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How does it work with having a companion. It might be easier to find someone with the same outlook. But if you're already in a relationship it's going to be an

• toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I might be able to answer that. My wife and I are early 30s. I spent my 20s in the rat race, working 60-80 hour weeks for material possesions (nice vehicle, luxury townhouse, etc). At some point, I got tired of it and said, "Can we try something different?" I switched to a fully remote job. We disposed of the townhouse (no equity in it). We downsized our lives (1 car! I ride a bicycle everywhere! You would not imaging how much better shape I'm in) and began to live more frugally with a short-term plan of moving onto a sailboat and living on the ocean for a few years. We save 50%+ of my income (we live in a low cost of living area), we should be able to retire comfortably around age 45. We'll be moving onto our sailboat in the next few months, learning to sail together, and then starting a long circumnavigation around the world (~5 years). My wife didn't require any convincing. More quality time together for getting rid of things we shouldn't have cared about in the first place? It was an easy sell. If anything, she sold me. Rule 1: Pick the right partner.
  • lowglow 11y ago
    Beautiful. You are an inspiration! :)
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Thank you! But I can't take the credit. These other people I found organically online gave us the push we needed: http://www.thenomadtrip.com/ http://www.thenomadtrip.com/ http://fattygoodlander.com/ http://fattygoodlander.com/ http://www.sailingtotem.com/ http://www.sailingtotem.com/ I love technology. I love the work I do. But I will only live so long. Work to live, don't live to work. Make enough to live well enough to spend time living well. You won't lay on your death bed wishing you crammed a few more hours in at the computer. You will regret the extra hours you could've spent with those you care about.
      • astrowilliam 11y ago
        Your last statement really hit a note with me. I've been spending my life chasing money and recently realized that I was just filling a hole. I have found someone that is willing to go adventuring with me. Screw the boring office worker life, it's time to start living. Good luck and have an incredible life!
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
          Life is short, I encourage you to live it to the fullest! (and it sounds like you are on your way!)
          • astrowilliam 11y ago
            Thanks, man! I can feel the positive changes happening already.
      • intellegacy 11y ago
        also see reddit.com/r/vandwellers
  • rokhayakebe 11y ago
    What a wife you have. One in a million, indeed.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      The "secret" (there isn't one!) is really to simply find someone who wants to live the same life you do. Easier said than done, it's true, but you need compatibility whether you want to live a $1M/ year or a $20k/year lifestyle together.
  • js2 11y ago
    Re: sailing around the world. I'm sure a lot of things have changed since this was written, but you might be interested in this ebook - http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/sailbook.html http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/sailbook.html
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • cylinder 11y ago
    Well you got a remote job, so you did a little locational arbitrage. Most people leave the small towns because of lack of opportunity. The cost of living is low because incomes are low. Can someone come up with a model that's sustainable and applicable to the majority of people?
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      My remote job pays the same I'd make locally in my tech niche. The benefit comes from no longer having to own a car for myself to commute, gas, insurance on that car, etc. It freed up the $20K in equity I had in the vehicle, and saves me $5-8K/year in commute costs. If I lived in SF, I would pay at least $2-3K/month for rent alone (that's $24K-$36K/year after tax money you're just burning up). Yet, you can spend under $1K in almost any non-major metro in the US. > Can someone come up with a model that's sustainable and applicable to the majority of people? Make more than you spend and save combined, live frugally, spend judiciously. This is not rocket science.
      • hueving 11y ago
        Right, you have a high paying job so it's easy for you to sit on a perch well above the median and tell people how simple it is.
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
          It's simple the same way exercise is simple: knowing what to do is easy, having willpower to do it is hard. Being financially independent can be done on a median wage, full stop. https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ "Is that all too fluffy and philosophical? OK, fine. Here’s how to cut your life costs in half. Start by getting rid of your Debt Emergency if you have one. Live close to work. Move to another city if you enjoy adventure. Don’t borrow money for cars, and don’t buy stupid ones. Ride a bike wherever you can. Cancel your TV service. Stop wasting money on groceries. Give your kids the opportunity to achieve greatness without being pampered. Lose the overpriced cell phones. Learn to appreciate the life-boosting joy of using your own body to get things done. Learn to mock convenience. Practice optimism." http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/08/01/a-millionaire-is-made-ten-bucks-at-a-time/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/08/01/a-millionaire-is-m... "A family of four in the US can live comfortably on about 24k per year plus having a paid-off house. With an nice conservative 4% annual withdrawal/return rate on your investments, you need $600k invested to generate this cashflow, inflation-adjusted, forever, plus your $200k house. $800k total. Or, if you want to get off your butt and work very occasionally to earn $12k per year, you can slice the $600k number down to $300k! Or you can save the $600k AND work, and keep saving more and more over the years – ending up a multimillionaire all while doing very little paid work." You will never get ahead if you live in SF, period (maybe if you strike a startup lottery ticket; with those odds, might as well buy a traditional lottery ticket and save the nights and weekends). I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You can view it as an adventure, but you'll eventually need to dig out financially (overcompensate retirement savings) when you decide to move somewhere else.
