Good info!
Iām 48 this year, and will take my SS early at 62. I am also cramming as much as I can into 401K and IRA as possible, as is my wife. Our house will be paid off when Iām 60, which is also a plusā¦
Not to derail the topic. 
But thatās how comment sections roll.
1 Like
Concur about this āretirement mindsetā.
I did the same thing for about 3 years ā but without the kids. I āsoft retiredā and found myself helping friendās companies, contributing business insight and technology, and busier than I ever thought possible. Sure, I took two months to eat my way around China, but I re-found my passion in technology. Shortly thereafter, I found myself bringing together friends to start a new company.
1 Like
Its pretty much illegal for most foreign nationals to work in any country, but Iām pretty sure it can be done. Sure, its probably harder today than it was 50 years ago, but it was also illegal then to work in a country not your own, that hasnāt changed.
You and your wife rock, dude. Is it destiny that your post arrived on the same night my wife and I just re-checked our opinions on the same question? Weāll be leaving in around a year for another kind of adventure, but based on some of the same ideas.
The hard part of having values and principles is putting them into action. But when you manage to do it, the stress and uncertainty is triumphed by the pride in doing what you know is right.
Bon voyage.
-jeff
PS: Contact me privately (see blog.nella.org) for some help traveling frugally in Switzerland.
1 Like
You know, that brings to mind my situation a little bit, but Iāve still managed to do a little bit of traveling, and when I havenāt its hasnt been for lack of money (I never have any anyways 
), but from lack of will, fortunately my lovely wife is much moreā¦ adventurous and manages to get me to wander outside of the house every now and then.
Sure, I wouldnāt go backpacking across eourope now, but I see now how I could have easily done so in my 20ās.
My point is, its not really about the money, not if you really want to go, just book a flight, canāt afford the return ticket? Book it anyway, its amazing what you can do when you actually HAVE to, Canāt afford the one way ticket to Scotland? Go anywhre thats local and cheap, its good practice and soon youāll find your mindset changes and who know where else you will go next?
But who am I to give advice on the internet, I can only talk about what Iāve done, for example, we spent about 15 days in Puerto Vallarta on a 1000 dollar budget.
1 Like
Well, hereās the problem - SS - Iāve seen people try to live on that. They end up greeters at Wal Mart. (Nothing wrong with that, but not how I want to spend my later years) The rest of my retirement is in the stock market. Seeing whatās happened over the past few years and what continues to happen frankly I think weāre all (pardon my french) fucked.
1 Like
You gotta cover all bases for sure.
I have all my retirement in the stock market as well, but it gets shifted to more conservative stuff as I age (blue chips that donāt fluctuate much and pay dividends) and the key thing - I dollar-cost-average. You MUST do this. Week in week out, whatever one can afford. Up markets, down markets.
It would be difficult to live on SS when we are older, but it most certainly will provide a good addition to whatever else one is doing.
Oh, really? So the only thing stopping struggling families from enjoying jetsetting lifestyles is theyāre not motivated enough? Do tell!
The American Dream lives on in the fact that the middle class has forgotten what it means to be lower class, and buys into the bullshit spun for them by the upper class. āAnyone can be a millionaire! Just work hard! (ā¦and be incredibly lucky / born into privilege / rig the game in your favor!)ā
No, hard work and motivation alone cannot solves the problems many people face. No, not anyone can be a millionare. In fact, itās not even true that anyone can be merely comfortably well off. There are countless people in this country who scrape by below the poverty line, and who will never get their heads above it no matter how hard they work. Some of the single most driven, insanely hard working people Iāve ever known have been the poorest, most destitute individuals - somehow working multiple jobs, taking night classes, and caring for children and family members, all just to break even, or try in vain to get out of crippling debt.
āWork from homeā in another country? Sure, if you have a college degree and are employed in some sort of intangible service industry where that is remotely feasible. Not so much if your work involves physical services, or production of actual goods.
