the way.. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was cheap, easy to maintain, and close to work. That decision freed up thousands each year for investing.

3. Buy Gently Used Cars

Cars lose value fast. We’ve driven used cars for 8–14 years each (and counting.  Bertha is still chugging along as our back in Dallas car), avoiding car payments while watching our savings grow. No regrets here—this one was an easy win for us.  What is the point of having a pretty car and then parking it in a high school lot every day? 

4. Crush Your Grocery Bill

Early on, meal planning and cooking at home saved us hundreds every month. Now that we’re in a more comfortable spot (and aren’t feeding two kids), we’ve loosened up on this one. It was a powerful lever in the beginning, though.

5. Tax Optimization

When we could, we took full advantage of accounts like 403(b), 457(b), but we prioritized funding our Roth IRAs. As teachers in relatively low tax brackets, paying taxes up front made more sense to me than deferring them. I can’t imagine our tax rate being much lower in the future.

6. College Hacking

We cash-flowed our own advanced degrees with side hustle money. For our boys, we wanted them to have skin in the game so we set a boundary: we’d cover the equivalent of two years at community college plus two years at a state school. If they graduate for less, they keep the difference. Kid #1 used every penny; kid #2 has a path to graduate early and spend the difference on grad school or pocket the savings. Either way, the cost was predictable for us.

7. Travel Rewards

This hasn’t necessarily sped up our FI path, but it certainly has made the journey more fun. In our version, we’ve leaned heavily on travel hacking to fund dozens of budget-friendly trips rather than blowing money on a few luxury ones.

8. Cut the Cord and Premium Cell

We ditched cable years ago, but have added so many streaming services back that I don’t think we actually saved much. Same with cell phones.  We could optimize here, but at this point, we’re fine with the splurge.

9. Multiple Income Streams

This was huge for us.  Some years we had the equivalent of three full time salaries!  Side hustles paid for extras (like advanced degrees and travel) and also boosted our investments. Our family rule: half of any side hustle income went to the family budget for extra fun or unexpected expenses, half was personal money for the earner. That balance kept us motivated and moved us much faster toward FI.

10. Savings Rate & The 4% Rule

At the end of the day, Financial Independence comes down to saving enough so your investments can cover your expenses. Some years we hit a 50% savings rate; other years, one or both stepped away from W2 work to invest time into a side business and our rate dropped. The point is, we always had the basic framework in mind: spend less, invest more, and track progress against the 4% rule.

Looking back, every pillar helped in some way, but for us the biggest levers were multiple income streams, keeping housing and car costs low, and investing in low-cost index funds. Those three principles alone got us most of the way to where we are.

So what about you? Have you seen this list before? Which of these pillars could have the biggest impact on your financial path?

yellow bicycles

Urban Biking & Slow Travel: My New Favorite FI-Friendly Habit

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A lot of people in the FIRE community are passionate about biking.  Some even go as far as replacing one (or both!) of their cars with a bicycle. While I admire that level of commitment, I’ll be honest: I’m not quite that gung-ho. Our slow-travel lifestyle isn’t exactly conducive to hauling a personal bike across the country, and I’m definitely not strapping one to a plane 🙂 

But here’s what has surprised me: using urban bike-share programs has become one of my favorite ways to explore a city. It’s the perfect “middle ground” for someone like me that is interested in the FI mindset, but also trying to live practically while bouncing from Honolulu to Kansas City to Omaha to Boston. This Fall alone, I’ve used bike shares in every one of those cities, and each experience has reinforced how useful (and fun!) they can be.

It expands your reach.
Walking a city is great, but it can limit your radius to a few miles. With bike share, suddenly the entire waterfront, the next neighborhood over, or that park you’ve been meaning to visit becomes accessible without giving up the pedestrian feel of truly experiencing a place. It’s slower and more immersive than driving, but infinitely faster than walking. A perfect sweet spot.  One thing I like to do is to grab a rental bike and go 4-5 miles in one direction to get a feel for an area, park the bike, then work my way back on foot.

It saves money.
Bike share programs are shockingly affordable. A few dollars unlocks a full day of mobility with no gas, no parking fees, no rideshares, etc.  In Omaha, for example, the Heartland month pass got me unlimited access to bikes throughout the metro area for around $20.  And while I’m not trying to replace a car with biking anytime soon, even occasional use can offset Uber rides or rental car time. For travel, especially slow travel, those savings add up.

It’s good for the environment.
One less car trip means fewer emissions. It’s a small thing, but choosing bikes over short car rides is exactly the kind of low-friction habit that makes the FI lifestyle more sustainable both financially and environmentally.

