RPF0566-Accidental_Early_Retiree_-_Scott_and_Susan
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00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.600 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:39.040 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I am your
00:00:43.000 | host and today I am here with Scott and his lovely wife, Susan, who is in the background.
00:00:49.120 | And we're going to be talking about early retirement from somebody who, I don't know
00:00:53.040 | whether to say, Scott, that you're not in the early retirement community because you
00:00:57.800 | are, I guess, a type of early retiree, but you're not really part of the online community,
00:01:02.560 | which is something that I am excited to bring to Radical Personal Finance.
00:01:07.120 | And by way of background for you, Scott, one of the things I've been looking forward to
00:01:12.120 | in my own family's travels, because of course we've met here in a campground in the Rocky
00:01:17.000 | Mountains and there's a whole huge swath of people who are living interesting lifestyles,
00:01:24.680 | who've developed interesting approaches to life, approaches to where they live, how they
00:01:29.520 | live, how they earn their money. And a lot of these people have very little connection
00:01:34.800 | to the online early retirement community. So I get to profile some of those neat stories
00:01:39.840 | and I'm really thrilled to bring your story to my audience today.
00:01:42.680 | So I'd love for you to begin just with a little bit of background. For the last couple of
00:01:46.440 | decades, you and your wife have been traveling the world and traveling the country. So how
00:01:50.360 | did you come to live this type of lifestyle?
00:01:53.440 | Well, we got into it a little bit as, I guess, baby steps. I mean, it was a real evolution
00:02:02.520 | as we went along. We originally, we were both, we were living in Chicago and both working
00:02:08.720 | for computer companies and we were doing a lot of traveling away from the city on the
00:02:14.560 | weekends.
00:02:15.560 | In the early 90s.
00:02:16.560 | In the early 90s, yeah. And we just got to thinking, I wonder if there's a way we could
00:02:21.240 | recreate a little bit closer into Chicago and still do the types of weekend activities
00:02:27.280 | that we like to do. And that led us to start thinking about a sailboat because we got Lake
00:02:32.880 | Michigan right there and it would be a way to get out on the water, kind of get away
00:02:37.940 | from the city, but without necessarily having to travel hours to do it. We ended up, at
00:02:45.120 | that point in time, the online world was quite a bit different. We were using AOL and we
00:02:52.560 | started searching for a boat and we found one through AOL. We ended up buying it up
00:02:57.200 | in Toronto and it was in the process of bringing that boat back through the Great Lakes that
00:03:03.360 | really we kind of, this thing was born.
00:03:10.040 | It was the first time that I'd taken two weeks off in a row. It was the first time
00:03:15.960 | that I was really disconnected from voicemail, which of course at the time was like, you
00:03:20.200 | know, the corporate world revolved around voicemail, much more than email. And so, yeah,
00:03:29.400 | we brought the boat back and in the course of that trip, we just, we thought, oh, we
00:03:33.800 | got to, you know, we've been working hard, we've been making good money and we thought,
00:03:38.480 | well, maybe we could take a quarter off. And so we both went to our employers and said,
00:03:44.520 | you know, can we have a quarter off? And I don't think either of them thought about
00:03:48.760 | it very long. They both said no. And so we realized that if we were going to do it, we
00:03:55.560 | were just going to have to take a chance and quit our jobs. We both felt very employable.
00:04:02.320 | So and we kind of had originally thought in terms of a year. So we thought, okay, well,
00:04:08.920 | you know, we'll go and we'll do some sailing. And at that point we were thinking mostly
00:04:13.720 | of, you know, cruising sort of in and around the US, maybe down into the islands, into
00:04:19.280 | the Caribbean, that kind of thing. And but, you know, so a year was sort of our initial
00:04:28.500 | target and we thought, oh, you know, it'd be no problem to get a job again.
00:04:31.360 | It's forever. A year is forever.
00:04:32.360 | Yeah, it just seemed like such a, yeah, it just seemed like such a big unit of time for
00:04:37.040 | us at that particular moment. We were, we were in our, let's see, we were 37 at that
00:04:43.280 | point. And anyway, I mean, after a year on the sailboat, I mean, we totally felt like
00:04:48.840 | we were just getting started. And so, you know, a year turned into two, turned into
00:04:55.360 | three, turned into let's, you know, let's, let's go much further. And then we got it
00:05:01.480 | in our minds that we would, that we would take the boat to New Zealand. And then we
00:05:05.520 | would kind of see how we felt at that point. But anyway, that trip to New Zealand, which,
00:05:10.880 | I mean, I'm, you know, there's, there's a lot of stops in between and we can talk about
00:05:14.840 | that along the way here. But anyway, that, that trip turned into around the world cruise
00:05:21.460 | and we ended up doing 50,000 nautical miles, saw 32 countries and spent a decade on the
00:05:28.280 | boat.
00:05:29.280 | So you, you really thought at the beginning when you got the sailboat, you really thought,
00:05:34.280 | oh, we're going to take a year off. We're going to perhaps cruise down, cruise the great
00:05:37.880 | lakes around the Caribbean a little bit. Then we'll sell the boat, move back to Chicago,
00:05:42.000 | get another job. That was your plan?
00:05:44.480 | That's probably the closest thing to a plan that we had. You know, I mean, we just, we
00:05:48.560 | felt like we'd had, we decided in around that period of time, maybe a few years before that
00:05:55.760 | we weren't going to have kids. So that, you know, that kind of changes the formula a little
00:05:59.920 | bit. We, we thought, you know, we're just basically taking responsibility for ourselves.
00:06:05.240 | You know, we didn't have other futures that were tied into ours. And we'd had a couple
00:06:11.880 | of, of sad events too, in a way. Well, more than just in a way, but one of them was Susan
00:06:19.760 | actually got diagnosed with MS very early in, early in your thirties, right?
00:06:26.440 | Yeah. Right. In 1993, the end of 1993.
