Manila Philippines Arrival – Our Experience And Tips
We woke up very early today to get ready for our flight from Guam to Manila. Our alarms were set for 2am, but both JC and I woke up at 1am. Facing the day on three hours of sleep was not ideal. The world is a harsh place when you haven’t slept much, and seeing…
Costa Rica Expat Family Budget
Costa Rica is a popular expat destination due to a variety of appealing factors. These include easy entry requirements, beautiful surroundings, friendly people and low cost (allegedly). We spent two months in Costa Rica and would highly recommend it to anyone seeking an expat living situation. I have done posts recapping our budget and reflections…
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…
International Cell Phone – Simple Verified Approach
A small but critical part of the research for international travel surrounded how to manage our cell phones. Our phone numbers are critical for all sorts of things. The least important of those is staying in contact with family friends. We could find ways to get in contact with them without our phones. The most…
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.…
Whirlwind Out The Front Door – Preparing For Long-Term Travel
With my employment ending, I expected to have ample time to devote to preparing for long-term travel. I was entirely wrong about that. We would have been in an hours deficit had I stayed at my job any longer. JC and I were cranking through tasks almost non-stop over the last week. We even had…
Early Retirement Identity Crisis
Today is my first day without a job since I was in high school and it is making me consider my early retirement identity. I turned in all of my work equipment, said all the final goodbyes, and very anti-climactically walked out of the building on my own. It felt a little bit like a…
We have health insurance, now leave us alone…
As was forecast in in a previous post, we selected the Cigna Global Silver plan for our international health insurance on this year of travel. Hopefully we’ll never find out how good, bad, or mediocre our new international health plan is. Wasting thousands of dollars on premiums and never using health insurance is a great…
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…
Traveling Toward Fire
A Premature FI Experiment
