About our lifestyle

We traveled the world slowly 365/24/7 from 1995 to 2014. Two financial meltdowns later (actually three: 2000-02 when the S&P declined 49%, 2007-09 when the S&P declined 56.8% and 2011 when the S&P declined 19.4%--not including the flash crash in 2010 when the S&P declined 16%), we have been able to remain retired and continue to travel because of what we call our "frugally chic" lifestyle. Oh, and let's not forget COVID and its aftermath.

Until 2014, we owned no real estate, had given up a home base and had given up all of the stuff we used to keep in our base. The single most important financial aspect for us was to have only one home. We did not pay to keep a home base and also pay rent where we happened to be in the world. Secondly, we had no fixed expenses except for health insurance which covered us in the world (but not for more than 30 days in the USA). Thirdly, we had and stuck to a budget that changed only when our investments made money (we tried to live only on the appreciation of our capital but that became "difficult" when the dot com bubble burst, when the great recession hit, and so on).

For about 20 years our home was in the hotel or apartment wherever in the world our 11 suitcases, car (purchased on the continent where we happened to be), 2 bicycles and skis (that were in the rack on the car) were. 
That's us and our rig at Torres del Paine, Chile in 2007

Since we began our nomadic life in 1993 (a term that really doesn’t describe us because we like luxury, not tents--or glamping for that matter), it became easier and easier to have all of the comforts of home on the road. We carried with us 2 laptops and all of our financial stuff was accessed online. We used ATMs (without paying that hideous 3% foreign transaction fee that is so pervasive) which BTW didn’t even exist in 1993. We had a mail forwarder (for that pesky snail mail) that scaned the envelopes for us, posted them on a website and allowed us to discard items before forwarding the balance to us the mail wherever we happened to be (since went out of business).  In our cell phone, we just changed the sim card and our telephone number for the country we happened to be in. We used to travel with a tiny Archos personal video recorder (before it died–for the second and last time because we didn't replace it) so that we could watch our favorite programs on our own schedule not the cable provider’s. 

In January 2014 we invested in real estate and have been living in the lap of luxury in our new condo (aka Private Residence at the Four Seasons Resort Vail. Yikes! Talk about changing our style of life.... We have a home base once again (with furniture and stuff, like everyone else). Why you ask? Well, we loved Vail, CO and knew that for the foreseeable future we wanted to ski in Vail in the winters. To read a more full-some description of why we bought a condo in Vail, click here.

For the six months of the summers we had been planning to continue to travel. During the summer of 2014 we spent 1 month on a road trip to San Francisco (and actually spent 40 days joyously on the road), one month in the San Francisco Bay area, two months on Kauai (on the north shore) and two months in South Korea (in Seoul and all over). By the beginning of October we were getting road trip weary. As we got older we seemed less patient than we were in 1993 when we started traveling and everything was new, exciting and fun. In 2014, we had decided that our future travel schedule would be more like everyone else's in the Vail Valley. We'd travel in the spring and fall.

We did that for a few years, and then Dimitri said "if I don't travel now, when will I travel?" In 2021 we started a new formula that Dimitri (our concepts guy) cooked up that seemed to work. We would keep Vail and would travel in chunks for 6 months of the year. During the crowded Festive Season, we would leave mid-November and would return mid-January. Then during the crazy President’s Day-Spring Break period, we would leave again for about 2 months. In 2023 we added a two month summer vacation (from our everyday vacation) as well. We were happy with our condo rentals so we planned to keep that gig up.