Travel Archives - CLIPPING CHAINS

January 22, 2024January 21, 2024

QA12: Will A Life Of Financial Independence Meet Expectations?

We’re back to the digital mailbag to answer your questions!

For this week:

An update on markets and our personal finance situation
The role of dividends in growth and withdrawal assumptions
Expectations vs reality on a life of financial independence
Our experience with health insurance without employer-sponsored plans
Real estate investing: an update on our experiences and economics as remote landlords
Health insurance considerations for long-term travel
Short- to medium-term savings goals (like a house) versus saving for retirement
Loss of purpose without a traditional job
So much more!

December 26, 2023December 25, 2023

“The Rewards of Being in One Place for a While” (Meghan Walker and Callan Cooper)

By popular demand, I’ve decided to extend a travel series centered around the topic of building community or maintaining our need for social interactions when away from home. Community building is especially complicated when abroad, where cultures and languages vary considerably from our own. My guests today, veteran travelers with considerable expat experiences, are perfectly suited to discuss this topic.

Meghan Walker, a previous guest who writes at awaytofi.com, spent many of her formative years living abroad in Kenya and New Zealand. Her husband, Callan Cooper, is an expat living in the United States from New Zealand, where they met. Meghan and Callan joined me in my home in Colorado for a rare in-person interview, where we discussed in detail the beauty and challenges of international extended travel, careers, evolving travel philosophies, and financial tactics that can have you living a similar life much sooner than you think.

November 20, 2023November 18, 2023

The Social Dilemma of Extended Travel (Jeff, A Way to FI)

In October I published a mini episode on my thought processes on the pros and cons of extended travel abroad. Many of you left comments or emailed me your thoughts, and I’m so thankful for your input. You’ve all given me plenty to consider. One of the most insightful emails came from Jeff of awaytofi.com, a previous guest on this podcast (Episode 44). Jeff has been living abroad for over fifteen months with his wife, Rose, and as such is well-versed in discussing the impacts of extended travel, particularly on our social lives. This week’s episode is an in-depth exploration of extended travel, especially as it relates to our human need for a sense of place and community. Travel takes us away from our tribe, so how do we create new ones? Do we even need to? You can probably expect more content like this with upcoming guests and articles.

October 16, 2023October 15, 2023

Mini Episode: Is the Best Life Lived at Home?

Years ago, we decided to one day try living abroad for at least a year. We always loved traveling and also always felt that we never had enough time to truly experience a place beyond the superficial. I wanted to stay for a while, learn the language, and slowly morph into a new life mode. But now I’m starting to question the wisdom of this decision. Is living abroad a bad idea?

October 9, 2023October 8, 2023

An Ode to the Road Trip

This is a bit unusual, but why not? Here’s my love letter to the road trip.

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023

The Problem with Bucket Lists and How to Be Happy with Less

It’s often said that happiness equals what you have minus (or sometimes divided by) what you want. When our wants are many, what we have is of little consequence. That is why there are hordes of unhappy millionaires and high achievers who quietly suffer (yes, suffer) under the weight of lofty and insatiable desires and ambitions. Western ideals place great importance on the “haves.” And despite an anecdotal feeling that my greater social circle is less materialistic, I’m less certain that we’ve diminished our appetite for having things. The things look and feel different. Less like fancy watches or cars or gaudy showings of riches and more like spreadsheets full of countries and crags unvisited, food not tasted, status not yet achieved, or routes not sent. We believe subconsciously or otherwise that by checking items off our bucket list we will arrive at some sense of blissful satisfaction. But biology and evolution suggest otherwise.

September 25, 2023September 24, 2023

Dr. Jim Dahle of the White Coat Investor on Building the Ideal Life

Jim Dahle is the founder of the White Coat Investor, a widely consumed personal finance and investing blog and podcast specifically designed for physicians and other high-income careers. What Jim created in 2011 as a simple blog has grown into a multi-media empire that now employs fifteen people and hosts content from a range of columnists.

Jim has cut back from his full-time (plus) emergency physician career and White Coat Investor responsibilities to focus on what makes life worth living, and that’s where I wanted to pick up this conversation. Jim is a climber, husband, and father of four. Today we discuss how he’s managed to step away, at least slightly, from his hard-charging career and blogging days to what he’s now describing as his ideal life.

May 29, 2023May 28, 2023

Six Important Reasons to Reconsider Early Retirement

Today on episode 65 I’m revisiting a post published almost exactly two years ago. At the time of writing, I’d been away from my corporate job for eighteen months. I spent six months of that time living in a tiny A-frame camper with my wife and dog before resettling in the St. George, Utah area.

I was climbing a lot and working on this website, but I can now comfortably admit that I was in a bit of a low spot in terms of overall life satisfaction. The issue was one of expectations. In other words, I expected too much about a life without my career and I took for granted elements of my work life that enhanced life satisfaction. I was feeling stale with this project—I wouldn’t start the podcast until late summer—and despite having all the time in the world to dedicate to the craft of climbing, I was slowly coming to the realization that I’d used climbing as an attempt to fill a void that was not yet clearly defined or outlined.

Two years later, I’ve spent considerable time addressing each of the areas discussed in this post, to varying degrees of success. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for other changes still ongoing.

May 22, 2023May 21, 2023

Jeff and Priti Wright: You Might Need a Sabbatical

Today on episode 64 I’m excited to welcome Priti and Jeff Wright, two accomplished young professional alpinists from Seattle, WA. In 2020, Priti, a software developer, and Jeff, a mechanical engineer at Boeing, embarked on a year-long sabbatical to travel across the globe and climb alpine objectives in Patagonia, France, and Pakistan, finishing by the beach in Hawaii.

The trip was wildly successful, even amid the raging pandemic, including ascents of the Cerro Torre, the six classic North Faces of the Alps in a single season (including the Eiger North Face in winter), culminating in the first ascent of K6 Central and the third ascent of K6 West—both 7000+-meter peaks—in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan.

In contrast to early retirement, Priti and Jeff make the compelling case for a traditional career peppered with sabbaticals. This episode is filled with lifestyle and career philosophy, planning concepts, detailed financial considerations, and just a damn good time. And they are even planning their next sabbatical in 2024, which will look drastically different than their trip in 2020. You won’t want to miss this one.

February 27, 2023February 27, 2023

Five Lessons from Three Years of Financial Independence

One evening, circa 2011, I sat over dinner with my future wife in our small and sweaty Houston, TX rented bungalow. I was and still am an occasional cheap bastard, so the air conditioning was almost certainly set to engage on an “as-needed” basis, far from anything resembling comfort. The concept of financial independence wasn’t on the radar.

During downtime at work—I told you I was distracted—I was scouring numerous free WordPress blogs documenting the travels of zealous climbing dirtbags. They were camping and climbing and making whatever money they needed along the way. People were even starting to live and travel in vans, something I associated with sixties and seventies surfer culture. I wanted that life.

At this point in my late twenties, I was maybe barely a year into my career as a geologist in the oil and gas industry. But I could see the writing on the wall—this would not and could not be my career for the next 35-40 years. In fact, at that moment, I couldn’t see myself lasting my target three to five years until I expected to return to school for a career in academia. And there was a new problem: I’d kind of grown obsessed with this new hobby of rock climbing.

Twelve years later, I finally found a very different path to a life of freedom, if such a thing even exists. After three years of financial independence, what follows are some key lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Category: Travel