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It's more than just a ticket. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I am your host and today I am here with Scott and his lovely wife, Susan, who is in the background.

And we're going to be talking about early retirement from somebody who, I don't know whether to say, Scott, that you're not in the early retirement community because you are, I guess, a type of early retiree, but you're not really part of the online community, which is something that I am excited to bring to Radical Personal Finance.

And by way of background for you, Scott, one of the things I've been looking forward to in my own family's travels, because of course we've met here in a campground in the Rocky Mountains and there's a whole huge swath of people who are living interesting lifestyles, who've developed interesting approaches to life, approaches to where they live, how they live, how they earn their money.

And a lot of these people have very little connection to the online early retirement community. So I get to profile some of those neat stories and I'm really thrilled to bring your story to my audience today. So I'd love for you to begin just with a little bit of background.

For the last couple of decades, you and your wife have been traveling the world and traveling the country. So how did you come to live this type of lifestyle? Well, we got into it a little bit as, I guess, baby steps. I mean, it was a real evolution as we went along.

We originally, we were both, we were living in Chicago and both working for computer companies and we were doing a lot of traveling away from the city on the weekends. In the early 90s. In the early 90s, yeah. And we just got to thinking, I wonder if there's a way we could recreate a little bit closer into Chicago and still do the types of weekend activities that we like to do.

And that led us to start thinking about a sailboat because we got Lake Michigan right there and it would be a way to get out on the water, kind of get away from the city, but without necessarily having to travel hours to do it. We ended up, at that point in time, the online world was quite a bit different.

We were using AOL and we started searching for a boat and we found one through AOL. We ended up buying it up in Toronto and it was in the process of bringing that boat back through the Great Lakes that really we kind of, this thing was born. It was the first time that I'd taken two weeks off in a row.

It was the first time that I was really disconnected from voicemail, which of course at the time was like, you know, the corporate world revolved around voicemail, much more than email. And so, yeah, we brought the boat back and in the course of that trip, we just, we thought, oh, we got to, you know, we've been working hard, we've been making good money and we thought, well, maybe we could take a quarter off.

And so we both went to our employers and said, you know, can we have a quarter off? And I don't think either of them thought about it very long. They both said no. And so we realized that if we were going to do it, we were just going to have to take a chance and quit our jobs.

We both felt very employable. So and we kind of had originally thought in terms of a year. So we thought, okay, well, you know, we'll go and we'll do some sailing. And at that point we were thinking mostly of, you know, cruising sort of in and around the US, maybe down into the islands, into the Caribbean, that kind of thing.

And but, you know, so a year was sort of our initial target and we thought, oh, you know, it'd be no problem to get a job again. It's forever. A year is forever. Yeah, it just seemed like such a, yeah, it just seemed like such a big unit of time for us at that particular moment.

We were, we were in our, let's see, we were 37 at that point. And anyway, I mean, after a year on the sailboat, I mean, we totally felt like we were just getting started. And so, you know, a year turned into two, turned into three, turned into let's, you know, let's, let's go much further.

And then we got it in our minds that we would, that we would take the boat to New Zealand. And then we would kind of see how we felt at that point. But anyway, that trip to New Zealand, which, I mean, I'm, you know, there's, there's a lot of stops in between and we can talk about that along the way here.

But anyway, that, that trip turned into around the world cruise and we ended up doing 50,000 nautical miles, saw 32 countries and spent a decade on the boat. So you, you really thought at the beginning when you got the sailboat, you really thought, oh, we're going to take a year off.

We're going to perhaps cruise down, cruise the great lakes around the Caribbean a little bit. Then we'll sell the boat, move back to Chicago, get another job. That was your plan? That's probably the closest thing to a plan that we had. You know, I mean, we just, we felt like we'd had, we decided in around that period of time, maybe a few years before that we weren't going to have kids.

So that, you know, that kind of changes the formula a little bit. We, we thought, you know, we're just basically taking responsibility for ourselves. You know, we didn't have other futures that were tied into ours. And we'd had a couple of, of sad events too, in a way. Well, more than just in a way, but one of them was Susan actually got diagnosed with MS very early in, early in your thirties, right?