00:06:31.560 | Yeah. So, you know, it was even, even though it seemed like her disease was going to be
00:06:36.840 | reasonably mild and, and has been, I mean, you know, compare against other types of people
00:06:42.040 | and you know, that there are a lot of different levels of MS, but anyway, that, that, that
00:06:47.440 | was something that we saw that was, you know, had the potential to affect the quality of
00:06:52.120 | a, of a traditional retirement. Right. You know, we could get to 65 years old and maybe,
00:06:58.200 | you know, I mean, we wouldn't be able to go anywhere or do anything. I mean, we, you know,
00:07:01.600 | it could be very limited. And also Susan's mother had developed early onset Alzheimer's.
00:07:08.200 | Okay. And so, and that was in her late fifties.
00:07:11.160 | Right. So, you know, so we could see, you know, we
00:07:15.480 | could see right, you know, in a close family sort of view of Susan's parents who had, were,
00:07:22.320 | you know, her dad was in the process of retiring, her mother was needing additional care, and
00:07:28.440 | they were really looking at a retirement that was going to be extremely limited for a couple
00:07:32.360 | of people that love to travel. And Susan's mother was very, you know, very much of an
00:07:37.200 | activist in her days. And, and yeah, so, I mean, it was kind of a combination of those
00:07:43.840 | things that I think all kind of pointed us towards let's do things differently.
00:07:48.640 | Right. Right. If I had met you say six months into that trip and you were just starting
00:07:54.720 | to feel like we're just getting started and we might want to change something, would you
00:08:00.000 | have guessed or even imagined that you'd be on the road for another 17 years now?
00:08:05.120 | No, no, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, like I said, it was, it was very much
00:08:13.400 | of a, of a baby step approach for us. You know, I mean, we, we both grew up sailing
00:08:19.200 | in the Susan grew up in Michigan. I grew up in Minnesota. Okay. So, you know, we had a
00:08:23.560 | lot of inland lakes and I went to a great YMCA boys camp for five years as a camper,
00:08:28.960 | two years as a counselor that was very sailing oriented including a boat on the, on Lake
00:08:34.400 | Superior. But, you know, that's not the same as things starting to think about, you know,
00:08:40.240 | open ocean sailing. And so it really wasn't until we had a couple of, well, really our
00:08:46.240 | first kind of, you know, we had about maybe three significant open ocean cruises. The
00:08:54.920 | first one we did, we actually bought a, after we decided to stick, to stick with sailing,
00:09:00.240 | we actually bought a better boat for ocean going cruising because the original one we
00:09:04.920 | had in mind was going to be for, you know, Lake Michigan, Chicago type sailing. It was
00:09:10.200 | a 35 foot boat. So we moved up to a 43 foot boat. And when we bought that, we actually
00:09:15.160 | took off two weeks after we bought it and went from Florida with the intention of going
00:09:19.640 | all the way to Black Island. Okay. But we ended up, we ended up stopping about three
00:09:24.160 | days into that. Where is Black Island? Is that Caribbean? Black Island is off of, yeah,
00:09:29.200 | off of Long Island. Okay. Yeah. We ended up kind of cutting that trip into two parts for
00:09:34.160 | some technical reasons that, you know, we all run into with new, new adventures. But
00:09:40.160 | anyway, then the second set of trips that we did, we did from, we went from Florida
00:09:45.280 | to to the Bahamas, Bahamas to Bermuda, and then Bermuda to Nova Scotia. And so that was
00:09:52.720 | from the Bahamas to Bermuda was a six day passage and from Bermuda to Nova Scotia was
00:09:57.040 | a six day passage. And I think really at that point I'd have to say we, we started, you
00:10:03.520 | know, really feeling like, okay, we, you know, we know what it's like to be at sea for a
00:10:07.240 | week and, you know, we can, we can take it to the next level. If I had met you at that
00:10:12.440 | time, speaking financially, if I'd met you at that time, would you have thought it was
00:10:17.080 | financially feasible for you to not return to work as you had previously thought about,
00:10:22.640 | but to continue sailing and cruising? Or would you have, would you have just thought, yeah,
00:10:26.760 | absolutely we could do it? Or would it have been questionable for you? Well, I think if
00:10:30.120 | we'd ever thought in terms of, you know, funding a 50 year retirement, you know, I
00:10:35.440 | think anybody would have a lot of doubts about that because we were at 37, you know, it's
00:10:41.680 | like, well, how much money do you need? I mean, and I think maybe as Americans, we,
00:10:49.360 | you know, we may, we may overestimate in some ways what's, what's really required. I was
00:10:54.920 | telling, as I was saying to you earlier today, I mean, our, the, you know, the amount that
00:11:00.240 | we've spent for the last 20 years has actually remained relatively constant. So I guess if
00:11:06.240 | you look at that in terms of, you know, inflation adjusted dollars, our spending has probably
00:11:11.480 | been on a, you know, a downward trajectory. So you mean constant and nominal values, the
00:11:15.400 | budget in terms of annual numbers that you used basically 20 years ago, it's been fairly
00:11:20.760 | steady in terms of nominal value. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in, in, you know, inflation adjusted
00:11:27.800 | dollars we're, you know, we're spending less every year. Yeah. Why do you think that is
00:11:31.760 | what's gone down in expenses? Well, that's a good question. I'm dining out. Yeah. Susan
00:11:39.760 | has become an awesome, awesome cook. Yeah. That's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah. And
00:11:46.360 | we've got some, we've got some great photos of, of the provisioning that we used to do
00:11:50.880 | for the sailboat. I mean, we used to basically be ready typically for four months at a time.
00:11:57.320 | So I mean, it was, you know and, and, and you can't, you know, the kind of food that,
00:12:02.600 | that we would buy too. And I think about, well, first of all, when we lived in Chicago,
00:12:07.000 | I mean, you know, we had a drawer full of delivery menus, right. You know, restaurants
00:12:11.920 | within walking distance and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean the, the, the types
00:12:17.520 | of things that, that we ate and the amount we spent on food was just completely different.