Go through the correct channels to become employed overseas? Sure, if you can afford to spend time and energy you ordinarily put into making ends meet at home on working your way through another nationās unfamiliar laws and red tape. Doable for the comfortable middle class who have financial breathing room - not so much for the lower class who do not.
Then, assuming you arenāt denied or rejected - and most countries these days are all too happy to cherrypick who they let into the country, taking only the most ādesireableā - you are often only allowed to work in the single, pre-determined field of employment that you applied to be allowed to work in.
And that assumes that the country has determined that itās a job that theyāre okay with letting you fill rather than a local citizen, or even a different immigrant who has lived there longer than you. If you canāt find employment in that field, or are denied it, then you get to start the work visa process over from scratch.
And if you are granted entry and get the job, but the work dries up partway through your stay, youād better have enough money to live off of, or to get you home, because youāre not getting another job in a different field - thatās a whole different application process.
Contrast this to my grandfatherās time - his family moved from Argentina to Italy when he was six, and when he was twelve he left alone to immigrate to America in the early '20s. He had nothing, no money, no work experience, no education, no papers, didnāt speak English - heck he was still a twelve year old kid! - but they let him in and he worked oddjobs for pennies and nickels in New York City, hawking newspapers, working the docks and warehouses, whatever anyone would let him do, and he built a life, alongside countless other immigrants, from countless other parts of the world and walks of life.
Today? Impossible. He was too poor, too āundesireableā to be accepted in the modern day. Nevermind that in time he built a family, served in World War II, and raised two sons who went on to become a doctor and a computer engineer. None of that would have happened if he had faced the barriers to travel that exist for todayās poor.
Today, heād have to have be smuggled in illegally, and (assuming he didnāt get killed while trying to enter the country, or abducted by the smugglers for ransom or worse) then once inside heād have to be forever wary of the police and the immigration services, lest they ask for his papers and jail or deport him. He could be arrested simply for looking for work, with employers pressured and incentivized to report illegals. He could be exploited and abused, and heād have no legal redress because of his illegal status. He could be murdered in broad daylight and no one would care.
The world has changed in only a few short generations. National borders used to be at least somewhat open. Now, they are quite decidedly closed.
Sure, you can be allowed past the guards and bars and walls if you pass the ācredit checkā and have the money for it. But if youāre some poor schlub trying to make a better life somewhere less horrible than where you were born? Good luck! Youāre gonna need it!
2 Likes
There was atime when it was cheaper to move around the world, if only because cost of living was better and finding gainful employment was easier. Just around a century ago, and for most of the century before that, would be the golden age of international mobility for the masses.
Iām not saying that āmost societiesā welcomed immigrants with open arms, but national boundaries didnāt used to have such strict enforcement or such high entry barriers. It was much easier and less dangerous to travel both legally AND illegally, to almost anywhere you wanted to go. Thatās not to say it wasnāt difficult, or that people necessarily welcomed foreigners so much as they (sometimes barely) tolerated them, but it certainly wasnāt the nightmare that is the modern day situation.
If you were originally talking about immigration, then I agree with you. That is clearly much harder to do than it once was in many ares of the world.
Thanks! And count on it. Switzerland is on the list ā¦ probably in about 10 months or so. Iāll definitely drop you a line.
After 20 years in Berkeley my eldest was approaching high school age and we decided to move back to New Zealand. Thereās a 6 month difference between the school years, we decided on a big geography lesson.
So one year the 4 of us went to Burning Man and never came back, we drove across the US to show them how big it was, visited NO, got chased by a hurricane, DC, NY, gave the truck to some burner friends and pared down to a suitcase each ā¦ 6 weeks: London, Norway, Berlin, Munich, Venice, Pompei, Rome, Paris, back to London ā¦ by then the kids were getting pretty stressed, one more art museum and ā¦
Next we flew to India ā¦ the kids calmed down, and got really quiet and closer, this was so different and a chance to realise just what a privileged life theyād had ā¦ weād planned for some down time so we stopped by a beach for a week or so, the kids had a chance to wind down, we carved watermelons for Halloween, we also met another family from the UK travelling with their kids, weāre still friends, we went on to Vietnam for a week (they met us in NZ later) and then to NZ for a chance to check out our new home.
