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.
Hello! Welcome to “Location Independent, International Jobs,” the Wednesday series where I showcase stories from people who have become location independent, work internationally, and/or practice location arbitrage, as is the case with today’s guest poster.
Today you’ll hear from Moose, who blogs about FI at MSoLife. It isn’t everyday that you meet a fellow Carolinian with ties to Chile who speaks Spanish fluently. We’ve had fun ribbing each other in Spanish over email. I couldn’t wait to hear more about his plans for the future once he reaches FI in a few years.
This interview will cover:
Where Moose plans to move to live more cheaply once his family has reached FI
Who geoarbitrage is right for, and who it isn’t right for
How a mini-retirement can fit into your FI goals
For the complete story of how Moose plans to retire to South America, read on.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I was born in France and have lived in Mexico, the UK, the USA, and
Germany, so it’s hard to say where I’m from, but I currently live in Los
Angeles, California and am from Charlotte, NC. I’ve been married for a
little over five years and we have one daughter, who’s two years old. I was
an Army officer for six years before going to business school and I’ve
worked in investment banking (for a short time and it sucked) and investment research for private equity and hedge funds.
It’s no secret that the ThreeYear family loves to travel. But we have two kids who almost always travel with us, and four travelers are a lot more expensive than two! So over the years, we’ve learned how to keep our travel expenses down.
Here are 5 ways that we budget travel with our kids.
Today I’m excited to guest post on Keep Thrifty. Keep Thrifty is a personal finance and travel blog run by Chris and Jaime, who live in Madison, Wisconsin. They’re run some amazing lifestyle experiments in the last few years, including living in half their house, moving to an apartment, and taking a one-year mini-retirement. I love how brave and willing to think outside of the box they are for their family.
In the post, I share how I caught the travel bug, met and married Mr. ThreeYear, and then settled into… life as we know it! I share the reasons we’ve embarked on our three year experiment and what we hope to get out of it as we work towards location independence, or location freedom, as Keep Thrifty calls it! It sure is freedom!! Not being tied down to one job or one place is such a freeing thought. Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it! Continue reading “How We Are Working Towards Location Freedom: Guest Post on Keep Thrifty”
Merry Christmas! The ThreeYears are currently in Chile. We just got back from a side trip we took to the San Pedro de Atacama desert, in the northeastern part of the country, close to the Bolivian border. San Pedro de Atacama is the driest desert in the world by amount of rainfall received, but it’s also nestled in the Altiplano of the Andes mountains, so there are mountain-fed rivers and streams and salt lagoons everywhere.
Mr. ThreeYear is from Chile, and his entire family lives here, so we visit as much as we can, usually for about three weeks. We plan a side visit to one or two spots we’ve never visited for each trip, so that we can see somewhere new in South America. This year, we picked the San Pedro de Atacama desert, because Junior ThreeYear wanted to visit a desert and see an observatory.
San Pedro de Atacama Desert is a tourist destination, so it’s quite pricey. Here’s what we did to plan a great trip without breaking the bank.
The Flight
Luckily, in the last few years, a number of discount airlines have sprung up in Chile. We eventually decided on JetSmart, an airline with several flights per day from Santiago to Calama, the airport nearest San Pedro. We did an online search from the US just a week before our trip, so we could have gotten better rates if we’d planned ahead more. We looked at JetSmart and Sky, another discount carrier in Chile, and eventually chose JetSmart for its prices and flight options. JetSmart is definitely no frills, as we found out. The planes are new and clean, and you have ample space between seats, which was very nice. However, if you took anything bigger than a small carry-on (8 kilos or less), you’d be charged for it–about $16 online per bag, $21 at the ticket counter, or $37 at the gate (the prices increase as you get closer to the plane). Also, you have to print your own boarding passes or download them to your phone, or you’ll be charged $8 per boarding pass at the ticket window. Soft drinks, coffee, and a small selection of snacks and sandwiches are sold on board (a Coke or a small container of Pringles is $2.50).
Our plan with JetSmart, which we took to Calama.
The four of us carried two backpacks and two carry-ons, one of which was over the size limit, as we found out at the gate (the website where we booked the tickets was not clear about size limits of carry-ons). Luckily, the gate agent took pity on us, and said she wouldn’t charge us since it was close to the right size. We boarded the flight and flew two hours up to Calama, a small mining city in the middle of the desert.
We paid a total of $540.12 for four tickets from Santiago to Calama. We probably could have gotten a better deal if we’d booked earlier, but we thought $135 per person was reasonable.
The Rental Car
By far the best decision we made during our trip was renting a car. We booked the car online via Priceline, and paid $115.49 for four days and three nights. We rented through the local company Econorent and booked a four-door Nissan Sentra.
At the airport, we picked up the car, then drove to San Pedro de Atacama, after getting directions, because Mr. ThreeYear didn’t have cell service in the airport (he has an international plan through work). Driving through the desert was eerie, at first. Everything is so vast, dusty, and rocky. Continue reading “Our Trip to the Desert: San Pedro de Atacama”
Why does my post title sound like a Nike commercial? Just do it. It’s a kick in the pants, is what it is. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to go a bit crazy during the holidays. My extended family was here last week and we ate turkey, played laser tag (even Grandpa!), and enjoyed ourselves immensely. The kids tore the house upside down, much coffee was consumed, and we decorated for Christmas. Eventually, my family left, and we were left with cleanup, the extra turkey and dressing, and a huge disinterest in returning to the routine parts of life that we’re somewhat required to engage in to keep the paychecks coming.