00:12:22.760 | Now I would say, wouldn't you Susan, that, that we're much more like basic ingredient
00:12:29.000 | oriented. I mean, you're much more likely to start with not something that's a, that's
00:12:34.360 | an already prepared sort of a thing, but it's all, you know, starting from the scratch ingredients.
00:12:40.000 | And it turns out that I love to cook. So that's good. Did you know that before you traveled?
00:12:44.800 | No, I had no idea. I had no. Yeah. Yeah. What other expenses have changed up or down? What
00:12:52.000 | have been the major changes in the last two decades?
00:12:54.760 | Well, that's a, that's a good question. I mean, we used to spend, we used to spend a
00:13:00.200 | lot of money on boat insurance. That was a, that was a huge, because when you're, when
00:13:07.600 | you are a couple on an ocean going, you know, two handed passage, basically it's considered
00:13:14.280 | to be a shorthanded risk. And at that time, I assume it's probably fairly similar, but
00:13:23.120 | Lloyd's of London was pretty much the only, the only place where you could get that type
00:13:27.400 | of, of insurance. And so that, that was, that was a high cost.
00:13:32.800 | I'd say this, the sailing overall was much more expensive than the RVing.
00:13:37.240 | Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:38.920 | Just because the, the wear and tear on the, on the sailboat out on the ocean led to big,
00:13:46.200 | you know, months usually of repair, expensive repairs and the insurance and the, the charts
00:13:56.480 | and everything that went along with it. But I mean, the boat was more expensive than this
00:14:01.280 | RV just right out of the gate.
00:14:03.760 | Oh, sure.
00:14:04.760 | You know, so yeah.
00:14:05.760 | Yeah. So yeah, that, yeah. Cruise, that cruising sailboat, which we bought in 1998, we paid
00:14:11.760 | $205,000 for it. Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah. And this RV, which is, which is also,
00:14:21.280 | this is a, that was a 1988. So it was a 10 year old boat that we bought in '98. This
00:14:27.600 | RV was also 10 years old when we bought it. And so it's now 20 years old and we paid about
00:14:35.040 | $68,000 for this. And really the boat had pretty much everything the RV has plus all
00:14:42.040 | the sailing stuff.
00:14:43.360 | Right.
00:14:44.360 | And, and everything to do with, you know, long, long distance cruising and a big water
00:14:48.680 | maker and, you know, so, so a whole nother layer of, of systems.
00:14:52.960 | Right.
00:14:53.960 | And things get pretty expensive on boats. Interesting rule of thumb is that your, your
00:14:59.640 | costs basically double every additional five feet of boat length.
00:15:04.160 | Really? You mean operating costs or purchasing costs?
00:15:07.160 | Just overall costs in general.
00:15:08.160 | Just in general. Yeah.
00:15:09.160 | Wow. So that's a big deal. To go from 30, 30 something feet to 45 feet is a big difference.
00:15:17.040 | Yes.
00:15:18.040 | Yeah. Absolutely.
00:15:19.040 | And all the, the safety equipment that we bought for the boat was really expensive and
00:15:27.960 | had to be inspected every, every so many years. I mean, just the overall costs of the
00:15:34.080 | sailing were much, much more than the RVing.
00:15:36.760 | Yeah. Yeah. Good point. I mean, we used to, at that point in time, it was just electronic
00:15:42.720 | charts were just starting to come on the scene. And so every year, and we weren't really confident
00:15:50.680 | enough with, with relying on those, you know, we just didn't feel, I mean, when you're out
00:15:56.280 | in the ocean and you've got, you've got bad weather and, and various different kinds of
00:16:01.560 | issues, I mean, the last thing you're thinking about is I want to sit down at my computer.
00:16:06.320 | Right. Right.
00:16:07.920 | So we had paper charts and we used to spend a couple thousand dollars a year, right? Just
00:16:13.120 | on paper charts. Cause you have to have everything that you think you might, that you're pretty
00:16:17.200 | sure you're going to need. And also a whole bunch of other stuff that you might need if
00:16:21.400 | you have to divert because of weather or various other issues. So.
00:16:27.080 | So did you get what positioned you? So it sounds like this occurred fairly naturally
00:16:35.280 | it evolved, so to speak. You didn't set out with a clear goal. We're going to travel the
00:16:39.580 | world and we're going to quit at 37. Some people do. Right. But that doesn't sound like
00:16:43.160 | it was your path. What were the good habits and the good things that you put in place
00:16:47.940 | financially that allowed you to be in a position where at 37, you could take advantage of the
00:16:53.880 | fact that you wanted to live well at a young age, having seen the tragedy, what good habits
00:16:59.000 | did you have? What good things happened in your life that made that happen?
00:17:04.320 | Well I think, you know, for as much as you have, like Susan was talking about costs with
00:17:09.720 | sailing and with RVing and sailing being more, if you, in both cases, we really wanted to
00:17:18.720 | get out into places where our costs would actually be lower. So I mean, when you talk
00:17:26.640 | about good habits, I mean, you know, things like anchoring instead of, you know, going
00:17:31.400 | into a marina. I mean, that, you know, makes a big difference. I mean, in the sailing world,
00:17:35.080 | they actually charge you by the foot at a marina. So it can get, it can get pretty expensive.
