South Africa Travel Reflections
South Africa is a location that we nearly scratched from our itinerary. This wasn’t due to a lack of interest, but because of the daunting travel and cost involved to get there. In these reflections I ultimately feel that had we skipped South Africa, there would have been something missing from our year of travel.…
Travel From South Africa To Portugal
This week was all about getting from South Africa to Portugal. It was a long series of flights and layovers that totaled 38 hours from leaving our Knysna South Africa condo to entering our Lisbon Portugal condo. Shortly after arriving in Portugal JC and I got sick which made for a few boring days. Travel…
March International Travel FIRE Budget
The beginning of March was the tail end of our tough stay in Sri Lanka before moving on to South Africa. The majority of spending in our March international travel FIRE budget is comprised of South Africa costs. In the upcoming expat cost of living series post on South Africa, I will extract the South…
Robberg Nature Reserve & Buffalo Bay Beach – Knysna South Africa
The highlights of this week were a hike at Robberg Nature Reserve (day 272), a day trip to Buffalo Bay Beach (day 275), and expIoring the waterfront in Knysna South Africa. Around that I focused a lot on language learning, mostly Spanish but also some Portuguese phrases. The week gets off to a morbid beginning…
Sri Lanka Expat Family Budget
⚠️ Limited Data: This cost breakdown is based on only two weeks in Sri Lanka, a much shorter stay than our typical destinations. Use these numbers as a rough guide rather than a comprehensive analysis. Sri Lanka turned into a tough stay for us. Given the short time we stayed in Sri Lanka, I debated…
Fighting Through Sickness In South Africa
This week was a little bit miserable for me after getting sick and having it linger for the entire week. We definitely were not able to maximize our first week in South Africa, but we did get some activity in. The Knysna waterfront was our first stop (day 255), followed by the Knysna Heads and…
Thailand Expat Family Budget
Thailand is my favorite place so far on our international gap year. I have already covered in depth the reasons why it is my favorite place, and I will now turn to the financial side of things. In this Thailand expat family budget, I will show the cost of living full time in Chiang Mai…
February International Travel FIRE Budget
Our February international travel FIRE budget includes the cost for time spent between Chiang Mai Thailand and Colombo Sri Lanka. More of the days were spent in Thailand, but the costs were pretty similar between the two locations. However, these two locations could not have been more different outside of the cost. Thailand blew us…
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…
January International Travel FIRE Budget
The month of January was split between Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam (22 days) and Chiang Mai Thailand (9 days). This was anticipated to be one of the cheapest stretches of the year with these locations known for their lower cost of living, and no long flights to travel between them. However, we managed to…
Traveling Toward Fire
A Premature FI Experiment
