travel – Two Sides of FI

What happens if all the travel you want to do after retiring would break the budget? In this episode, Eric and Jason talk about the importance of travel to their early retirement plans. Topics discussed include financial concerns, disagreeing with your spouse, the value of planning by age range, and much more. Be sure to check out the show notes below.

Show Notes

Essential Background:

We both love travel so we’ve touched on this topic before. The most detailed exchange prior to this episode can be found in How We Travel: Pre + Post Financial Independence, from 2021. There, we compared notes from our respective sides of FI and some recent vacations: 7 days for Pre-FI Eric and 5 weeks for Post-FI Jason. See just how different travel can be once you reach FI and the constraints have been removed.
For more on Jason’s FI journey, check out these episodes centered on his retirement milestones to date: What I Learned in My First Year of “Early Retirement (1 year), My New Life: Two Years After Early Retirement (2 years), and Finding My Way in Early Retirement: A 30 Month Check-In (2.5 years).

Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins – was mentioned by Eric here, and is a much-discussed book in the FIRE community. It’s intended as a “practical guide on how to get the most out of your money—and out of your life”. If you like the aim of prioritizing memorable experiences far ahead of simply accumulating money for later in life, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

Are you familiar with the Camino de Santiago? Jason talked a little about this including his plans to walk the most famous of the Camino routes, the Camino Francés (the French Way), in 2025. There is a wealth of information available online, including on YouTube. If you’re US-based, consider checming out the American Pilgrims site.

Wondering what that word was we were trying to pronounce when talking about traveling to Croatia? Hvar is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, located off the Dalmatian coast, lying among several other islands. It’s consistently ranked in the top of many lists concerned with the best of island travel, and Hvar promotes itself as “the sunniest spot in Europe”.

Have you checked out the Two Sides of FI Discord server? If you’re not familiar, this is an instant messaging social network. Ours is meant to be a community for viewers of our show, as well as a space to discuss all things relation to FIRE. It’s totally open, free of charge, and is anonymous as you’d like. This makes it a safe space to talk about financial topics you might otherwise be sensitive about sharing. Come check it out and see if it fits your interests! There are both desktop and mobile apps available.

Did you know Jason resumed blogging? To be notified of his future posts, please consider subscribing here. He’s also archived his old blog, which documents the first two years after he retired from his career, and started even before Two Sides of FI began. Get more information on those archived posts here.

You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.

Eric’s business: 30X40 Design Workshop
Jason’s blog: the next phase is now
Eric’s Y ouTube Channel
Our podcast

A seven day vacation or 5 weeks of travel – which would you prefer? When you’re working towards financial independence, vacations are a time to set aside work and everyday chores. But they’re constrained by things you don’t often control: accrued vacation time, work and school schedules, business obligations, and holidays, to name a few. In this episode, Eric and Jason compare notes from their two respective sides of FI and their recent vacations: 7 days for Pre-FI Eric and 5 weeks for Post-FI Jason. See just how different is travel once you reach FI and the constraints have been removed.

For more information on Jason’s five-week trip, including the valuable lessons he and his family learned on their longest trip ever, check out his blog post: https://thenextphaseisnow.com/longest-vacation-of-my-life/

Show Notes

As we mentioned in the episode, one leg of Jason’s travels brought the Two Sides of FI together in the same place for the first time in several years, as he and Lorri visited Eric and Laura in Maine. Along with all the fun times we’d planned (and carried out!) for our few days together, we’d intended to film episodes with our spouses – which we did. Unfortunately, a few technical issues meant that we decided not to use that footage after all. However, we believe the two episodes we recorded later with our spouses (Part 1 and Part 2) turned out even better in terms of the quality of our conversations. If you haven’t seen these shows yet, please check them out. Two times Two Sides of FI is the only way to get the full picture!