Travel/Holidays

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Nomad
Posts: 389
Joined: Wed May 16, 2018 5:23 pm
Location: UK

Travel/Holidays

Post by Nomad »

I'm not sure this is in the correct section however...

Does anyone manage to do a lot of holidays/vacations while in early retirement extreme mode/
Which strategies actually work?

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Seppia
Posts: 2016
Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:34 am
Location: South Florida

Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by Seppia »

look for user slowtraveler among others.
I am still working my a$$ off at this time so I don't feel like I can give a lot of recommendations

prognastat
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by prognastat »

I am not too familiar with it as I'm still in accumulation myself, but it seems one of the common ways people finance it is travel hacking with credit cards. Though I suspect the more ERE you are(lower spending) the harder it is going to be to use your spending to generate points.

The other thing that seems common is finding ways to slow travel and not spend like a tourist while traveling.

jacob
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by jacob »

Nah, if you spend enough money on credit cards to get enough airline miles for more than a bus ticket, you're doing something wrong (relative to ERE).

The concept of holiday in the sense of traveling somewhere far away only to return home again a couple of weeks later for no productive reason doesn't really exist within the ERE framework.

What actually works:
  • If you must, swap houses or stay in someone's guestroom/couch. In return they can do the same for you. (I have plenty of offers for this and returned plenty as well but only ever did it twice.)
  • Slow travel. After selling your main home or renting it out, you pack your luggage and take off and stay where you want to go for 6+ months or more. This is to amortize the ticket. You want your annual ticket expenses to be very low.
  • Relocation. Same thing but you stay in the new place. This is what I do.

sky
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Joined: Tue Jan 04, 2011 2:20 am

Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by sky »

We are currently living in a van and moving slowly west toward the Rocky Mountains. Our average is about 100 miles a day, which is too fast to be low cost living. Ideally moving 100 miles every week or two would be much cheaper.

Bicycle touring can be extremely low cost if you cook your own food and travel through areas with free camping opportunities.

Stahlmann
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by Stahlmann »

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Last edited by Stahlmann on Mon Jul 02, 2018 4:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Astra
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by Astra »

I traveled for free (not counting food costs) while broke and in my early 20ies by combining couchsurfing and hitchhiking. This works great in Europe, with open borders and no need to fly. Could also work well inside USA. Meeting locals is great, and you can usually cook something with your host for cheap eats, and they can also suggest free activities in their hometown so you can avoid expensive tourist entertainment. Many great things about a city are free anyway (bathing in the river, seeing the architecture, enjoying the atmosphere, street art, seasonal festivals). I've also couchsurfed in rural areas, in which case you help out on the farm, go hiking or horseriding. Rural hosts get less travelers, so they are especially generous, as long as you are a pleasant guest. I use "couchsurfing" as a verb, in reality, the platform couchsurfing.com has become very overrun lately, I moved on to BeWelcome and warmshowers if on bike. I've always felt safe hitchhiking, but it can be very energy-consuming: for your free ride you owe at least to have a conversation with your driver. It helps to travel in a pair: one can chat with the driver, the other can chill or sleep in the back seat. Many people in their 30-40ies are happy to give you a ride and reminisce about the hitchhiking adventures of their youth. Sometimes they insist on inviting you for dinner (so they can reminisce some more?). It also helps if you don't look like an axe-murderer!

The other option: travel in an RV or van. Cost-wise, this should be similar to living in a trailer, but I have no experience with this.

thrifty++
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by thrifty++ »

I have travelled a couple of times for long periods. This was before I discovered ERE. I was still very frugal but far less strategic and extreme about it all. So my long travel periods still made a hit on my NW accumulation but were not disastrous. I saved money by staying in backpacker hostels in the bunks and in rooms off airbnb.
Now I am about to take a sabbatical from work for 5 months and I have done my budget. I do consulting work on the side which I can do remotely. Depends how much I want to work though otherwise it will defeat the point. But I will be staying mainly in one or two places which limits costs significantly because of avoiding transit costs and means because of the length of time I can live like a local and stay in a room in a shared place at local rates, cook in the kitchen, buy groceries, etc.

According to my budget the amount of money I get from consulting and investment income will very closely match my expenses. Depending on how much consulting work I want to do and how low I want to get my expenses I could end up increasing my net worth. But I want to relax and not stress about it so it is likely I my net worth will stagnate rather than increase or decrease which is fine by me.

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jennypenny
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by jennypenny »

If you can charge business expenses to a card, you can rack up some decent miles/points. We're saving most of ours to use after DH finally pulls the plug. We're also planning on buying senior lifetime passes to the national parks when we're 62. Sweet deal and we'll probably be out of miles/points by then so we'll just drive around and camp everywhere.

Fiddle
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by Fiddle »

During my time in a full time, full on job I was lucky enough to have a company car and had to visit teams across the country a couple of times a month. I swapped my flashy car for an estate and put a bed in the back and my partner and I spent ALOT of long weekends visiting teams in different places on the company petrol expenses.

For the past two and a half years we've been doing a semi retired lifestyle and we've done some good travels.
We use an old LDV convoy van and cruise to different countries. By staying off campsites and stocking up on good priced food from supermarkets we live for less than we do when we are at home!
The main thing is to find free fun on the way, things like spending time in nature areas and free museums etc.

slowtraveler
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Re: Travel/Holidays

Post by slowtraveler »

Vans seem to work well for travel within a political unit like USA, South America (if have S American passport), or Europe. C40 has a journal which includes some ERE van travel.

For international, 2 passports are really helpful to maximize the countries you can visit without Visa. Look for 90 day Visa exempt entries, Wikipedia has a good page under "Visa Requirements for xyz Citizens".

Month long leases are 30-50% of the price of daily rentals. Get a hostel, walk around the area you want to rent, and ask owners how much for a room, how much h electricity per kwh, water per m^3, cleaning/other fees. Take videos of rooms and all damage to minimize your chance of getting taken for your deposit. Hostel world, Agoda, booking.com, hotels.com (1 night free after 10 nights), Airbnb, stack these with befrugal or topcashback when it makes sense (app is often cheaper than a travel portal) and pay on rewards card.

Definitely have a no FTF, ATM reimbursed debit card.

Because you're ERE, you can take buses or trains easier, I recommend rome2rio and man on seat 61 for travel planning. For flights miles tend to be a hassle. Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, Bank of America Premium Travel, and Capital One Venture all have bonuses you can use for $500 travel credit so they're great for variability. You could probably get all 3 with 10k of spending. Pay1040 can be used to pay your taxes and get a travel bonus at the same time. So pay 1.85% on taxes, get 15% back for travel, good deal and 1500 of flights helps. Use Google flights to see where to fly cheapest and direct, also, what dates are cheapest. The flexibility helps massively. Bestonwardticket for onward tickets so you can use one way tickets and leave when you want.

Ideally, go somewhere food is cheap. It tends to be hard to find the good prices markets when moving is a constant. Street food is a life saver here.

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