00:17:41.440 | So, you know, the more that you're, the more that you're anchoring out and taking, you
00:17:45.520 | know, and have your boat set up to be able to feel comfortable doing that. You know,
00:17:50.080 | you've got the right, the right gear to do it, the right safety equipment, the right
00:17:55.040 | charts, the right, you know, the right things to, so that you can feel comfortable that
00:18:00.520 | you're, you know, choosing a good anchorage and then you're, you know, you're going to
00:18:03.560 | stay safe and that kind of thing. And I think, you know, you can look at this kind of thing
00:18:09.080 | too with exact kind of thing with RVing. I mean, we've made an investment. We very much
00:18:13.760 | have this RV optimized for this type of camping, which not that many people actually do. You
00:18:22.320 | know, you don't, you don't find them that often right on the lot that are kind of ready
00:18:25.840 | to go with, you know, a big solar array and the right, you know, the right tankage to
00:18:31.320 | be able to support extended stays in places like this. But I mean, like where we're both
00:18:36.560 | staying right now, because Susan has an excess pass as a, as you know, somebody who with
00:18:41.920 | a handicap or the handicap, or if you're a retired person where you'd have a golden age
00:18:46.400 | pass, I mean, this is $5 a night to camp here. It was cheap at 10.
00:18:50.040 | I was going to say we're paying through the nose at $10 a night. For context, we are at
00:18:56.520 | a beautiful campground up over 10,000 feet, the top of a mountain in the Rocky mountains
00:19:01.440 | overlooking there's a lake on one side, there's a mountain cliff on the other, and we're on
00:19:05.840 | national forest land. So we could be parked for free just in a slightly different place.
00:19:10.600 | But because of the beautiful view we've chosen to spend the, the heady amount of $10 a night
00:19:16.960 | to, to have a place to park. But there are no hookups. There are no, there's no water
00:19:21.040 | facilities. There's no sewer facilities. So you have to be self-contained. And so in order
00:19:24.640 | to do that, we're staying here for a week right now, in order to do that, you've got
00:19:28.400 | to have planned ahead and be prepared to do that. We did the same thing. And in the second
00:19:32.960 | part of this interview, I want to talk a lot about the technology that you've developed
00:19:35.840 | to allow you to do that. But it is true. If you put a little bit of money into infrastructure,
00:19:40.960 | then you can take advantage of very low cost places like this.
00:19:44.800 | Yeah. And going back to the sailing for a second, I mean, one of the big things that
00:19:50.840 | helped with our costs was when we left the U S with the boat. Right. I mean, yeah.
00:19:56.360 | Because of Anchorage or what would the, why?
00:19:59.160 | Really anything and everything you can think of, you know, from, from food costs to healthcare.
00:20:07.240 | I mean, we we had a healthcare policy in those days that where we had to be out, do you remember
00:20:15.680 | how many months, nine months outside of the country? Yes. Every year. Yeah. And it, you
00:20:19.840 | know, it was just a fraction of what we would pay for a healthcare policy in the U S and,
00:20:26.240 | you know, prescription drugs that we needed. I mean, a lot of those were available over
00:20:31.080 | the counter for pennies, for pennies compared to what they cost here. You know, and, and,
00:20:38.240 | and of course, once we left the U S we didn't have a car anymore. We didn't have a cell
00:20:42.840 | phone. We didn't have, you know, all of the little things, you know, all the, you know,
00:20:49.200 | we didn't have any television costs. We didn't have any internet, you know, connectivity
00:20:53.600 | costs. We didn't, you know, just right on down the line, all those things that add up,
00:20:57.640 | you know, in any given month, I just, I mean, just, I'm sure you've, you've probably talked
00:21:02.400 | about this on other shows, but just things like owning a car, I mean, all the different
00:21:06.080 | expenses that you have with a car, boom, they're gone.
00:21:09.880 | So back to my earlier question, and I know I want you to maintain your financial privacy,
00:21:14.080 | but I want to go back to the accumulation period before 37 during your early thirties.
00:21:20.560 | And when did you meet Mary? How long were you together prior to making this step?
00:21:25.120 | We got married in 1991.
00:21:26.960 | So it's about 35 or so, right? But it was before.
00:21:30.120 | We were just, just turned 31, right?
00:21:32.600 | Right.
00:21:33.600 | Yeah. So during your early thirties as a young couple, what did you do differently than other
00:21:39.600 | of your coworkers that allowed you at 37 to buy a sailboat and leave? Were you aggressive
00:21:45.440 | savers? Did you make it like, what did you do?
00:21:47.840 | Well, we, I mean, we, we, we ended up being, being pretty good at saving, but I think that's
00:21:54.960 | mostly because we had a lot of income.
00:21:57.040 | Okay.
00:21:58.040 | You know, I, I worked for a company called Wise Technology, which was the, the number
00:22:04.960 | one supplier of computer terminals back in the day when, when the dumb terminal was king.
00:22:11.220 | We also made PCs and, and multi-user multi-processor Unix based systems. And Susan worked on the,
00:22:19.940 | the trading floor actually at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. So she was one of the
00:22:24.500 | few women that was, you know, for people, most people have probably seen trading places.
00:22:30.860 | She was, she was out there in the, you know, in the open outcry, right in the pit.
00:22:35.780 | Orange juice futures and corn and soybeans.
00:22:38.700 | It was Euro dollars.
00:22:39.700 | Euro dollars.
00:22:40.700 | Yeah.
00:22:41.700 | Euro dollars.
00:22:42.700 | Yes.
00:22:43.700 | So anyway, she, she worked in the, at the Mercantile Exchange. I worked for, for Wise
00:22:47.020 | Technology and, you know.
00:22:50.100 | Can I just, I have.
00:22:51.100 | Oh, please do. Yeah.
00:22:52.100 | Yeah. Well, so, so we weren't thinking so much about accumulating money. I think that
00:22:58.740 | we always thought we would go back to work when we were done sailing. And because we
00:23:04.780 | had been earning really well before we went sailing, we assumed that we could after sailing.
00:23:11.580 | Also, we didn't realize that our whole worldview would change as a result of the sailing experience.
00:23:21.020 | For one thing, our pace, the normal pace of our lives. You know, you sail around the world
00:23:27.020 | at six miles an hour and things really take on a different perspective. So we came back
00:23:37.060 | with that and we, and so, but you know, what we're doing now with the RV, I'd say, springs
00:23:45.740 | directly from that experience. But when we started out sailing, it wasn't, oh, we're
00:23:52.980 | going to retire when we're 37 and go and live off what we've earned for the rest of our
00:24:00.660 | work, you know, normal working life.
