Category: Location Independence

Our family set a goal to become location independent in three years. We did it in a year and a half. Here are our goals, plans, ideas, and post-location independence thoughts about creating more location freedom in our lives.

Your Three Year Experiment: Scott and Caroline

Hi there! As promised last week, today I have a brand new series for you, featuring people who are sharing their three year experiments, that is, their plans, goals, and dreams for the next three years. 

Today I’m thrilled to introduce Scott and Caroline, who share their early retirement strategies at Costaricafire. In this interview, you’ll learn:

  • how they created a real estate portfolio to help them retire
  • the three income streams they’ll use to fund retirement
  • the first thing they’ll do when they’re fully location independent

If you’d like to be featured in the series, send me a note! My contact info is on the Start Here page.

Hello! Tell us about yourselves.

We are Scott and Caroline, 40-something parents of two daughters from New York City. Caroline has been operating her own Career Coaching business for over 10 years after a career in finance, consulting and recruiting, and Scott has recently stepped away from a 23-year IT career to focus on our real estate investments and IT consulting.

What’s your background? Early years, education, married, kids, jobs?

Continue reading “Your Three Year Experiment: Scott and Caroline”

How Our New Home is an Investment in Our Health

Last month, we moved from our home in New Hampshire, where we’d lived for six years (and a total of eight in the town), to Davidson, North Carolina.

Despite massive spending last month to get settled (thank you fifteen year mortgage for mountains of equity to help get through that), I expect our new home will be a financial boon. We’re closer to family, so we’ll spend less on travel to see them. We’ll be able to spend more on travel to places we’ve been itching to go as a family (Hawaii, Ireland, Australia) and we’ll have the time to do it. We took out another fifteen year mortgage with a low interest rate, which we plan to pay off early. It’s our only debt.

While I’m not working as an ESL Teacher next year, so we won’t have my income to save and invest, I expect to spend this year figuring out ways to lower our expenses–through an energy audit, shopping at Aldi, and new cell phone plans.

We’re definitely temporarily spending more with our move, as last month’s spending shows. But ultimately, through gas savings, food savings, property tax savings, and do-it-yourself savings (yard and house cleaning), I expect to see our overall spending decline and our overall savings increase in 2019 (because we’ve got a net worth goal to reach!).

Let me be clear: we didn’t move for financial reasons. We moved because it’s been our dream to achieve location independence, and be able to travel at will and be closer to our families. But we chose a smaller house, in a travel hub, where we can also continue to save and invest for our retirement and education goals.  Continue reading “How Our New Home is an Investment in Our Health”

What’s Next for the Three Year Experiment?

In July of 2016, I turned 37. My husband and I lived in New England, far from both sides of our family, because of his job. I longed to be able to live in a place with milder winters, see my family more, and travel for extended periods of time. I longed to be able to visit Chile and see his side of the family, more than once every three years.

So when he asked me what I wished for on that birthday, I voiced my crazy wish, “I want to be able to spend half the year in Chile with your family and half in the Carolinas with mine.” At the time, it was impossible. His job kept him in New Hampshire, our kids were in school there, and we were far from financial independence. Yes, we’d spent the last eight years growing our net worth, first by paying off our $38,000 of consumer debt in 2008 and then slowly growing our net worth from there, but we were no where near the amount needed to quit work. Continue reading “What’s Next for the Three Year Experiment?”

A Decade of Progress

Yesterday was my birthday. My family and I were sitting around the table, eating takeout subs (which is what I requested), when I asked Mr. ThreeYear what we’d been doing ten years ago. We dialed back the years and realized that was the year of the layoffs, when he’d been working in a job that was not right for him just to pay the bills, battling terrible anxiety and, in hindsight, depression, and I was staying home with our one-year-old.

I also realized that it was ten years ago (on July 4th) that I’d found The Total Money Makeover in the bookstore and we’d started our journey to financial independence.

Twenty Nine

I wonder what I was thinking on my birthday ten years ago. I was 29, facing the last year in my twenties, and was going through one of the most difficult periods of my adult life. But I had hope after reading that book. Continue reading “A Decade of Progress”

Do You Live in One of the Best Areas in the US?

Where do you live? Is it on purpose or by chance? Since we’re moving in a few more days, I thought I’d take a look at some of the best places to live in the US (sorry international readers!).

US News and World Reports tallied major metropolitan areas in the US to come up with this list. They used a strong job market, cost of living, quality of life, desirability (whether you want to live there), and migration to rank the cities.

Here are the top ten: Continue reading “Do You Live in One of the Best Areas in the US?”

Our Location Independence: Your Questions Answered

After I posted our news that we’re moving to North Carolina this summer and will officially be location independent, some of you had questions. I thought I’d publish a follow up post to answer those questions and hopefully shed a bit more light on some of the decisions we made.

But first, make sure you read this post that details that plan. It contains a lot of information about where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing!