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • Grishnakh 11y ago
    Yeah, but where do you find the right partner? Lemme guess, you found yours in college, or around that age. I have to go the opposite way: I'm recently divorced (I violated your Rule 1), and currently living just a bit too far from a major metro area for women there to want to date me, and there's absolutely zero women around here I have any interest in. So my next move is to move into the metro area, as close to downtown as affordable (considering both rents/CoL and job availability/location), because if I want to have a social life at all, that's where I have to go to find available women in my age range who I would consider dateable. The other problem I see with your plan is that it sounds like you might not have any other friends or family (kinda hard to bring your friends with you on a 5-year sailing trip). I did that with my last wife: I didn't have any friends besides her, and moved around several times with her because of her career, and I think I got tired of her (it didn't help that we had some compatibility issues). Most common advice about marriage seems to include something about having friends outside the marriage. Living in a city gives you better access to that; living on a sailboat virtually guarantees you won't.
  • mclovinit 11y ago
    It's good to see you have a teammate going forward. I may try something similar if my spouse is in agreement. Sailing definitely requires a solid partner. It's hard work. My spouse and I (in our 40s) live in a fairly old and small single family home well below our means. Our neighbors are retired and spend a lot of time on their boat sailing up and down the coast. They have definitely been through some stormy weather through the years (pun intended), but that's what it takes. You won't know the shipmate ya have 'til ya "capsize" arrghhh :) Sometimes they are gone for months at a time. One of them picks up work related to sailing when not sailing and is quite handy in fixing anything from sails to refurbishing old boats. When they are not sailing they come back to their home which has been paid off for many years. I suppose paying real estate tax is always there, but the benefit is that they have a good community to come home to. Plus it gives me a chance to partake in conversation and share a pint or three in front of a warm fire ;)
  • serge2k 11y ago
    Living in a boat travelling the world, just the two of you. vs Crashing in a van in Palo Alto. One of those sounds decidely more romantic and fun.
  • flyrain 11y ago
    I envy you, man. Just out of curiosity, do you have children? Or are you going to have children?
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      We have a little one on the way, and intend to sail with him or her. We intend to have another eventually, or adopt when we return to land.
  • prawn 11y ago
    What does your wife do? If one of the two of you is freelancing and has a variable income, getting the one with a reliable income to quit is risky.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      My wife doesn't work. We're a one income family. We have sufficient assets that no work is necessary for at least 5 years (based on a low burn rate).
• kirykl 11y ago
  I was in a relationship and after my companion decided to end it, I found out it was to join someone living in a van. Don't be too quick to discount relationships with that lifestyle
• lowglow 11y ago
  Yeah, it's all about them. If they're into it, awesome, but in my personal experience the people I dated were very much used to a standard of living, and had some expectations of my contributions to uphold an image. But this journey is ultimately up to you. You start out by asking yourself what do you truly find valuable? Are all of these things you've collected simply working together because in combination they've found some local maxima to sustain your current life? One thing I've found is that even if the people you knew before aren't available to make the transition, there are plenty people on the other side that will know you for who and what you are to them. Taking a stand and fighting for your change and growth takes some guts, and people find that admirable. Dating has also never been better because you both immediately enter into these relationships without pretense.
• timmaah 11y ago
  My wife was into it 100%. We sold the big expensive house and moved into a 25' Airstream almost 4 years ago. I felt like I wasn't getting ahead. A bit stuck. I know she did as well. A bit different from the grandparent we still work a normal 40 hour week with normal (remote) jobs but have kind of checked out of the normal american dream. http://i.imgur.com/FQfQIlu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FQfQIlu.jpg That little dot in the middle is where we are spending this week. Middle of the Mojave Desert about 10 miles from any human.
  • rpgmaker 11y ago
    Where you already working the job and then talked management into letting you work remotely? Also, do you use some form of satellite comm service in order to get internet connectivity in remote areas? I'm interested in knowing how people go about getting these (apparently) high paying remote jobs...
    • timmaah 11y ago
      My job is mid web developer salary range. Currently on my second job since we went nomadic. This job was remote from the start though I am the only remote person at this company. Internet is all cellular connections. Verizon unlimited plan with AT&T on our phones as backup. We use a powered booster with an antenna on the roof. Interstate 40 is ~12 miles away from our current location, so the tower we are on was built to serve the highway.
• nether 11y ago
  There was a guy on Reddit living in a van who answered this. He said the vast majority of women he met responded extremely negatively to his living situation.