Yeah. Right. In 1993, the end of 1993. Yeah. So, you know, it was even, even though it seemed like her disease was going to be reasonably mild and, and has been, I mean, you know, compare against other types of people and you know, that there are a lot of different levels of MS, but anyway, that, that, that was something that we saw that was, you know, had the potential to affect the quality of a, of a traditional retirement.

Right. You know, we could get to 65 years old and maybe, you know, I mean, we wouldn't be able to go anywhere or do anything. I mean, we, you know, it could be very limited. And also Susan's mother had developed early onset Alzheimer's. Okay. And so, and that was in her late fifties.

Right. So, you know, so we could see, you know, we could see right, you know, in a close family sort of view of Susan's parents who had, were, you know, her dad was in the process of retiring, her mother was needing additional care, and they were really looking at a retirement that was going to be extremely limited for a couple of people that love to travel.

And Susan's mother was very, you know, very much of an activist in her days. And, and yeah, so, I mean, it was kind of a combination of those things that I think all kind of pointed us towards let's do things differently. Right. Right. If I had met you say six months into that trip and you were just starting to feel like we're just getting started and we might want to change something, would you have guessed or even imagined that you'd be on the road for another 17 years now?

No, no, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, like I said, it was, it was very much of a, of a baby step approach for us. You know, I mean, we, we both grew up sailing in the Susan grew up in Michigan. I grew up in Minnesota.

Okay. So, you know, we had a lot of inland lakes and I went to a great YMCA boys camp for five years as a camper, two years as a counselor that was very sailing oriented including a boat on the, on Lake Superior. But, you know, that's not the same as things starting to think about, you know, open ocean sailing.

And so it really wasn't until we had a couple of, well, really our first kind of, you know, we had about maybe three significant open ocean cruises. The first one we did, we actually bought a, after we decided to stick, to stick with sailing, we actually bought a better boat for ocean going cruising because the original one we had in mind was going to be for, you know, Lake Michigan, Chicago type sailing.

It was a 35 foot boat. So we moved up to a 43 foot boat. And when we bought that, we actually took off two weeks after we bought it and went from Florida with the intention of going all the way to Black Island. Okay. But we ended up, we ended up stopping about three days into that.

Where is Black Island? Is that Caribbean? Black Island is off of, yeah, off of Long Island. Okay. Yeah. We ended up kind of cutting that trip into two parts for some technical reasons that, you know, we all run into with new, new adventures. But anyway, then the second set of trips that we did, we did from, we went from Florida to to the Bahamas, Bahamas to Bermuda, and then Bermuda to Nova Scotia.

And so that was from the Bahamas to Bermuda was a six day passage and from Bermuda to Nova Scotia was a six day passage. And I think really at that point I'd have to say we, we started, you know, really feeling like, okay, we, you know, we know what it's like to be at sea for a week and, you know, we can, we can take it to the next level.

If I had met you at that time, speaking financially, if I'd met you at that time, would you have thought it was financially feasible for you to not return to work as you had previously thought about, but to continue sailing and cruising? Or would you have, would you have just thought, yeah, absolutely we could do it?

Or would it have been questionable for you? Well, I think if we'd ever thought in terms of, you know, funding a 50 year retirement, you know, I think anybody would have a lot of doubts about that because we were at 37, you know, it's like, well, how much money do you need?

I mean, and I think maybe as Americans, we, you know, we may, we may overestimate in some ways what's, what's really required. I was telling, as I was saying to you earlier today, I mean, our, the, you know, the amount that we've spent for the last 20 years has actually remained relatively constant.

So I guess if you look at that in terms of, you know, inflation adjusted dollars, our spending has probably been on a, you know, a downward trajectory. So you mean constant and nominal values, the budget in terms of annual numbers that you used basically 20 years ago, it's been fairly steady in terms of nominal value.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in, in, you know, inflation adjusted dollars we're, you know, we're spending less every year. Yeah. Why do you think that is what's gone down in expenses? Well, that's a good question. I'm dining out. Yeah. Susan has become an awesome, awesome cook. Yeah. That's a very good point.

Yeah. Yeah. And we've got some, we've got some great photos of, of the provisioning that we used to do for the sailboat. I mean, we used to basically be ready typically for four months at a time. So I mean, it was, you know and, and, and you can't, you know, the kind of food that, that we would buy too.