00:24:04.660 | Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, it, I mean, I think that, you know, we made, we made money
00:24:12.740 | on our house in Chicago. We, you know, we were able to, we were able to put money away
00:24:17.020 | just because we, I mean, we didn't really live extravagantly. I'd say we lived well,
00:24:24.060 | but not extravagantly. And what's the other interesting thing is I always think that we
00:24:29.580 | were very much at a tipping point. I mean, I think if we hadn't have gone in this direction,
00:24:35.380 | we probably would have gone in a direction that would have, you know, we probably would
00:24:39.660 | have bought a summer house and we would have, you know, we would have bought fancier cars
00:24:44.540 | and, you know, we would have, I could, I could see us kind of headed in that direction in
00:24:49.220 | a way, but, but, but it was, it was just the right, kind of the right pivot point for us,
00:24:55.020 | right? We didn't get ourselves all buried in a whole bunch of financial commitments
00:24:59.140 | and, and you know, all sorts of long-term things that we were trying to accomplish.
00:25:05.340 | And it just, you know, it's one of those things where we, we figured that the worst thing
00:25:10.760 | that could happen is that we would have to go back to work. And it's just, you know,
00:25:15.100 | through a kind of a series of different things along the way including what I'm doing now.
00:25:20.220 | I mean, this, you know, we didn't really, when we transitioned from the sailboat to
00:25:25.460 | the RV, I remember talking to Susan about the idea of, gosh, I would really love to
00:25:31.940 | have some sort of a seasonal hobby business, you know, something where that we could supplement
00:25:38.940 | the other money that we have and, but not have something where, where the enjoyment
00:25:46.460 | diminishes because of the fact that I never get a break from it.
00:25:50.500 | Right.
00:25:51.500 | And so, the, the Techie for Hire thing that I'm doing now is just, has just worked out
00:25:56.720 | so well because it, you know, it's five months of kind of heads down, you know, six days
00:26:01.500 | of work, six days a week working on other people's rigs. And then I have seven months
00:26:06.780 | where we're, you know, where we're traveling around, we're doing, you know, doing exactly
00:26:11.840 | what we want to do. I can work on our rig, I can develop new things that I then turn
00:26:17.000 | around and in the five months that I'm doing Techie for Hire, I've got, you know, new kind
00:26:21.980 | of road tested things that I can, can bring to people and say, oh, here, you know, here's
00:26:26.640 | what we've been doing over the last summer or two summers or three summers. And that's
00:26:31.100 | really working for us. So it, it, it feeds into the, you know, kind of the next year's
00:26:35.600 | business with, with Techie for Hire. So, so our, our financial picture along the way has
00:26:42.560 | not been, you know, just, it's not been linear in a lot of ways. I mean, it's just kind of
00:26:47.220 | been made up of, I mean, a fair amount of good fortune, I guess I'd say, along with
00:26:53.020 | the fact that, you know, we, we, we took a chance and things have just come together
00:26:58.280 | for us at the, you know, each thing sort of at the right point in time where it just allowed
00:27:03.220 | us to carry on. And I mean, now we're, you know, to the point where we're, we're, you
00:27:09.300 | know, we're, we, you know, we feel, we feel secure with, with where we're headed and,
00:27:15.020 | and you know, absolutely no regrets.
00:27:18.100 | Have you needed to pay attention to things like stock markets or obviously you come from
00:27:22.340 | the financial background, has that been a major influence in your decisions in terms
00:27:27.260 | of how you run your investments? And if so, how does that affect it? How have you dealt
00:27:32.100 | with the ups and downs over the last couple of decades?
00:27:35.940 | Well yeah, I mean, early, early on it was, I mean, it was, it was so easy, you know what
00:27:44.060 | I mean? We, you know, at the end of every year we'd have more money than we had at the
00:27:48.300 | beginning of the year. And, and it just, we didn't have to think about it much, you know,
00:27:53.380 | it just seemed like, oh, this is going to be, this is going to be simple. But yeah,
00:27:58.900 | I mean, obviously things changed when, starting with the tech bubble. And I mean, there was
00:28:04.780 | a period of time when we moved, we had pretty much the money that we have, we'd moved it
00:28:10.140 | all into cash. I mean, we were, you know, so I mean, there, there have been times when
00:28:14.220 | we've, when we've been uncomfortable with, you know, with the state of the market, with
00:28:20.500 | the markets. But yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it was pretty, pretty shocking obviously
00:28:25.420 | when, you know, in the big downturn, but at the, you know, at that point, I mean, it's,
00:28:30.580 | you know, it's all, it's all come back. So, so that's great.
00:28:33.620 | What would you have done if you ran out of money?
00:28:37.620 | Gone back to work.
00:28:39.940 | Would you have gone back to the corporate type of work that you were doing previously?
00:28:44.140 | Or would you have gone in the direction of independent business like you're doing now?
00:28:48.940 | Oh, that's an excellent question. You know, I suppose it depends on when that happened,
00:28:54.940 | right? Because, you know, at some point along the way that was a little bit invisible to
00:29:00.060 | me, I'm sure that, that my 17 years of experience that I had when, when, when we started doing
00:29:09.060 | this in the tech business kind of ceased to be recent enough and, and maybe even relevant
00:29:15.820 | enough. I don't know, but, but, you know, it just wouldn't have been, you know, I think
00:29:20.300 | if a year or two or five years into it probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but
00:29:24.780 | you know, after 10 years, I think it's probably a little bit different deal. As it turns out,
00:29:30.020 | I mean, I, I really like, I really like being, you know, I'm, I'm essentially a blue collar
00:29:34.620 | guy now, which I never would have envisioned for myself early in my life. You know, I mean,
00:29:42.020 | I was, I don't know if I was socialization or programming or whatever, but I was, you
00:29:47.860 | know, I was on a white collar path and that's what I did. And I suppose a lot of it was,
00:29:53.620 | you know, the fact that I accomplished the goals that I, you know, or whatever visions
00:29:59.500 | I had in my mind, I was able to match up with what I was doing, that it made it easier for
00:30:04.740 | me to, to see that, you know, that I like working with my hands and, and I like, you
00:30:09.860 | know, I like doing installation work and I like, I like being involved in things that
00:30:13.980 | I'm interested in too. I mean, that's, that's, you know, for me, I've been lucky all along
00:30:19.900 | in that I've through my work career and, and in what I'm doing with what I'm doing now
00:30:23.800 | with techie for hire. You know, it's, it's just stuff that I've, that I love to do. And
00:30:30.060 | so it's, it's made it a lot easier.
