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.

We just finished our first year of “slomadic” living, trying out different parts of the country and different styles of life with urban living in Omaha, Nebraska and beachside living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. One of the lessons we have learned has been to be careful about making long-term decisions based on things that feel amazing in the short term but quickly become routine.

The ChooseFI community talks a lot about “hedonic adaptation” as one of the biggest hidden obstacles to financial independence. The basic idea is that people quickly adjust to improvements in lifestyle, income, possessions, or comfort. What initially feels luxurious slowly becomes normal, and the emotional boost fades much faster than the bill.

That idea connects directly to lifestyle inflation. As income rises, spending tends to quietly rise along with it. Bigger houses, newer cars, nicer hotels, upgraded neighborhoods, subscriptions, dining out, and premium experiences all start to feel justified because they are now “affordable.” The danger is that expenses expand just as fast as earnings, delaying financial independence indefinitely.

For most of our journey toward FI, Katie and I worked hard to avoid that trap. We tried to frame spending decisions around buying freedom instead of accumulating “stuff.” We were never particularly interested in keeping up with the Joneses, and we scratched our itch for luxury experiences without permanently inflating our lifestyle was through travel hacking using points and miles rather than higher spending.

It gets tougher in a nomadic life, though.  Instead of making one decision to buy a cheer house and then benefiting for years, every relocation gives us another opportunity to overspend.  So our challenge keeps resetting itself every time we move.

When you arrive somewhere new, it is very easy to convince yourself that certain upgrades are absolutely worth it. A slightly nicer neighborhood. A better beach view. A more walkable location. A premium gym. Better weather. More restaurants nearby. And honestly, some of those things really do improve quality of life.

The problem is that emotional adaptation happens quickly.

The ocean view that feels magical the first week may become the thing you barely notice while washing dishes. The rooftop lounge becomes background scenery. The upgraded apartment starts to feel normal instead of special. Financially, that matters because recurring lifestyle costs persist while emotional returns decay.

That does not mean upgrades are bad. Some improvements absolutely create durable satisfaction. Better health, lower stress, walkability, proximity to friends, and environments that align with your values can all be worth paying for. The key lesson for us has simply been to become more intentional about distinguishing between upgrades that create lasting value and upgrades that mainly create temporary excitement.

I think this becomes especially important in retirement and FI planning because permanent fixed expenses compound risk over time. Things like second homes, timeshares, boats, RVs, luxury neighborhoods, and high-maintenance lifestyles may sound exciting initially, but they also create ongoing financial obligations long after the novelty wears off.

Ironically, one of the things we are learning is that flexibility often produces more happiness than permanent escalation.

Temporary access to desirable experiences can outperform ownership both financially and psychologically. Spending a few months living near the beach may deliver much of the same joy as owning beachfront property, but without the taxes, insurance, maintenance, and long-term commitment. Visiting interesting places, rather than permanently upgrading every aspect of life, may actually preserve more appreciation and excitement over time.

At least for me, that has been one of the biggest lessons from year one. Sometimes the sweet spot is not maximizing luxury. It is creating enough flexibility that life continues to feel interesting before adaptation quietly turns everything back into normal

We just finished our first year of “slomadic” living, trying out different parts of the country and different styles of life. So far that has included urban living in Omaha, Nebraska and beachside living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Along the way, we have learned a lot, but one of the biggest lessons is that there are real advantages to medium-term stays and temporary living arrangements.

One of the big benefits of snowbirding, slow travel, sabbaticals, or extended rentals is that they allow you to test a future life before committing your capital to it. That may sound obvious, but I think many people underestimate how different a place can feel when you are actually living there instead of simply visiting.

That is the real financial insight for me: experience can be more valuable than ownership.

At first glance, renting for a few months may seem financially inefficient compared to buying. After all, you are paying rent without building equity. Because we still own our home in Texas, you could certainly argue that paying for temporary housing in another location at the same time is not the most optimized use of our money.

And mathematically, that is fair.

But when I compare a few months of rent to the potential cost of making a major relocation mistake, the equation changes pretty quickly. 

• Buying in the wrong area
• overestimating how often you will use a second property
• Purchasing a “money pit” timeshare, RV, or boat that you won;t use enough
• Misjudging the climate or pace of life
• Locking yourself into a lifestyle you only liked in theory or in the short term

All of these can become enormously expensive lessons. In comparison, a few months of rent feels like cheap insurance 🙂

One thing we have learned repeatedly is that visiting a place and living in a place are completely different experiences. Vacations tend to highlight scenery, attractions, restaurants, and novelty. Daily life highlights grocery stores, traffic patterns, workout options, healthcare access, weather, and whether the rhythms of the place actually fit your personality. Those ordinary Tuesday factors matter a lot more than most people realize.

I think this idea is especially powerful for people pursuing financial independence or retirement. Many people spend years optimizing for a future life they have never actually tested. They dream about living in an RV, sailing around the world, relocating to the mountains, moving to a beach town, or settling into downtown urban life, but then commit large amounts of money before figuring out whether they truly enjoy the reality of those lifestyles.

Short-term trials create clarity. They reduce the odds of making expensive permanent decisions based on fantasy instead of experience. That may be one of the biggest lessons from our first year. Sometimes flexibility is more valuable than optimization, especially while we are still figuring out what kind of life we actually want to build.