Mr. ThreeYear and I dragged ourselves back to work, got the kids off to school, and made lists of all that needs to get done before we leave for Chile in just a few weeks.
As I drove to work, I listened to Afford Anything’s latest podcast. In this one, she interviewed A.J. Jacobs, who I momentarily confused with J.D. Vance, until I read his bio and remembered he’d written A Year of Living Biblically, which I’d read several years ago. In that book, Jacobs spent a year following the more obscure commandments of the Old Testament, such as “wear no mixed-fiber clothing” and “dress in all white.” He grew out a beard and posted the ten commandments on the doorway of his apartment, in order to see how his life changed for the better (or worse). He’s engaged in such experiments many times, both as exercises for living a better life and journalistic fodder. One of the takeaways from the interview was that if you want (or need) to change something in your life, just start doing it. Motivation follows action, or something like that. Continue reading “Just Do It”
Hello! Welcome to “Location Independent, International Jobs,” the Wednesday series where I showcase stories from people who have become location independent, work internationally, and/or continuously travel. I’ve interviewed some fascinating individuals who all have slightly different takes on location independence or living internationally. Recent posts include Steve from Think, Save, Retire, Mrs. Adventure Rich, and Mavis, an international teacher.
Guest posters will be sharing how they became location independent or how they got jobs abroad, but most importantly, they’ll share how their lifestyle has positively or negatively affected their finances and how they got to the life they’re living now.
The reason for this series is to showcase people who have already achieved what the ThreeYear family is working towards: location independence and/or securing international jobs. Since we’re not sure which route we’ll take, we thought we’d hear from people who’ve already achieved one or the other, so we can learn more. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Heather, a twenty-something ESOL teacher who lives in New Hampshire.
I know Heather from my Master’s program and we have a lot in common, which is why I asked her if she would share her story on the blog. Heather moved to Chile after college, just like I did, and taught English as a Second Language, just like I did, and fell in love with Chile (easy to do!) just like I did. And we both live in New Hampshire and attend the same Master’s program in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). But, our stories are a bit different, and probably more importantly, we’re about a decade apart in age. So Heather is at a different place in life than I am, which is cool, because she can do things like introduce me to SnapChat. Okay, without further ado, I give you Heather!
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I’m from Sandwich, New Hampshire. [Laurie: I love that town name]. I have a B.A. in Italian Studies from Connecticut College.
Heather in Gran Torre Santiago (the tallest building in Latin America), overlooking the north part of the city.
How did you make the decision to move internationally?
I was finishing up college and was set on working abroad as an English teacher. I had done the CELTA course between freshman and sophomore year and wanted to get a job where I could be the principal teacher since previously I had volunteered or tutored (CELTA stands for Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults–it’s affiliated with the University of Cambridge ESOL examinations). I didn’t apply for any US jobs and put all my energy into looking for something abroad. I figured this was a perfect time to do it since I would be graduating and needed a break from school. Also, I wanted to confirm that TESOL was my career path before jumping into grad school. Continue reading “Location Independent, International Jobs: Heather”
Our family is on a journey to become location independent in three years. One of our plans is to move across the world for a few years. Today, I’ll share the story of the last time I moved to a different continent.
Travel back with me, to many, many, many (ok, not quite so many) years ago. The setting: a shabby chic apartment near my college campus. Two twenty-something women are starting to realize that the real world was closer at hand than they would like.
The Conversation
When I was a senior in college, with “real life” bearing down on me hard, I had a conversation one night with my friend Liz (maybe over martinis, I forget) about what we would do after college. The year before, we’d spent our fall semester in Madrid in an exchange program. We’d had the time of our lives, and were still having trouble adjusting to college life.
Last week, I was offered a new gig as a part-time ESOL Teacher. This gig will allow me to work in two schools for a total of about 30 hours maximum per week. But is it a good idea? Does it help us with our three year goals?
A New Gig Helps Me Mind the Gap
Personal finance bloggers talk all the time about the ways to increase your net worth—spend less or make more.
Some advocate spending less, some show you how to make more. Some, like Afford Anything, talk about both—minding the gap between how much you spend and how much you earn, and getting it as large as possible.
My husband is the main income earner of our family. I, on the other hand, work only 15 hours a week. But part of my job is making sure I’m here before and after school, taking kids to appointments, and making sure life runs smoothly for the Three Year Experiment family. The more I’m at home, the smoother things run. But I’ve also found I have to work. I go a little crazy if I don’t.
Have you ever considered buying a rental property? How about a rental property in another country? Read on to hear the story of how we bought and rented out an apartment in another continent.
Our family stumbled into owning real estate in another country. It’s certainly not part of our plan for becoming location independent, but here’s how we ended buying an apartment in another country.