00:30:32.620 | In part two of this interview, we're going to talk about techie for hire and talk a little
00:30:35.700 | bit about the tech development because you guys have been on the road for two decades
00:30:39.140 | and the world has changed in that time. And that's incredible. But a couple more questions
00:30:44.620 | on this lifestyle. What is the hardest thing about living this nomadic existence that you've,
00:30:52.660 | that you've lived for the last couple of decades?
00:30:55.180 | Well, I'll let Susan think about that for a second. You know, I, I, I think that, that
00:31:05.780 | it's, it's probably for me, it's been a little hard on my friendships. You know, some of
00:31:10.940 | the people that I was, you know, really close to early in my life are in my twenties and
00:31:16.820 | thirties. I mean, we, we've kept in touch and, and did things together for a long time.
00:31:22.820 | But you know, I think there's only, you know, I think the fact that we went off in a different
00:31:28.340 | direction and have been at it for so long you know, people that, that I figured were
00:31:34.580 | going to be, you know, kind of best friends for life kind of thing. I mean, you know,
00:31:39.260 | I'm just not as in touch with them as I, as I once was. And you know, I, I suppose that
00:31:43.980 | happens to everybody with, you know, you, one couple goes off and decides not to have
00:31:48.220 | kids and another couple does. And you know, it creates a, a, a why, a fork in the road.
00:31:55.460 | And you know, I, I, I think I really noticed when we were, we lived briefly in Susan's
00:32:01.220 | hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, and it was our one period in the last 21 years when
00:32:08.360 | we stayed put. And essentially, you know, at that point we had no jobs, no kids and
00:32:14.140 | no religion. And those in, you know, in a, in a community like that anyway, those three
00:32:19.660 | things are a lot of, for a lot of people, those are their gateways to being, you know,
00:32:25.700 | interacting with other people. Those are, those are, those are their circles of friends.
00:32:29.260 | It structures your life. Most people's weeks are structured around their jobs, their children
00:32:34.860 | and their religious activities. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so anyway, I mean, that's,
00:32:40.520 | that's, that's probably been something that, you know, it's just combination of, of the,
00:32:46.920 | the path that we went off on. That's just so different from, from other people we know.
00:32:52.560 | But you know, having said that, I mean, we've made a, we've made a lot of great new friends
00:32:56.900 | when we've been, we've got, you know, we've got RVing friends that we're quite close to
00:33:01.360 | and, and you know, new synergies, new, new things in common that with those people that,
00:33:09.320 | you know, just don't exist with, with people that we were tight with 25, 30 years ago.
00:33:16.360 | Right. Susan. I, I agree with, with what Scott says. I think, I think women are a little
00:33:24.920 | bit better with their women friends than, I think it's easier. It's just a male, female
00:33:32.560 | thing. I don't know, because I have, I still have a pretty significant group of women friends
00:33:41.080 | from grade school through high school, through college, through my working years that I'm
00:33:47.320 | still in touch with. So, so I don't feel that quite as much. I just, I don't really know
00:33:56.040 | how to answer that question. The keeping up the curiosity about visiting new places is
00:34:06.680 | huge. I mean, you have to have that to keep up the... How do you keep that up? Well, we,
00:34:15.760 | we stop for usually four or five months a year. And so I, I, and that was true when
00:34:23.640 | we were sailing also, because we had to be out of the hurricane belt, you know, so we
00:34:29.440 | would go somewhere and typically stay. And usually that's enough time to, to recharge
00:34:34.560 | and get the, get the wandering juices going again. So, and so far that has held up. But
00:34:44.160 | we'll, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. Absolutely. I don't think we, either of us has as much
00:34:48.720 | energy to devote to conquering new things and places as we did in our thirties, of course.
00:34:57.640 | But well, and we feel very much like the order that we did our traveling in was, was perfect
00:35:05.360 | in terms of the, the mental and physical requirements. I mean, sailing, blue water sailing is, is
00:35:13.960 | a unique thing. And we ran into very few people who were, who were over 50, I would say, who
00:35:21.640 | were actually doing long distance sailing. I mean, you, you find a lot of, you find a
00:35:28.040 | lot of sort of traditional retirement age people in the Caribbean. And, and I presume
00:35:35.840 | in the Mediterranean as well. But in terms of people that are, you know, that are actually
00:35:40.000 | crossing oceans, it's kind of a young person's game, just, just by virtue of, you know, the
00:35:46.200 | physical requirements of it. The, I mean, you know, you have to keep watch around the
00:35:50.800 | clock. I mean, we did a, we did a passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas that was
00:35:55.760 | 24 days at sea with one of us being up, you know, every hour of, one or the other of us
00:36:02.280 | being up one or the, every hour of every day. So.
00:36:07.880 | As you've been around this community, these communities, let's call it the sailing community
00:36:11.400 | and the RVing community, a decade in each, essentially, have you noticed any changes
00:36:18.400 | in the community over those decades?
