Giving Retirement a Trial Run

We’ve an announcement to make! We’re taking the plunge and headed towards some form of mini retirement / sabbatical!

Why? What? How? When? Who? Hold your horses, we have the answers you seek.

Why Now?

Mr.C has written about this in our ‘cast the net to our readers’ post. In short, a serious case of the travel bug hit. The elder Coconut is to start school soon and that would restrict our travel desires. We both really want to spend time as a family unit right this instant when our young coconuts are cute and actually want to hang out with us!

What are we going to do?

We intend to travel! Slow travel through European countries, staying as long as we like wherever we like. Roughly, we’ll start with the UK and Ireland. We have some family and friends there so we would like the local orientation. Then we would head over to Estonia and work our way down. We know that we have a 90 day travel restriction in Schengen countries (after which we need to spend 90 days outside Schengen countries for the clock to reset).

So when we are in “Schengen exile”, we will hit the non-Schengen countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Cyprus. Along the way, we’ll go over to Russia where we have some extended family. When it gets colder, we will sort ourselves between Turkey (we did a lightning 2 day stopover before, it was amazing!), Portugal, Spain, Italy, Morocco (yes our geographically attuned readers, this is not Europe anymore!). It seems like we don’t have enough time with this 90 day travel restriction but we’ll figure this out in more detail as we go along. We only plan to book the initial few flights then let the winds of change guide us.

How are we going to fund this?

Excellent question! We have yet to hit our magic number yet but we are at a comfortable level. Comfortable enough to maybe be able to Barista-FI when we do come back to Singers. Ideally though, we would come back and realise we’re totally acing the FIRE dream and need not bother with compulsory work. Realistically, we hope to be able to get into a similar paying profession.

In short, we haven’t worked out the specifics!

1. We will rent out our condo so that should pay for itself with very little that we will have to top up. Strangely, I’m very excited about selling / donating all our other belongings. Often, I look at random belongings we have and wish I could zap it into oblivion. I do have strange day-dreams when am bouncing about trying to put Coco#2 to sleep in the carrier 🙂
2. We plan to travel with an eye on the finances, not drop huge amounts of cash unnecessarily. Perhaps look at some longer term stays to get better stay rates. I am certain Barcelona will see us spending more than just a week! We will indulge in local experiences. We’re not certain what opportunities will arise as we travel but we’re open to it!
3. The flights should be covered by miles. We have yet to decide how best to structure our travel especially after the miles hacking session that Mr.C attended, we’re certain this will be an avenue for good value! Even if it wasn’t, I did a quick check and we both have enough miles to cart the 4 of us over to somewhere in the UK on SQ. Economy, not Business or First as we would have loved.
4. We have to ramp up the savings rate leading up to the trip. So as tempting as the ticket prices to Bali are and all those mailers I get from AirAsia, Scoot, Malindo, SIA…I shall be hitting delete, delete and delete. Eye on the prize, eye on the prize.

We have yet to decide how to budget for the trip as well. A few Round the World (RTW) blogs we found gave us an indication of how much this might set us back. The big ticket items are usually the flights and the accommodation as food can be relatively affordable unlike Australia, where the simplest of meals was an average of AUD24. We have flights covered by miles, leaving the biggest chunk of expenses to be accommodation. The cost indications we have seen are mostly from solo or travelers without kids so their accommodation cost is on the low by staying as hostels and backpacker inns. We would want to have apartments / houses during our travels. We’re open to being hosted by friends and family and kind souls 😀

We’re half tempted to set aside a chunk of cash that we can spend and once we run out of it, we fly back! 😀

When Does This Amazing Trip Start?

We’ll be starting a countdown soon. At this point, we’re targeting May 2019. This could be sooner but hopefully not later!

Who is Travelling?

Just us adults of course, we are leaving the kids with their grandparents.

Nahh, you guessed it. All 4 of us!

So yes, sensational times ahead of us! Stay tuned for more details as we work it out. Feel free to chime in on the comments section on your thoughts and your tips even! We’re brimming with excitement!!