All in all we travelled for 5-6 months - weāre so glad we did it - I think itās important to plan regular down times for the kids, donāt keep moving every few days, occasionally stop somewhere quiet for a week, more amusement parks and beaches, fewer museums, you get the idea. Donāt forget to bring maps, take the train, esp in India, rather than formal English have them write a blog for their friends back home. Make sure the kids get to walk in streets in India and Africa, and look for other kids doing the same thing for them to spend some time with. Plan on periodically boxing stuff up youāve accumulated and sending it home.
Anyway I wish you well and hope you have a great time, when you make it to NZ I hope youāll have a chance to bring them down South
3 Likes
I have a friend doing this with four kids. I have to respect his request for obfuscation which I had to make to get the story, though with some research and creativity it is not hard to figure out.
It all started when he gave some safety classes to an environmental activist group as a favor, it was likely a federal tip off to investors that ruined a nearly successful tech startup leaving him on the hook for huge debts that he could never repay.
He is a member of a minority group found in most cities worldwide, not as much now than 20 years ago they still have a tradition of opening their homes and looking the other way for their own illegal immigrants often giving work under the table as well as encouraging cross pollination where many of his friends have 2-3 100% legal and correct passports thanks to place of birth differing from those of both parents. He has been away form the US since 2005 when they started with one baby and are still going strong. There have been times at the start where they have been stuck once all winter almost out of cash in a cement construction apartment with nothing but a kerosene mountaineering stove for heat and cooking and no money for the electrical meter, the black mold was hard on them. But they have adapted, they cycle or take public transportation where they can but he is an airplane pilot which helps them get around quietly and sometimes makes them some money, otherwise he makes money as a business consultant or engineer and his wife is a writer which keeps an income some would call low but is enough. One thing he had to get over was being afraid to ask for help in addition to giving assistance. The cool thing is that their kids are very independent though very loving and connected, have no boundaries in where or how they want to live, what they want to do, and are amazingly talented and multilingual.
(edit)
Like Taniwha said, moving around too fast wastes money, my friend typically stays for at least six months often setting up logistics for the next move a few weeks before the family. They also have a low budget property acquired along the way in trade that they can use as a fallback or rest area, though they have no assets in the US.
1 Like
Great memories, thanks for sharing them ā and good tips! Most appreciated. Yes, weāll be going to the South island of New Zealand. The youngest of us really wants to see penguins, so weāre planning on a stop in Oamaru.
Oh, local and cheap i have done, often. For the record, i live in argentina. We have recently (kind of?) defaulted, so our currency is looking weaker than ever. I know the south of my country, but i havenāt stepped on foreign soil, and i really, really want to. There is just too much associated risk to getting into debt just for travelling, in this country, having nowhere to fall back to can be really fucked up.
1 Like
Pankaj Ghemawat āActually the world is not flatā.
Says exactly what you are saying - despite what you have heard, the world is not more connected and people are actually turning more āin on themselvesā in reaction to more connection options. The world is becoming more disconnected and therefore dangerous.
This is why we propose California as a new center for world discussion - to counter this trend that Pankaj has documented. SovereignCA.org
You can also see (rarer/bigger) yellow-eyed penguins out on the Otago peninsula, near Dunedin (you have to book ahead and pay) the trip is worth it, but check and make sure theyāll be there and doing interesting stuff. You can also see albatross out there.
If you are driving south try and go one way up/down the West Coast and the other way down past Kaikoura - the West coast is subtropical rain forest - beautiful (except that being rain forest it rains a lot).
One more suggestion: we got good mileage from porting our home phone number to a voip box and carrying it with us
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