00:36:23.200 | Well, I think that it's, I mean, I think it's probably easier to, to do this, you know,
00:36:33.120 | to take a different path maybe than it ever has been. When I think of, of some of the
00:36:39.120 | complexities of, of what we had to do when we were on the boat, just, you know, everything
00:36:45.600 | from paying bills to getting our mail, to staying in touch with people. I, you know,
00:36:52.600 | I was telling you earlier today how, kind of reminiscing about being in the Bahamas
00:36:57.880 | in the late nineties. And if we wanted to send an email to somebody, we had a little
00:37:02.560 | device that was about the size of a pocket organizer that had an acoustic coupler on
00:37:06.640 | it. And we'd have to go into shore with the dinghy, find a pay phone and hold this thing
00:37:11.120 | up. And you, you know, you'd hear the classic, you know, modem, acoustic modem noises going
00:37:16.760 | through that phone. It worked great. But, you know, I think that, I think that those
00:37:23.040 | kinds of things, you know, and we had a relationship with our bank to, you know, to pay all of
00:37:29.360 | our bills at that point in time. And, you know, now, I mean, we can stay in touch with
00:37:33.400 | people. I mean, I was, you know, I did a two hour project for somebody the other day using
00:37:42.440 | Team Viewer, you know, where I was, had my laptop connected to his and, and I was taking
00:37:47.040 | care of, of some issues for him. And, you know, he was in his RV at a, at a campground
00:37:52.160 | and I was in my RV by, up at Rabbit Ears Pass above Steamboat Springs. And, you know, we
00:37:57.800 | had a, we had a two hour phone connection and we had a two hour computer connection.
00:38:03.160 | Incredible. Yeah. To do that kind of work. And so I've got, I've got, you know, so, so
00:38:08.440 | I think that, I think that it's, it's, it's easier because of the, the ability to stay
00:38:13.520 | connected to the, you know, to the outside world now than, than it was when we were sailing
00:38:20.920 | in particular. I mean, as far as the community goes, it, it, yeah, it's a little bit different
00:38:26.480 | group of people. I mean, probably just, I mean, we, we, when we hit the Panama Canal,
00:38:34.720 | cruising just changed for us in a lot of ways because when we were cruising the East coast
00:38:38.680 | of the US and we were in our late thirties, you know, we, the people that we were meeting
00:38:43.520 | that were on boats, a lot of times were 50, 60 years old, you know, there's a huge age
00:38:48.320 | gap. But once we hit the Panama Canal and started, started heading West, it was all
00:38:54.040 | pretty much people that were, that were our age. How did they do it? You know, that, that,
00:39:01.680 | you talking about financially, how people did it when they're, yeah, gosh, they're,
00:39:05.880 | you know, sailing, I guess RVing too, but I mean, there are, there's such a range of
00:39:11.280 | people in terms of, I mean, we met, we met, I remember a couple in Brazil that we met
00:39:19.240 | that I don't think, I really don't think they had any money and they, but they were
00:39:23.320 | on a sailboat and I mean like no money, you know, they were, they were trying to figure
00:39:27.760 | out how to, you know, how to kind of pull it together to, to, to make their next passage
00:39:32.560 | so they could provision and that kind of thing. So, I mean, you can, you know, there, there
00:39:36.680 | are people that we met that are probably close to, you know, zero based. I mean, once they
00:39:41.080 | got the, once they got the boat and had it fitted, they set off and they didn't have
00:39:45.360 | a lot of money to, to fall back on. And then, I mean, there were, you know, obviously.
00:39:50.080 | Some people would work along the way.
00:39:51.880 | Yep. Yep.
00:39:52.880 | That was a pretty, that was pretty common. And a lot of people that we know went back
00:40:00.400 | to work and resumed their former lives.
00:40:04.640 | Yeah. But the, but the budgets, the budgets can be, you know, whether it's a, you know,
00:40:10.480 | larger budget than anybody that they've actually thought about or just however they choose
00:40:14.200 | to spend their money, just a huge range. And we see the same thing with RVing. I mean,
00:40:18.160 | we see people, it's kind of funny though, the, the, the fancier the rig and the more
00:40:24.480 | money that I sense that people have available, the less likely you are to see them in a place
00:40:29.520 | like this. And it's just, it's just interesting. I know it's a combination of stuff. I mean,
00:40:36.280 | everything from the fact that a 45 foot motorhome would be tricky to get here.
00:40:41.680 | Yep.
00:40:42.680 | You know, most, most of the, most of the public lands camping really lends its, the public
00:40:49.360 | lands campgrounds lend themselves to sort of, you know, 35, 36 foot motorhomes or RVs
00:40:56.920 | or less.
00:40:57.920 | Right.
00:40:58.920 | And we're right at that cutoff here with our 36 foot class A. But I mean, I, there have
00:41:04.400 | been so many places where we've been even, you know, state parks, national parks, a lot
00:41:09.880 | of them are older. They just don't have the space for, you know, great big long motorhomes
00:41:14.960 | or big slides or, you know, a tag axle rigs that can't, you know, that can't make corners
00:41:21.720 | very well. And, or people that have, you know, paint jobs that are, that are way too precious.
00:41:27.740 | It's hard to stomach the idea. I mean, coming up the road up here, it's hard to stomach
00:41:30.880 | the idea of taking a $250,000 rig up a road like this. I know when, when my wife and I
00:41:36.880 | were analyzing the market and trying to think through, I'm a researcher and we try to think
00:41:42.960 | obsessively about every detail I can possibly come up with. And we came to the conviction
00:41:48.080 | that we needed to have a rig that was big enough to be reasonably comfortable for multiple
00:41:54.780 | days of bad weather, things like that, where you're stuck inside.
00:41:57.960 | But we wanted to be as small as possible because you think when you're looking at fancy rigs,
00:42:02.760 | Oh, the bigger, the better, but you get out on the road and all of a sudden you find bigger
00:42:06.000 | is not always better. And then we also became convinced that we didn't want to be, have
00:42:10.240 | so much money in the rig that first we didn't have money for fuel or, or fun stuff because
00:42:16.080 | who wants to just sit in a campground the whole time? The point of traveling is experiences
00:42:19.920 | and whether those experiences are gastronomic or some other type of local thing, that's
00:42:26.560 | part of the fun of it, not just to sit in a campground and twiddle your thumbs. And
00:42:31.200 | so, and it's a lot easier to stomach driving up a road, like getting up here when you're
00:42:35.320 | not that worried about a rock messing up your paint job or, or a little bit of dust messing
00:42:40.680 | everything up.