And honestly… riding a bike is just fun.
There’s something childlike and joyful about pedaling through a new part of the city. No agenda. No stress. Just moving your body, noticing small details, and feeling connected to the place you’re exploring.

As I continue this slow-travel journey, bike-share programs have quietly become one of my favorite tools. They let me explore more, spend less, and stay present in the spaces I’m temporarily calling home.

If you haven’t tried urban biking yet, especially while traveling I encourage you to give it a shot. Start with a short ride along a river, a downtown loop, or a neighborhood you’ve never visited. You might find, like I did, that it’s one of the simplest ways to make a city feel more accessible, more affordable, and a whole lot more fun.

CampFI: Four Ideas That Changed the Way We Think About Financial Independence

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Earlier this month, Katie and I had the opportunity to present at CampFI Rocky Mountain (week 2.5) about our journey after reaching financial independence. We talked about our experiment with “slomadic” living, spending several months at a time in different parts of the country while trying to figure out what we want this next phase of life to look like.

Typically, people ask us about the logistics. How do we find housing? What do we do about mail? How do we handle healthcare, taxes, or travel rewards?  Those are interesting questions, but they aren’t really the biggest lessons we’ve learned. For this presentation we decided to focus on four themes that kept showing up over and over again throughout our journey. They have influenced almost every major decision we’ve made this year.

More Than One Right Answer

I love the Financial Independence movement, but the focus on optimization can lead to analysis paralysis.  Plus, as teachers, Katie and I are well aware of the multiple choice mentality that has conditioned many of us to believe that every question just has one correct answer.

Luckily, life doesn’t work that way. Should you pay off your house or invest? Retire early or keep working? Move across the country or stay close to family? The answer is often, “Yes :)”  

One of the most freeing ideas we’ve embraced is that decisions are rarely binary.  There are usually several good choices. We can be happy choosing A, B, OR C.  Once we accept that, decision-making becomes much easier.  We spend a lot less time trying to optimize every single variable and more time asking whether a choice fits the life that we are trying to build.

Freedom Is Better Than Wealth

This may be the biggest surprise of our FI journey. Looking back, many of our best financial decisions weren’t really about maximizing money. They were about maximizing options.

Katie left a higher-paying corporate career because education gave us work we enjoyed and schedules that fit our family. Later, side hustles, teaching online, and consulting gave us even more flexibility. Instead of making one giant leap into retirement, we gradually reduced the work we no longer enjoyed while keeping the parts that were still meaningful.  

The crazy thing?  In chasing freedom, the money followed naturally.  Financial independence didn’t simply increase our net worth. It increased our ability to say yes to opportunities (and our ability to say no). That has turned out to be far more valuable than just chasing dollars.

Simple Is Better Than Complex

If you’ve followed this blog for very long, you’ve probably noticed this theme already.

Simple investments. Simple travel. Simple spending. Simple housing.

I enjoy reading about complicated financial strategies just as much as the next FI nerd, but I’ve learned that complexity often creates more opportunities for mistakes. The same has been true in our personal lives. I can understand the appeal of real estate investment or the concept of RV travel, but the devil is in the details.  In both cases there are just too many variables and opportunities for friction for us right now.  We’ve realized we don’t need a large house, multiple properties, elaborate travel plans, or a complicated investment portfolio to be happy.

Simple systems free up mental energy for the things that actually matter.

Zero-Based Thinking

This has probably become our favorite mental model. Every once in a while, we like to ask ourselves a simple question:

“Knowing what we know today, would we make the same decision again?”

Sometimes the answer is yes, but sometimes it isn’t.

I really enjoyed teaching at the university, but after COVID permanently shifted the bulk of the teaching online, it no longer fit what I wanted to do. The four bedroom house by the elementary school and across the street from the community pool was perfect while raising kids, but isn’t the house two empty nesters need today.  The dependable sedan was great for commuting in city traffic, but not ideal for cross country moves.

Even our current experiment with slow travel is really just one long exercise in zero-based thinking. Instead of assuming we know where we want to spend retirement, we’re intentionally testing different possibilities before making another long-term commitment.

Looking Ahead

When we accepted CampFI’s invitation to speak, my first draft had us spending most of our time talking about geo-arbitrage, budgeting, and logistics.  Instead, we found ourselves talking about philosophy. How do you make decisions? How do you define success? What kind of life are you actually trying to build?

I hope the presentation was helpful for the people who attended, but I also hope these four ideas are useful for anyone pursuing financial independence, whether retirement is five years away or fifty.  After all, FI isn’t just about accumulating enough money to stop working. It’s about building a life that gives you the freedom to make the choices that matter most.

Are We Doing “Slow Travel” Wrong?

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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.