Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Thank you for the sharing! As we read through your reply our face went from smile to grin to a full on laugh out loud session!

Good times travel hacking indeed!

Thanks for sharing, you must have some great stories ( wow, nine years )! Although we must say, just thinking of flying out of ORD on that scale and the notorious weather delays gives us shivers. ;) We like your new philosophy of 'being homeless' and being able to be at the foot of the trail, congra...

Context/Background In 2016 we sold 95% of our belongings and set off to become location and employment independent, while concurrently pursuing FI/RE. Our goal was to go abroad and travel continually for one year out of one 36L backpack each (Osprey Manta AG 36). In that one year we were fortunate ...

Hey everyone, thank you in advance for your help! :-) For the last few years we've been using a SATA 2TB drive and a Zalman ZM-VE350 as a back-up drive and virtual optical disk drive but are having difficulty replicating (and if possible, improving) it's functionality while reducing weight and volum...

@axelheyst Awesome stuff thank you for sharing, replied to your DM!

@mooretrees You're in for some great craftsmanship on your school bus!

@axelheyst The solo trips you want to take sound very much like the lifestyle the friend ( http://www.antigroundhogday.com/ ) we told you about in our last response is working on. It's a great feeling when you can leverage a skill set to help others and in return they're able to help you with a reso...

@ChrisAtTTL That's a great way to teach entrepreneurship, value/take care of what you buy since you ultimately plan on selling it, and not have a bunch of unused things around the house! We're always amazed to see how many 'last year's' or 'broken' things people keep around instead of selling them a...

@AxelHeyst Awesome insight and wisdom Axel! Hopefully the 'mistake' hasn't been too costly and totally worth it! ;) We have a friend who recently FI/REd and his plan is to travel throughout the country in his converted RAV4, so far it's working out pretty well! Are you and your girlfriend continuing...

@screwtheaverage do you see yourselves doing this house sitting long term? It does sound interesting but do you ever long for a home of your own? I don't seem to have the international travel bug anymore and home is meaning more and more to me. But home is a flexible term and I'm not in love with o...

@Classical_Liberal There's little doubt that your choices now will pay off exponentially in the future! Our past situation very much sounds like a mirror image of your current, as we too lived in a small to medium college town that was booming. It's more robust than just another 100K invested becaus...

@classical_Liberal Great thoughts and examples, and we completely agree with being intentional about your lifestyle and building your life around those choices! Unfortunately, there are so many people who think in weeks and months instead of years and decades and don't realize the power of intention...

Like many on the ERE forums we're always on the lookout to optimize our money (savings/investments/expenses/etc.) but eventually hit a 'wall' with reducing housing costs, arguably one's largest recurring monthly expense. We managed to get our housing costs down to $450 a month for a one bedroom apar...

Hey everyone, We’re Screw The Average, a married couple (IT and Project Management and Training consultants) in our 30’s who’ve been working, traveling, and house sitting for nearly four years. In 2016 we sold 95% of our belongings and set off to become/pursue independence (location, financial, empl...

@Jacob Thank you Jacob, another great read indeed! If others haven't read this they should definitely check it out, we suspect it can be found at most local libraries. @theanimal/@Stahlmann Interesting, haven't read these yet, we'll add them to our library queue. Thank you for the recommendations gu...

Read it a few years ago but we really enjoyed it ( GoodReads Reviews). Any thoughts or other recommended similar books?

For others who many need to ship something (especially large items) and want an alternative to traditional carriers/means you can try https://www.uship.com/, https://convoy.com/, or https://www.matson.com/ (shipping via container ships).

Thank you for the encouragement @theanimal, it's been quite the adventure indeed! Check out our response/contribution to the house sitting post found here: https://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10849&p=218711#p218711 In case it doesn't answer all your questions fell f...

We just posted our experience to another thread: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10849&p=218711#p218711

@Freedom_2018 thanks for sharing your personal experience, lots of great info! We too would like to share our thoughts/experience/perspective. We've been house sitting since 2016, and contrary to @Freedom_2018 we prefer to leverage house sitting to facilitate sightseeing and travel to locations we w...

Great housing hack! We do something similar with the outcome being very low monthly expenses. We're full time house sitters (63 so far) that have had the pleasure of visiting four continents, 26 countries, and ~80 cities. Our budget in 2018 was $7.5K, and in 2019 it was $7K (both years are for two p...