How Do You Travel So Much When You Only Work Part-Time?
Here are the 4 big reasons we're able to travel while working part-time.
This question came up recently, and I think it deserves some attention.
This summer, we’ll have spent more days traveling than at home. We spent two and a half weeks in the South of France, are currently headed to Wisconsin for almost 3 weeks, and have upcoming trips to Portland, Oregon, and Boston for 10 and 5 days respectively.
But what the hell, how is this even possible if I’m only working part-time?
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dive in.
1. First, we’re winning when it comes to the BIG stuff.
If you break down the typical American budget, you’ll find the BIG 3.
That’s housing, transportation, and food, and they make up roughly 50 to 60% of the average American’s budget.
So if you’re looking to save some serious dough, don’t worry about your daily latte, focus on the big ticket items that are going to have the highest impact.
For my wife and I, we are winning with the big stuff.
Here’s how we’re winning with the big stuff:
Our mortgage is wicked cheap.
We bought way less house than we were approved to buy, have never done a cash-out refinance, and have a very low-interest rate (2.875%) with a 30-year fixed mortgage. In other words, our mortgage is CHEAP, and if we stay put, so will it.
Our cars are paid off and old(ish).
We have two cars, both paid for, both 6+ years old. One of them is electric, and that’s what we use for the vast majority of our daily driving. That means our transportation costs are a fraction of what they would be if we had 2 car payments and a couple of gas guzzlers. In fact, we actually Turo (rent) one of our cars out, creating what I like to call “The reverse car payment” (your car pays you instead of you paying for it.) Quick note: this has provided us anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per month in extra income.
We eat 90% of our meals at home.
Our food costs are incredibly low for the following reasons:
We don’t eat out much (maybe 3x per month.)
When we do, we typically spend $50 to 75 for our family of 3. (It’s rare for us to spend over $100, and if we dropped $200 to $300 on a meal we would probably pass out.)
We don’t eat meat or drink expensive booze. (My wife is a vegetarian and I only eat meat on occasion, usually when we go out. When I drink, it’s usually beer, and I’d have a hard time spending more than $20 on a bottle of wine.)
2. Second, savings is optional for us.
In 2020 I heard about this new concept called Coasting to Financial Independence.
Coast FI is when you reach a point where savings becomes optional.
In other words, you’ve saved and invested everything you need for a comfortable future retirement, and now you just need to wait while time and compounding do the rest of the work. This means you can now work just to cover living expenses.
Coasting offers a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility, as long as your living expenses are manageable.
For us, it meant I could leave my high-paying but highly demanding job behind, opting to work seasonally as a tax preparer, and part-time as a self-employed freelance writer. This provides the income we need to cover our lifestyle, with savings being optional. Now, I work anywhere from 10 to 25 hours per week, depending on our income needs and my business demands.
This frees up a ton of time to travel, explore, and enjoy life.
3. Third, I can work from anywhere.
Another big component of our ability to travel is that I can work from anywhere.
For most people, vacation means not only spending a bunch of money really fast, but it also means they don’t have any income unless they are lucky enough to have paid time off. For us, I can literally write articles from anywhere. It doesn’t matter what time zone we are in, as long as I’ve got an internet connection, I can be making money.
This frees us up to travel for weeks or months at a time while maintaining a steady income stream.
That said, I do block out travel during the tax season, as TurboTax requires a wired internet connection for tax calls. It doesn’t mean it’s not possible to travel during tax season, it’s just a little more complicated as I need a hardwired connection.
Having the ability to work from anywhere really frees us up to travel for long stretches at a time.
4. Fourth, we’re also winning with the small stuff.
Lastly, while I really believe it’s the big stuff that allows us this lifestyle, I know the small stuff helps too.
Here’s something that most people find shocking:
We pay $360 PER YEAR TOTAL for our cell phone service using Mint Mobile (just $15/mo per person.) That’s a total cost for the two of us together each year.
Not $360 each, $360 total. Not $360 per month, $360 PER YEAR.
I’ve talked to tons of people that pay almost that amount in just a month for 2 to 3 phone lines.
In addition, I shop around for the lowest insurance rates every couple of years using Policygenius, and I’m not afraid to switch providers to get the best deal. This has saved us thousands of dollars per year in the past, and I anticipate that’ll be the same going forward as our insurance carrier continues raising rates.
Next, when it comes to our internet provider, we only pay for what we need, with our total cost coming in at $50 per month. I know a lot of people that buy a bundled package, combining internet and cable, and end up spending upwards of $100 to $200 per month.
We also like to shop for clothing secondhand, opting to support upcycled clothing stores like Uptown Cheapskate.
I think it’s badass anytime you can find a win-win like secondhand clothing: it’s better for your wallet AND better for the environment.
Another win-win is we choose to cloth diaper our daughter. This has likely saved us hundreds or thousands of dollars in diapers over the past couple of years. Again, it’s a win for our wallets AND a win for the environment as disposable diapers can take up to 500 years to decompose in the landfill!
At the end of the day, all of these little cost savings add up to big amounts over 1, 3, 5, and 10 year periods.
We just decide to cut back mercilessly on the things we don’t care about, and repurpose all of that money to travel, travel, travel. Because that’s what we like to do, and we want to do as much of it as we can.
But, Focus on What’s Important to You.
But I don’t tell you all of this to try and convince you to live the life I’m living.
I tell you all of this to explain that if you can identify what’s important to you, and are intentional about the way you use money, you can build a life you love.
Because at the end of the day, money is just a tool you can use to design a lifestyle that works for you and your family—whatever that might be.
Hi there - not sure if you made another post about this specifically or just don't intend to share specific details, but my question would more so be how you're truly covering your annual expenses, from say now until 30+ years from now until you start actually tapping into the retirement investments? I see you say you work part time, but I'd love to hear the numbers. Do you break it down somewhere in another post maybe? Say your family requires $60k in annual expenses still. Are you making $60k from your part time work? Because that seems high for a part time job. Or does your spouse work at all (either full time or part time as well, or she is not working).
Basically, what's your annual spend and how are you continuing to cover that? That's what baffles me for coast fire, especially with a child..maybe I'm in a higher cost of living area but I think I would need at least minimum $60k/yr to cover my annual spend for our family, and I don't see how that's realistic unless you still maintain a pretty high paying job, even if its part time in terms of hours. But I guess the flip side is if there are professionals who make $100-200k from their full time job, I suppose they find a $60k job that is much easier to them and less stressful so I guess that's a win in itself, even if they still have to do actual work for a job for decades longer