Travel, Travel & Retire!

What is Travel, Travel & Retire all about?

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” ― Vivian Greene

Summer, 2016.

This blog is about an almost 40 year old woman’s search for balance between living a fulfilled mindful life now,  maximizing travel experiences with her husband and two growing children, while still reaching financial independence in her early 50s.

This blog is written from the perspective of ‘mom’ –  a passionate working woman that believes that wealth cannot be defined with a fat bank account if it is not first filled with health, love and a bank full of joyful memories.

A woman that believes that no one can tell you what you can or cannot be or do with your life and how to define your own terms of success. That is on you.

How did I get to this point?

The blog starts in 2016. While it misses many years of work and life experiences in between (including a couple of work breaks for grad school and ‘dual’ stay at home parenting), I offer a summary of those years and main lessons learned here.

Why a blog, why now? Recently, three key things happened that really had a transformational impact on me and lead to many in depth conversations and re-assessment of our life goals and priorities:

1. 18 Summers: I read the following, which took my breath away: “You only have 18 summers. Take time to make some memories.” Yikes, by this short measure, so many years have already come and gone with our young kids. No!!!

2. College Plans: As we were setting up 529s and searching for appropriate funding limits for each of the kids, we got completely overwhelmed.  Whoa! We have some planning and catching up to do! I don’t mean just saving but also in teaching our kids about financial management for their own benefit.

3. Financial Independence can come sooner? I discovered (devoured!) several blogs about early retirement that transformed the way I think about my own financial independence. There are some remarkable people out there living the dream! Could I too?

Armed with this information the question became:

What is the perfect balance for our family to gain financial independence at a decent age, have enough funds to travel with our kids ‘now’, help them with enough savings to attend college AND arm them with enough knowledge of financial management along the way to avoid debt for themselves?

And so this blog – Travel Travel & Retire! was born. Join me in our journey to see if we ever find that balance…

Next, check out what to expect from this site and get a closer look at our completely transparent and detailed financial independence starting points, goals and progress reports.