Budget-Friendly Travel for Retirees: Our first Official blog post
Many dream of idyllic retirements spent sipping margaritas on a tropical beach. But what happens when that dream doesn’t quite fit your reality? In this, our first post for our travel blog, we explore the unexpected twists and turns of our own retirement plans. We’ll share how health concerns, political anxieties, and a deeper desire for travel led us to swap beach house plans for budget-friendly nomad retirement adventures. Our journey isn’t just about us – we want to inspire YOU to break free from the mold and craft a retirement that sparks joy and adventure! We hope you find this travel blog useful!
Also know as “You’re doing what??!?” (I was going to call this ‘Episode IV-A New Hope’ but I didn’t want to deal with lawyers, soooo…)
How our goals have evolved…..
The first step is to clearly define what your actual goal is. I’ve been reminded through this process it’s also important to recognize that your understanding of what your goal actually is may change as you attempt to define it more clearly.
Realizing the Goal Wasn’t Satisfying
Before this whole thing started I thought retiring to Panama was a good goal. But the more we talked about it, and the more that Sandra bought into the idea, the more I realized that buying a beach house and living out the rest of our retirement days in a tropical country wasn’t actually a satisfying plan.
But that realization came in stages.
We initially made a decision that we would retire at age 67. We planned on settling in Panama unless a visit there changed our minds and started tentatively forming a plan to spend a couple weeks there in May. A friend of mine was retired to Coronado so we at least had a shot at some inside scoop on how the process should go. We also decided that we would rent first before committing to a purchase so that we could be WAY more familiar with the country.
Downsizing and Preparing for Retirement
Step one was going to be downsizing from our current property. We have 5 acres with a 1,680 sf 3 BR house, a 1,000 sf ‘shop/storage’ space that was the original house on the property, plus two 40′ Conex containers we used as storage and workshop space. I’ve been collecting tools and shop equipment for decades as an auto mechanic and woodworker plus we have so much art; paintings, prints, dimensional pieces, glass, the mind fairly boggles at the scope.
The original plan starts with selling off most of our stuff, sell the house and use the proceeds to buy a motorhome or 5th wheel and a small piece of land. Then we could continue to work but be debt free and stacking money away while we prepared to retire. Oct 2022 we were laying out the timeline for early summer 2023 to sell the house, still with an eye towards working until 67.
Financial Considerations and Starting with Cash
Between personal property, project cars and equity in the house we’d be starting with a decent chunk of cash. We figured on spending maybe as much as $100k to set up a small acreage with an RV and use the rest to buy a rental property somewhere cheap to start developing a passive income. With no mortgage or debt we’d be able to live on maybe around $2,500 per month so anything we earned over that would go towards more rental properties
Adapting Plans Based on New Information
But then a couple of things happened in November 2022 that caused us to start having a much more serious discussion about what retirement looks like for us. First thing was that I went in for a routine follow up at the end of October (I have had some issues with my heart and actually have an ICD to improve my odds in case of a 3rd heart attack) and they started me on a blood pressure medication. When I went back 3 weeks later to see how that was working out my BP was 228/122 so they sent me to the ER. I had been monitoring it at home for a couple of weeks and 202/103 wasn’t an unusual reading, the systolic number was seldom below 180. This was explained to me as being bad and wrong and liable to result in a stroke so I wound up being admitted to the hospital for hypertension. Change to the medications and more monitoring but ya know, stress is a thing.
Health Concerns and Reassessing Retirement Plans
This was my third admission to the hospital because “this is the kind of thing people die from” situation, so it got me thinking very seriously about retirement sooner rather than later. Like, I have always wanted to travel more and I’m apparently running out of time to get that handled.
Political Factors and Stress
Around this same time, 45 announced he was going to try and become 47 and we were both uncomfortable with what we imagined the campaign was going to be like having already dealt with 2 years of “I didn’t actually lose; the Dems cheated”. I follow politics casually but it’s enough to cause significant stress because I can’t even believe we’ve gotten to this point in our country. Even if 45 isn’t a contender it looks like Desantis would be the GOP nominee and that’s hardly an improvement.
Exploring Retirement Destinations and Social Security Benefits
I had been reading up on various cheapest places to live aka retirement destinations and options with an eye towards where a couple could live on our anticipated SS payments of about $3,000. During the process we learned more about SS benefits and that we’d actually get closer to $3,600 because Sandra’s payment would be 50% of my benefit rather than being based on her earned income.
Crunching the Numbers: Local Living vs. RV Travel
I started working up the math to live in a motorhome on a piece of land locally while we continued to work as well as what it would look like to travel and live in an RV. I quickly realized that the second option was nearly as expensive as making no change to our lifestyle at all; around $4,000 per month assuming we owned the RV outright and traveled around 2,000 miles per month max.