00:42:41.680 | Well, we're, as I told you, this is a 20 year old class A motor home, you know, shorter
00:42:47.200 | than most these days, both in terms of height and length. And we're very often the, you
00:42:53.520 | know, kind of the upper end of, of the kind of rigs that you see in the, in public lands
00:42:58.760 | camping. And then the other, the other thing is that even on the roads, we do very little
00:43:03.240 | freeway driving. Almost, I mean, we've, we actively avoid it cause we just prefer the
00:43:09.800 | back roads. We feel like we see more of kind of the country and what's going on. And even
00:43:15.800 | the natural beauty I think is a little, seems more accessible to us with, with back roads
00:43:21.040 | driving. But the other, the other rigs that we see on the back roads are more, you know,
00:43:26.520 | are kind of like the rigs we see here. You know, they tend to be, they tend to be a little
00:43:30.480 | older and they tend to be, you know, where you just feel like people are, you know, they're
00:43:36.960 | not just going from private campground to private campground with on the freeway with
00:43:42.000 | a, you know, 50 amp power cord plug in at each end of the, of the journey. So, I feel
00:43:48.360 | like those people are missing a lot, but at the same time, I've, I don't really necessarily
00:43:53.000 | try to talk people into changing the way they camp because you know, they can, there are
00:43:58.600 | plenty of campsites for people who like that kind of camping and it leaves more for us
00:44:03.000 | with this kind of camping.
00:44:04.680 | My last question before we pivot into talking about the nuts and bolts of technology. When
00:44:10.720 | you left Chicago 20, almost 20 years ago, you would have had certain ideas about life,
00:44:17.320 | um, understandings of people, exposure, ideologies, philosophies, things like that. In the last
00:44:24.400 | 20 years, you've had a very diverse range of experiences, international travel, lots
00:44:29.560 | of national travel, all different cultures, all different people. Has anything changed
00:44:35.280 | in your own personal understanding of the world and of life, uh, in the last 20 years?
00:44:41.120 | And if so, what would be some examples of any changes?
00:44:44.160 | Well, I mean, I, I, I, um, you know, I, I, I guess it's just sort of a social commentary.
00:44:53.280 | I mean, I feel like, uh, we, we weren't, we weren't here in the U.S. for September 11th.
00:44:59.720 | We were, we were stern tied to the key, um, in, uh, in Tahiti at the time. And, and, you
00:45:09.240 | know, so we didn't experience some of the things that people who were here experienced.
00:45:13.360 | And I mean, I just feel like having been out in the world and, and having seen, you know,
00:45:19.000 | a lot of different ways that people live. And I mean, we had, we had really basically
00:45:24.360 | no problems anywhere with anyone when we were in, in 10 years of cruising, we never had
00:45:29.760 | anything stolen. We never, we were, you know, we were never robbed. We were never accosted
00:45:35.200 | really to speak of. Um, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's a great world out there.
00:45:40.800 | And unfortunately I feel like, um, I, to me, I, I feel like there's, there's, there's a
00:45:46.600 | certain level of fear that's, that's crept in, in, in the U.S. And, and I think some
00:45:52.520 | of that is just maybe attributable to the fact that, that people haven't been exposed
00:45:58.200 | to, to other cultures. They've been too insulated or too isolated or just too much dealing with
00:46:04.680 | people who, you know, talk and think exactly like themselves. So, I mean, I, I think maybe
00:46:10.200 | we were kind of on that, had at least a reasonable realization of that before we left, but I
00:46:15.640 | think it's, it's even more sort of acute for us now that, you know, that, uh, you know,
00:46:21.320 | it's, it's, it's a great world and we just need to, you know, we just need to figure
00:46:24.760 | out how to, how to fit into that, you know, and, and really these, the, the, the kind
00:46:29.760 | of, the kind of underlying fear, I guess, that, that I feel even from a lot of people
00:46:34.460 | that I do work for. I mean, I just, I just don't, I can't quite grasp where it comes
00:46:39.480 | from, but I, but I can definitely see that it's there. So what about for you, Susan?
00:46:45.680 | I think that a lot of the changes that, uh, in my point of view are from our experiences,
00:46:55.600 | but also 20 years has passed also. I mean, there's just no way around that your worldview
00:47:03.240 | in your thirties is different than in your fifties. So, um, I do, I do think that one
00:47:12.800 | of the great benefits that we've had from all the traveling that we've been able to
00:47:16.680 | do is to be open-minded. Um, and that's, that's fundamental to a rich life.
00:47:25.960 | Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah.
00:47:30.060 | Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful
00:47:33.880 | for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies
00:47:39.380 | and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals. Before
00:47:44.820 | you go, three simple requests. One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's
00:47:51.100 | show, make a plan to take action on it. Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and
00:47:58.580 | of itself doesn't automatically lead to a life change. It's action that leads to a life
00:48:05.100 | change. So take action. Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and
00:48:12.480 | share it with somebody that you care about. I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with
00:48:18.700 | me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share. That helps the
00:48:25.860 | person that you are engaging with. And it also helps you because teaching others is
00:48:31.540 | one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning.
00:48:37.940 | Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if you're gaining financial
00:48:43.220 | benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for
00:48:47.940 | this work voluntarily. Come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and you can sign up there to support the show
00:48:54.820 | at whatever level you feel is right for you. This is a voluntary support. That's my Patreon
00:49:00.580 | page. You can support me with a dollar a month, $5 a month, $10 a month, any number that seems
00:49:06.500 | right to you. But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show, and if it's achieving
00:49:11.800 | financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
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00:49:50.860 | (upbeat music)