And I think about, well, first of all, when we lived in Chicago, I mean, you know, we had a drawer full of delivery menus, right. You know, restaurants within walking distance and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean the, the, the types of things that, that we ate and the amount we spent on food was just completely different.

Now I would say, wouldn't you Susan, that, that we're much more like basic ingredient oriented. I mean, you're much more likely to start with not something that's a, that's an already prepared sort of a thing, but it's all, you know, starting from the scratch ingredients. And it turns out that I love to cook.

So that's good. Did you know that before you traveled? No, I had no idea. I had no. Yeah. Yeah. What other expenses have changed up or down? What have been the major changes in the last two decades? Well, that's a, that's a good question. I mean, we used to spend, we used to spend a lot of money on boat insurance.

That was a, that was a huge, because when you're, when you are a couple on an ocean going, you know, two handed passage, basically it's considered to be a shorthanded risk. And at that time, I assume it's probably fairly similar, but Lloyd's of London was pretty much the only, the only place where you could get that type of, of insurance.

And so that, that was, that was a high cost. I'd say this, the sailing overall was much more expensive than the RVing. Yeah. Yeah. Just because the, the wear and tear on the, on the sailboat out on the ocean led to big, you know, months usually of repair, expensive repairs and the insurance and the, the charts and everything that went along with it.

But I mean, the boat was more expensive than this RV just right out of the gate. Oh, sure. You know, so yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that, yeah. Cruise, that cruising sailboat, which we bought in 1998, we paid $205,000 for it. Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah. And this RV, which is, which is also, this is a, that was a 1988.

So it was a 10 year old boat that we bought in '98. This RV was also 10 years old when we bought it. And so it's now 20 years old and we paid about $68,000 for this. And really the boat had pretty much everything the RV has plus all the sailing stuff.

Right. And, and everything to do with, you know, long, long distance cruising and a big water maker and, you know, so, so a whole nother layer of, of systems. Right. And things get pretty expensive on boats. Interesting rule of thumb is that your, your costs basically double every additional five feet of boat length.

Really? You mean operating costs or purchasing costs? Just overall costs in general. Just in general. Yeah. Wow. So that's a big deal. To go from 30, 30 something feet to 45 feet is a big difference. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. And all the, the safety equipment that we bought for the boat was really expensive and had to be inspected every, every so many years.

I mean, just the overall costs of the sailing were much, much more than the RVing. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. I mean, we used to, at that point in time, it was just electronic charts were just starting to come on the scene. And so every year, and we weren't really confident enough with, with relying on those, you know, we just didn't feel, I mean, when you're out in the ocean and you've got, you've got bad weather and, and various different kinds of issues, I mean, the last thing you're thinking about is I want to sit down at my computer.

Right. Right. So we had paper charts and we used to spend a couple thousand dollars a year, right? Just on paper charts. Cause you have to have everything that you think you might, that you're pretty sure you're going to need. And also a whole bunch of other stuff that you might need if you have to divert because of weather or various other issues.

So. So did you get what positioned you? So it sounds like this occurred fairly naturally it evolved, so to speak. You didn't set out with a clear goal. We're going to travel the world and we're going to quit at 37. Some people do. Right. But that doesn't sound like it was your path.

What were the good habits and the good things that you put in place financially that allowed you to be in a position where at 37, you could take advantage of the fact that you wanted to live well at a young age, having seen the tragedy, what good habits did you have?

What good things happened in your life that made that happen? Well I think, you know, for as much as you have, like Susan was talking about costs with sailing and with RVing and sailing being more, if you, in both cases, we really wanted to get out into places where our costs would actually be lower.

So I mean, when you talk about good habits, I mean, you know, things like anchoring instead of, you know, going into a marina. I mean, that, you know, makes a big difference. I mean, in the sailing world, they actually charge you by the foot at a marina. So it can get, it can get pretty expensive.

So, you know, the more that you're, the more that you're anchoring out and taking, you know, and have your boat set up to be able to feel comfortable doing that. You know, you've got the right, the right gear to do it, the right safety equipment, the right charts, the right, you know, the right things to, so that you can feel comfortable that you're, you know, choosing a good anchorage and then you're, you know, you're going to stay safe and that kind of thing.