Okay, on to your questions!

The Numbers

Jalpan from Passive Engineering asks, “My question would be on the numbers. How did you decide your original number  and how did you reach the conviction that you’ll still be okay even though you’ve not hit it?”

Great question, Jalpan. When we first decided the net worth number we wanted to hit, we knew it wasn’t the same as our FI number. In order to be completely financially independent, we’d need to save up more than our double net worth goal. But, we assumed that during location independence we’d either:

  • be working full time or
  • be traveling for a short amount of time, like a year

Continue reading “Our Location Independence: Your Questions Answered”

The Big News

Mr. ThreeYear and I have some news to share. I’ve been waiting to tell you for awhile, but I wanted to wait until everything was finalized first.

The Big News www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

This summer, we’re going to be location independent!

That’s right, we’re doing it a full year and a half earlier than our plan. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited.

No, we haven’t reached our goal of doubling our net worth (we’ll keep working on that). And no, we aren’t going to take off on an around-the-world trip (yet!). But we are going to be able to move wherever we’d like.

We’ve sold our house in New Hampshire. We’re just waiting until the end of the month to close and move. I’ll be sure to write about all the details of our house sale and move later this summer.

And, we’ve found a place to live in a small community in a lake town of North Carolina.

How Did This Happen?

We felt very good about our timeline of becoming location independent by the end of 2019, and were working hard to save up and make decisions about how we’d make our location independent lifestyle look (if you read earlier posts, you’ll see we’ve changed our minds on that a lot over this past year and a half). But, this January, I had a fateful conversation. Continue reading “The Big News”

Location Independent, International Jobs: Jaime from Keep Thrifty

Hello! Welcome to “Location Independent, International Jobs,” the Wednesday series where I showcase stories from people who have become location independent or work internationally.

Today you’ll hear from Jaime from Keep Thrifty. Jaime and her husband Chris write about exploring the location independent lifestyle over the last year . I’m amazed at how brave and out-of-the-box they are in the decisions they make for their family. They refuse to take the road that they’re “supposed to,” and instead make the decisions that are right for their family.
This interview will cover:
  • How to take a mini-retirement
  • Financing a traveling lifestyle
  • The downside of location independence
For the complete story of how Jaime and Chris have made a mini-retirement (and trial location independence) work for their family, read on.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
My husband and I met while in college at UW-Madison. Before Chris graduated, he was offered a full time job at GE where he had his co-op. This allowed him to stay in Madison since I had two more years before I graduated. After I finished school, I worked as a personal trainer, we bought a house, got married, Chris got his MBA, and we had our first baby, N.

We were settled and content, but under it all we longed for more. Then I found out I was pregnant with twin girls, had a tough pregnancy, prayed for my babies, and at 37 weeks welcomed A & B into the world. A had surgery right away and spent a month in the NICU. Our life was at once overwhelming, but it was the push we needed to move past contentment and start working on our dreams.

Jaime in the hospital with twins location independence www.thethreeyearexperiment.com
After the birth of their twins

How We’re Saving for Our Dream: Guest Post on Mustard Seed Money

Today I’m very excited to be featured on Mustard Seed Money. Rob paid off his house and is approaching early retirement before 40, while never earning a 6-figure salary. His website is full of practical advice and specific ideas you can use to improve your financial life.

On his site, I’m sharing ways that Mr. ThreeYear and I are saving and investing to become location independent.

Here’s an excerpt from the post: Continue reading “How We’re Saving for Our Dream: Guest Post on Mustard Seed Money”

Your Complete Guide to Location Independence for Families

Have you ever dreamed of having the freedom to live wherever you’d like? Have you thought about moving to a warmer/cheaper/bigger/smaller town or city? Have you dreamed of being able to travel for longer than two weeks a year with your entire family?

Our family is pursuing a dream to become location independent, in order to be able to be closer to our families who live on two different continents, enjoy warmer weather than we currently do in New Hampshire, and travel for longer stretches of time.

For the last year and a half, we’ve been exploring ways to make that dream come true. We’re investigating overseas employment options. We’re saving and investing in order to double our net worth. We’re looking into non-traditional work arrangements.

What is location independence?

Location independence is a term used to describe a lifestyle in which you’re not tied to one location. You are free to travel for long stretches of time, if you so desire. You’re not tied to a place because of your job. You don’t have work obligations that mean you need to report to an office each day. You may live in one city, but you’re free to choose that city. You’re able to practice geographical arbitrage, and live in a region of your country or the world that costs less.

It’s generally a term that’s used when people are still working, and haven’t yet reached financial independence, but because of the way they’ve structured their lives, they’re able to work from anywhere, or almost anywhere. Location independence for families is building a lifestyle where your entire family can come with you. Whether you’re a family of 2, 5, or 25, location independence can work for a family, but extra planning IS required.  Continue reading “Your Complete Guide to Location Independence for Families”