Managing Money and Banking While Traveling Long-Term Internationally
Managing money and banking while traveling internationally was one of our biggest initial concerns, and something we knew we had to get right. Many anxious thoughts entered my mind surrounding failed payment transactions, disabled accounts, or the inability to access our financial tools. That lead me to research the best tools and systems we could
Guam Expat Family Budget: The Cost Of Living In Paradise
My family of four lived in Guam for a total of 45 days recently, and during that time we closely tracked our spending to determine what an expat family budget would look like. Guam is a special destination because my parents were stationed there in the Air Force. It’s a location that has fascinated me
October International Travel FIRE Budget
October was a chaotic month with two extremely long haul flights (first, second), round-tripping to Denver from Guam twice to pick up and drop off my mom. In all of that planning, traveling, and spending time with my mom, I completely forgot to document the October international travel FIRE budget. The month of October was
September Travel Budget In The Red
I always get excited when budget time rolls around, and I was particularly interested in this month. September is the first full month we have spent in Japan, which is our most expensive location (not counting Guam). If I had been allowed to peek ahead to the result of any one month’s budget before the
August Gap Year Budget Review
We have concluded another budget month while slow traveling internationally on our family gap year. I’m excited to crunch the numbers and see how our projections are matching reality. It’s the chance to prove or disprove that this approach of slow travel is sustainable over the long haul. Either way it’s useful data. The month
July Gap Year Budget
July is our first full month of travel and is our first chance to see if the financial aspects of this trip are going according to plan. We projected expenses for the places we are traveling using numbeo, but the accuracy of that in practice is a complete unknown to us. Being in Costa Rica
The Best Things In Life Are Free
Travel Log: Day 12 (7/9), Costa Rica Today was the undisputed best day so far in Costa Rica, thanks to a completely free activity (aside from a $3 Uber ride). This is exactly the antidote to yesterday’s failures. The place we went to is called “El Salto” or “The Jump”. It’s a small waterfall with
Rental And Budget Failures
Travel Log: Day 11 (7/8), Costa Rica Failures It was a day of rental and budget failures, and lessons learned. Lesson #1 – We aren’t professional cleaners This lesson kicked off first thing in the morning with an email from our property manager saying the new tenants thought the kitchen and bathrooms weren’t cleaned sufficiently.
Travel Vaccinations Cost Planning
When you have a list of 27 places that you might travel to, the plan for travel vaccinations becomes a project of its own. It is also an important consideration for cost planning. Reading through CDC recommendations became complicated enough that I had to put together a tracking spreadsheet. It was either that or one
FIRE Travel Budget
With tariffs bringing chaos to the market, this is an entertaining time to take a look at FIRE travel budget for the upcoming premature FIRE experiment where we will travel internationally for a full year. I find the budgeting aspect of this interesting because we have different moving parts that we don’t normally deal with
Traveling Toward Fire
A Premature FI Experiment