And I think, you know, you can look at this kind of thing too with exact kind of thing with RVing. I mean, we've made an investment. We very much have this RV optimized for this type of camping, which not that many people actually do. You know, you don't, you don't find them that often right on the lot that are kind of ready to go with, you know, a big solar array and the right, you know, the right tankage to be able to support extended stays in places like this.

But I mean, like where we're both staying right now, because Susan has an excess pass as a, as you know, somebody who with a handicap or the handicap, or if you're a retired person where you'd have a golden age pass, I mean, this is $5 a night to camp here.

It was cheap at 10. I was going to say we're paying through the nose at $10 a night. For context, we are at a beautiful campground up over 10,000 feet, the top of a mountain in the Rocky mountains overlooking there's a lake on one side, there's a mountain cliff on the other, and we're on national forest land.

So we could be parked for free just in a slightly different place. But because of the beautiful view we've chosen to spend the, the heady amount of $10 a night to, to have a place to park. But there are no hookups. There are no, there's no water facilities. There's no sewer facilities.

So you have to be self-contained. And so in order to do that, we're staying here for a week right now, in order to do that, you've got to have planned ahead and be prepared to do that. We did the same thing. And in the second part of this interview, I want to talk a lot about the technology that you've developed to allow you to do that.

But it is true. If you put a little bit of money into infrastructure, then you can take advantage of very low cost places like this. Yeah. And going back to the sailing for a second, I mean, one of the big things that helped with our costs was when we left the U S with the boat.

Right. I mean, yeah. Because of Anchorage or what would the, why? Really anything and everything you can think of, you know, from, from food costs to healthcare. I mean, we we had a healthcare policy in those days that where we had to be out, do you remember how many months, nine months outside of the country?

Yes. Every year. Yeah. And it, you know, it was just a fraction of what we would pay for a healthcare policy in the U S and, you know, prescription drugs that we needed. I mean, a lot of those were available over the counter for pennies, for pennies compared to what they cost here.

You know, and, and, and of course, once we left the U S we didn't have a car anymore. We didn't have a cell phone. We didn't have, you know, all of the little things, you know, all the, you know, we didn't have any television costs. We didn't have any internet, you know, connectivity costs.

We didn't, you know, just right on down the line, all those things that add up, you know, in any given month, I just, I mean, just, I'm sure you've, you've probably talked about this on other shows, but just things like owning a car, I mean, all the different expenses that you have with a car, boom, they're gone.

So back to my earlier question, and I know I want you to maintain your financial privacy, but I want to go back to the accumulation period before 37 during your early thirties. And when did you meet Mary? How long were you together prior to making this step? We got married in 1991.

So it's about 35 or so, right? But it was before. We were just, just turned 31, right? Right. Yeah. So during your early thirties as a young couple, what did you do differently than other of your coworkers that allowed you at 37 to buy a sailboat and leave? Were you aggressive savers?

Did you make it like, what did you do? Well, we, I mean, we, we, we ended up being, being pretty good at saving, but I think that's mostly because we had a lot of income. Okay. You know, I, I worked for a company called Wise Technology, which was the, the number one supplier of computer terminals back in the day when, when the dumb terminal was king.

We also made PCs and, and multi-user multi-processor Unix based systems. And Susan worked on the, the trading floor actually at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. So she was one of the few women that was, you know, for people, most people have probably seen trading places. She was, she was out there in the, you know, in the open outcry, right in the pit.

Orange juice futures and corn and soybeans. It was Euro dollars. Euro dollars. Yeah. Euro dollars. Yes. So anyway, she, she worked in the, at the Mercantile Exchange. I worked for, for Wise Technology and, you know. Can I just, I have. Oh, please do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, so we weren't thinking so much about accumulating money.

I think that we always thought we would go back to work when we were done sailing. And because we had been earning really well before we went sailing, we assumed that we could after sailing. Also, we didn't realize that our whole worldview would change as a result of the sailing experience.

