Author Topic: My current FIRE dream  (Read 2795 times)

rob in cal

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 333
My current FIRE dream
« on: May 26, 2018, 01:13:01 PM »
   Right now we are closing in on full FIRE (my wife is basically FIRED now that she has finished home schooling our youngest, and just works a little at the restaurant that we work at/own a small share of), and I am working about 30 hours a week doing my pizza deliveries.  We have assets of about 1,040,000 (that was fun to type in all those digits), but about 440k is our house. Once our kids, now 17 and 21, are fully launched and out of the house, say in the next few years (knocks on wood), with our assets having grown just a bit more in that time, and me being that much closer to ss (I'm 51 now) and wife that much closer to her mini cal strs pension (150 dollars a month eligible for her in 7 years), at that point in time FIRE really becomes more feasible.
    It becomes really really feasible if we sold our house and followed a "location independent" lifestyle.  What I dream about doing is something similar to what ARS is doing. Maybe renting apartments in different parts of the US for chunks of the spring and fall, spending the bulk of late spring and most/all of the summers in Europe (with some time in Croatia for sure as time spent there doesnt' count against the 90 day Schengen zone requirement, at least not now). A good deal of this time might be spent in some of the beautiful and restful Austrian lake districts, such as the Salzkammergut or Carinthia ( a land apparently unknown to most Americans who rarely travel south of the line Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, when in Austria).  Some might be spent in a busier city, such as Budapest, Vienna, Berlin or somewhere else, but with a nice balance, of several weeks in one spot, or more, thus very slow travel.
     Fall might be spent in US spots with nice fall colors.  November thru maybe March might be time for back to Northern California to see family and friends. If my mom is still living at her current home in this scenario, we could even rent from her for a month or so during this time, and maybe find a short term rental somewhere depending on where our kids end up living.
   Obviously a whole lot of uncertain factors and logistical issues, but I just love the idea of summers in my alpine lake region (as a youngster back in the 80's I spent basically parts of every other year in Europe and speak passable German), interspersed with other European adventures, coupled with maybe a fall in New England, heading back to home base, family and friends over the holidays and winter months, when I'd rather be in California than most other places anyway.  I don't know if my wife would go along with this, or if we would really enjoy this lifestyle once embarked on it, but it would have the advantage of freeing up lots of capital currently tied down in our house, and especially if we developed networks of places we enjoy staying over the years, the logistical issues would actually get better over time.  As we travel more in the coming few years (east coast coming up next month, 17 days total, longest we have ever taken as a family) this will provide some trial runs of sorts of whether we would really like being in different places as a lifestyle.
    Anyway, thats where I'm at right now. Anyone else have something similar planned, or finding too many drawbacks to doing this even if they wanted to do this?

Linea_Norway

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8569
  • Location: Norway
Re: My current FIRE dream
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2018, 06:53:43 AM »
I would like to live some place where I could do everything on short distance. But I see that places that are good for fishing in the sea are perhaps not the best places for cross-country skiing. I could imagine in spring to move to some place where spring starts earlier than in cold Norway. I have been considering owning several cabins in the country on locations with different climate. Then you can live in each following the best time of the year to be there. But it is expensive to own many places.

But I also think that moving each season without having a permanent residence is very tiresome. I think it would be best in such cases to still have a home base somewhere, which could be a small house or apartment. You could then travel for a 2-3 months per trip and then come back to your own place. No problems with breaking visa or Schengen rules. In this place you could also store the stuff that you would like to use in other times of the year. I would e.g. store the ski's in such a place if I would travel away for the spring or summer. But you must hope that the place to stay in abroadistan is nice enough to stay for a couple of months. And in this case, your small house might not be the best place to live either.

I do think it might be expensive to be living in one place and travel to live in another. Ideally you should not pay for 2 residents simultaneously. There is of course the option of renting out your own place. But it might not be easy to find a good renter for a short time and so often. If also makes leaving your stuff there more uncertain.

DH and I are thinking about sell our $$ house, to cash in for our retirement fund. But keep our cabin, with a value of 10% of the house. During the first x time in FIRE, we will rent a cheap place somewhere, maybe at several occasions, until we find out where we want to settle. This is all very open, I am making lists of places I want to try out. But we will keep the small cabin as a stable place in case we fall between 2 rentals. We are by the way focussing on staying in the same country, although moving to NL, D, GB is in the options.