After FIRE I'm planning ultra-slow travel where I spend at least 3 months per location.
I like the sound of that, for sure. I'm still somewhere between 8 and 13 years away from FIRE myself (kids and divorces really do alter the best laid plans) but I've been to 19 states and 9 different countries. Mainly western states and mainly western European countries. However what I noticed is that the more I travel, the more I look at it in terms of a place to
live for a while, not a place to tourist and sightsee. Like when I was in Belgium, sure, first I was totally struck by how amazing the city was. But then I started to realize that when you act like a local and do things like take the subways, or do a mile-long walk to get somewhere, it's actually just a really nice city to spend some time in. Travel changed the way I see things.
Now when I vacation to places, I tend to do more stuff like taking a walking tour, renting a bike, or even bring my own bike to ride around. I grocery shop, or even pack extra light and do laundry at a laundromat while on vacation as a way to force myself to actually slow down. I remember my first time to the California central cost, I would look up real estate prices of nice houses and be blown away at how impossible it would be for me to ever buy that nice $750,000 home that I loved the look of. However by my most recent trip, I was blown away at how incredibly
easy it would be for me to swing the $1300/month rent for a tiny 1-bedroom home half a mile from the bay (central coast, not SF bay) and enjoy just living there for a year even while I decompress from working for the previous 30 years or so, assuming I do achieve FIRE on time. Goals became possible, rather than impossible, and suddenly $750,000 was seed money to make retirement possible, rather than simply the initial payment to buy a house and keep working to pay for everything else needed in life.
My frequent cheap travel made it possible for me to quantify my goals and stay motivated for FIRE in a way that wasn't possible until I started to travel. Before I used to travel, I was like a crash dieter: I'd starve and starve, spending no money on anything, then blow it all on something stupid, like when I dropped $20k on a used sports car. Then I'd sell it 6 months later and starve and starve until I blew a few grand on a way, way fancier computer than I needed. A few years later I spent $10k on an ultralight. It was a feast/famine system that only stopped once I started to travel, honestly. Travel opened my eyes to see the world differently and to actually appreciate the places that I could spend
months not just a couple days if I stopped my binge spending. I feel like I've been "sober" ever since, and still get to have regular frugal vacations anyway.