For one thing, our pace, the normal pace of our lives. You know, you sail around the world at six miles an hour and things really take on a different perspective. So we came back with that and we, and so, but you know, what we're doing now with the RV, I'd say, springs directly from that experience.

But when we started out sailing, it wasn't, oh, we're going to retire when we're 37 and go and live off what we've earned for the rest of our work, you know, normal working life. Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, it, I mean, I think that, you know, we made, we made money on our house in Chicago.

We, you know, we were able to, we were able to put money away just because we, I mean, we didn't really live extravagantly. I'd say we lived well, but not extravagantly. And what's the other interesting thing is I always think that we were very much at a tipping point.

I mean, I think if we hadn't have gone in this direction, we probably would have gone in a direction that would have, you know, we probably would have bought a summer house and we would have, you know, we would have bought fancier cars and, you know, we would have, I could, I could see us kind of headed in that direction in a way, but, but, but it was, it was just the right, kind of the right pivot point for us, right?

We didn't get ourselves all buried in a whole bunch of financial commitments and, and you know, all sorts of long-term things that we were trying to accomplish. And it just, you know, it's one of those things where we, we figured that the worst thing that could happen is that we would have to go back to work.

And it's just, you know, through a kind of a series of different things along the way including what I'm doing now. I mean, this, you know, we didn't really, when we transitioned from the sailboat to the RV, I remember talking to Susan about the idea of, gosh, I would really love to have some sort of a seasonal hobby business, you know, something where that we could supplement the other money that we have and, but not have something where, where the enjoyment diminishes because of the fact that I never get a break from it.

Right. And so, the, the Techie for Hire thing that I'm doing now is just, has just worked out so well because it, you know, it's five months of kind of heads down, you know, six days of work, six days a week working on other people's rigs. And then I have seven months where we're, you know, where we're traveling around, we're doing, you know, doing exactly what we want to do.

I can work on our rig, I can develop new things that I then turn around and in the five months that I'm doing Techie for Hire, I've got, you know, new kind of road tested things that I can, can bring to people and say, oh, here, you know, here's what we've been doing over the last summer or two summers or three summers.

And that's really working for us. So it, it, it feeds into the, you know, kind of the next year's business with, with Techie for Hire. So, so our, our financial picture along the way has not been, you know, just, it's not been linear in a lot of ways. I mean, it's just kind of been made up of, I mean, a fair amount of good fortune, I guess I'd say, along with the fact that, you know, we, we, we took a chance and things have just come together for us at the, you know, each thing sort of at the right point in time where it just allowed us to carry on.

And I mean, now we're, you know, to the point where we're, we're, you know, we're, we, you know, we feel, we feel secure with, with where we're headed and, and you know, absolutely no regrets. Have you needed to pay attention to things like stock markets or obviously you come from the financial background, has that been a major influence in your decisions in terms of how you run your investments?

And if so, how does that affect it? How have you dealt with the ups and downs over the last couple of decades? Well yeah, I mean, early, early on it was, I mean, it was, it was so easy, you know what I mean? We, you know, at the end of every year we'd have more money than we had at the beginning of the year.

And, and it just, we didn't have to think about it much, you know, it just seemed like, oh, this is going to be, this is going to be simple. But yeah, I mean, obviously things changed when, starting with the tech bubble. And I mean, there was a period of time when we moved, we had pretty much the money that we have, we'd moved it all into cash.

I mean, we were, you know, so I mean, there, there have been times when we've, when we've been uncomfortable with, you know, with the state of the market, with the markets. But yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it was pretty, pretty shocking obviously when, you know, in the big downturn, but at the, you know, at that point, I mean, it's, you know, it's all, it's all come back.

So, so that's great. What would you have done if you ran out of money? Gone back to work. Would you have gone back to the corporate type of work that you were doing previously? Or would you have gone in the direction of independent business like you're doing now? Oh, that's an excellent question.

You know, I suppose it depends on when that happened, right? Because, you know, at some point along the way that was a little bit invisible to me, I'm sure that, that my 17 years of experience that I had when, when, when we started doing this in the tech business kind of ceased to be recent enough and, and maybe even relevant enough.

I don't know, but, but, you know, it just wouldn't have been, you know, I think if a year or two or five years into it probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but you know, after 10 years, I think it's probably a little bit different deal. As it turns out, I mean, I, I really like, I really like being, you know, I'm, I'm essentially a blue collar guy now, which I never would have envisioned for myself early in my life.

You know, I mean, I was, I don't know if I was socialization or programming or whatever, but I was, you know, I was on a white collar path and that's what I did. And I suppose a lot of it was, you know, the fact that I accomplished the goals that I, you know, or whatever visions I had in my mind, I was able to match up with what I was doing, that it made it easier for me to, to see that, you know, that I like working with my hands and, and I like, you know, I like doing installation work and I like, I like being involved in things that I'm interested in too.

I mean, that's, that's, you know, for me, I've been lucky all along in that I've through my work career and, and in what I'm doing with what I'm doing now with techie for hire. You know, it's, it's just stuff that I've, that I love to do. And so it's, it's made it a lot easier.

In part two of this interview, we're going to talk about techie for hire and talk a little bit about the tech development because you guys have been on the road for two decades and the world has changed in that time. And that's incredible. But a couple more questions on this lifestyle.

What is the hardest thing about living this nomadic existence that you've, that you've lived for the last couple of decades? Well, I'll let Susan think about that for a second. You know, I, I, I think that, that it's, it's probably for me, it's been a little hard on my friendships.

You know, some of the people that I was, you know, really close to early in my life are in my twenties and thirties. I mean, we, we've kept in touch and, and did things together for a long time. But you know, I think there's only, you know, I think the fact that we went off in a different direction and have been at it for so long you know, people that, that I figured were going to be, you know, kind of best friends for life kind of thing.

I mean, you know, I'm just not as in touch with them as I, as I once was. And you know, I, I suppose that happens to everybody with, you know, you, one couple goes off and decides not to have kids and another couple does. And you know, it creates a, a, a why, a fork in the road.

And you know, I, I, I think I really noticed when we were, we lived briefly in Susan's hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, and it was our one period in the last 21 years when we stayed put. And essentially, you know, at that point we had no jobs, no kids and no religion.

And those in, you know, in a, in a community like that anyway, those three things are a lot of, for a lot of people, those are their gateways to being, you know, interacting with other people. Those are, those are, those are their circles of friends. It structures your life.

Most people's weeks are structured around their jobs, their children and their religious activities. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so anyway, I mean, that's, that's, that's probably been something that, you know, it's just combination of, of the, the path that we went off on. That's just so different from, from other people we know.

But you know, having said that, I mean, we've made a, we've made a lot of great new friends when we've been, we've got, you know, we've got RVing friends that we're quite close to and, and you know, new synergies, new, new things in common that with those people that, you know, just don't exist with, with people that we were tight with 25, 30 years ago.

Right. Susan. I, I agree with, with what Scott says. I think, I think women are a little bit better with their women friends than, I think it's easier. It's just a male, female thing. I don't know, because I have, I still have a pretty significant group of women friends from grade school through high school, through college, through my working years that I'm still in touch with.

So, so I don't feel that quite as much. I just, I don't really know how to answer that question. The keeping up the curiosity about visiting new places is huge. I mean, you have to have that to keep up the... How do you keep that up? Well, we, we stop for usually four or five months a year.

And so I, I, and that was true when we were sailing also, because we had to be out of the hurricane belt, you know, so we would go somewhere and typically stay. And usually that's enough time to, to recharge and get the, get the wandering juices going again. So, and so far that has held up.

But we'll, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. Absolutely. I don't think we, either of us has as much energy to devote to conquering new things and places as we did in our thirties, of course. But well, and we feel very much like the order that we did our traveling in was, was perfect in terms of the, the mental and physical requirements.

I mean, sailing, blue water sailing is, is a unique thing. And we ran into very few people who were, who were over 50, I would say, who were actually doing long distance sailing. I mean, you, you find a lot of, you find a lot of sort of traditional retirement age people in the Caribbean.

And, and I presume in the Mediterranean as well. But in terms of people that are, you know, that are actually crossing oceans, it's kind of a young person's game, just, just by virtue of, you know, the physical requirements of it. The, I mean, you know, you have to keep watch around the clock.

I mean, we did a, we did a passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas that was 24 days at sea with one of us being up, you know, every hour of, one or the other of us being up one or the, every hour of every day. So. As you've been around this community, these communities, let's call it the sailing community and the RVing community, a decade in each, essentially, have you noticed any changes in the community over those decades?

Well, I think that it's, I mean, I think it's probably easier to, to do this, you know, to take a different path maybe than it ever has been. When I think of, of some of the complexities of, of what we had to do when we were on the boat, just, you know, everything from paying bills to getting our mail, to staying in touch with people.

I, you know, I was telling you earlier today how, kind of reminiscing about being in the Bahamas in the late nineties. And if we wanted to send an email to somebody, we had a little device that was about the size of a pocket organizer that had an acoustic coupler on it.

And we'd have to go into shore with the dinghy, find a pay phone and hold this thing up. And you, you know, you'd hear the classic, you know, modem, acoustic modem noises going through that phone. It worked great. But, you know, I think that, I think that those kinds of things, you know, and we had a relationship with our bank to, you know, to pay all of our bills at that point in time.

And, you know, now, I mean, we can stay in touch with people. I mean, I was, you know, I did a two hour project for somebody the other day using Team Viewer, you know, where I was, had my laptop connected to his and, and I was taking care of, of some issues for him.

And, you know, he was in his RV at a, at a campground and I was in my RV by, up at Rabbit Ears Pass above Steamboat Springs. And, you know, we had a, we had a two hour phone connection and we had a two hour computer connection. Incredible. Yeah.

To do that kind of work. And so I've got, I've got, you know, so, so I think that, I think that it's, it's, it's easier because of the, the ability to stay connected to the, you know, to the outside world now than, than it was when we were sailing in particular.

I mean, as far as the community goes, it, it, yeah, it's a little bit different group of people. I mean, probably just, I mean, we, we, when we hit the Panama Canal, cruising just changed for us in a lot of ways because when we were cruising the East coast of the US and we were in our late thirties, you know, we, the people that we were meeting that were on boats, a lot of times were 50, 60 years old, you know, there's a huge age gap.

But once we hit the Panama Canal and started, started heading West, it was all pretty much people that were, that were our age. How did they do it? You know, that, that, you talking about financially, how people did it when they're, yeah, gosh, they're, you know, sailing, I guess RVing too, but I mean, there are, there's such a range of people in terms of, I mean, we met, we met, I remember a couple in Brazil that we met that I don't think, I really don't think they had any money and they, but they were on a sailboat and I mean like no money, you know, they were, they were trying to figure out how to, you know, how to kind of pull it together to, to, to make their next passage so they could provision and that kind of thing.

So, I mean, you can, you know, there, there are people that we met that are probably close to, you know, zero based. I mean, once they got the, once they got the boat and had it fitted, they set off and they didn't have a lot of money to, to fall back on.

And then, I mean, there were, you know, obviously. Some people would work along the way. Yep. Yep. That was a pretty, that was pretty common. And a lot of people that we know went back to work and resumed their former lives. Yeah. But the, but the budgets, the budgets can be, you know, whether it's a, you know, larger budget than anybody that they've actually thought about or just however they choose to spend their money, just a huge range.

And we see the same thing with RVing. I mean, we see people, it's kind of funny though, the, the, the fancier the rig and the more money that I sense that people have available, the less likely you are to see them in a place like this. And it's just, it's just interesting.

I know it's a combination of stuff. I mean, everything from the fact that a 45 foot motorhome would be tricky to get here. Yep. You know, most, most of the, most of the public lands camping really lends its, the public lands campgrounds lend themselves to sort of, you know, 35, 36 foot motorhomes or RVs or less.

Right. And we're right at that cutoff here with our 36 foot class A. But I mean, I, there have been so many places where we've been even, you know, state parks, national parks, a lot of them are older. They just don't have the space for, you know, great big long motorhomes or big slides or, you know, a tag axle rigs that can't, you know, that can't make corners very well.

And, or people that have, you know, paint jobs that are, that are way too precious. It's hard to stomach the idea. I mean, coming up the road up here, it's hard to stomach the idea of taking a $250,000 rig up a road like this. I know when, when my wife and I were analyzing the market and trying to think through, I'm a researcher and we try to think obsessively about every detail I can possibly come up with.

And we came to the conviction that we needed to have a rig that was big enough to be reasonably comfortable for multiple days of bad weather, things like that, where you're stuck inside. But we wanted to be as small as possible because you think when you're looking at fancy rigs, Oh, the bigger, the better, but you get out on the road and all of a sudden you find bigger is not always better.

And then we also became convinced that we didn't want to be, have so much money in the rig that first we didn't have money for fuel or, or fun stuff because who wants to just sit in a campground the whole time? The point of traveling is experiences and whether those experiences are gastronomic or some other type of local thing, that's part of the fun of it, not just to sit in a campground and twiddle your thumbs.

And so, and it's a lot easier to stomach driving up a road, like getting up here when you're not that worried about a rock messing up your paint job or, or a little bit of dust messing everything up. Well, we're, as I told you, this is a 20 year old class A motor home, you know, shorter than most these days, both in terms of height and length.

And we're very often the, you know, kind of the upper end of, of the kind of rigs that you see in the, in public lands camping. And then the other, the other thing is that even on the roads, we do very little freeway driving. Almost, I mean, we've, we actively avoid it cause we just prefer the back roads.

We feel like we see more of kind of the country and what's going on. And even the natural beauty I think is a little, seems more accessible to us with, with back roads driving. But the other, the other rigs that we see on the back roads are more, you know, are kind of like the rigs we see here.

You know, they tend to be, they tend to be a little older and they tend to be, you know, where you just feel like people are, you know, they're not just going from private campground to private campground with on the freeway with a, you know, 50 amp power cord plug in at each end of the, of the journey.

So, I feel like those people are missing a lot, but at the same time, I've, I don't really necessarily try to talk people into changing the way they camp because you know, they can, there are plenty of campsites for people who like that kind of camping and it leaves more for us with this kind of camping.

My last question before we pivot into talking about the nuts and bolts of technology. When you left Chicago 20, almost 20 years ago, you would have had certain ideas about life, um, understandings of people, exposure, ideologies, philosophies, things like that. In the last 20 years, you've had a very diverse range of experiences, international travel, lots of national travel, all different cultures, all different people.

Has anything changed in your own personal understanding of the world and of life, uh, in the last 20 years? And if so, what would be some examples of any changes? Well, I mean, I, I, I, um, you know, I, I, I guess it's just sort of a social commentary.

I mean, I feel like, uh, we, we weren't, we weren't here in the U.S. for September 11th. We were, we were stern tied to the key, um, in, uh, in Tahiti at the time. And, and, you know, so we didn't experience some of the things that people who were here experienced.

And I mean, I just feel like having been out in the world and, and having seen, you know, a lot of different ways that people live. And I mean, we had, we had really basically no problems anywhere with anyone when we were in, in 10 years of cruising, we never had anything stolen.

We never, we were, you know, we were never robbed. We were never accosted really to speak of. Um, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's a great world out there. And unfortunately I feel like, um, I, to me, I, I feel like there's, there's, there's a certain level of fear that's, that's crept in, in, in the U.S.

And, and I think some of that is just maybe attributable to the fact that, that people haven't been exposed to, to other cultures. They've been too insulated or too isolated or just too much dealing with people who, you know, talk and think exactly like themselves. So, I mean, I, I think maybe we were kind of on that, had at least a reasonable realization of that before we left, but I think it's, it's even more sort of acute for us now that, you know, that, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a great world and we just need to, you know, we just need to figure out how to, how to fit into that, you know, and, and really these, the, the, the kind of, the kind of underlying fear, I guess, that, that I feel even from a lot of people that I do work for.

I mean, I just, I just don't, I can't quite grasp where it comes from, but I, but I can definitely see that it's there. So what about for you, Susan? I think that a lot of the changes that, uh, in my point of view are from our experiences, but also 20 years has passed also.

I mean, there's just no way around that your worldview in your thirties is different than in your fifties. So, um, I do, I do think that one of the great benefits that we've had from all the traveling that we've been able to do is to be open-minded. Um, and that's, that's fundamental to a rich life.

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals. Before you go, three simple requests.

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