Hello world! We’re Rex and Kara – The Roaming Rountrees. We’re about to embark on something many would consider crazy. For years, we’ve had a dream to quit our jobs and travel the world. I’m sure lots of people have had this same dream at some point. However, few act on it, either for financial reasons, or not wanting to rid themselves of all the “stuff” they’ve collected over their lifetimes. We crunched the numbers and talked through every scenario we could think of and decided life is too short not to say we tried. So, we are giving this a go! We plan to embrace a nomadic lifestyle becoming intentionally homeless while traveling the world and experiencing everything this beautiful planet of ours has to offer. We know there will be many incredible surprises and unexpected challenges along the way, but it will all add up to an epic adventure. We’re going to write about our experiences in this space – both the good and the bad – so come back often and please comment. We’d love to know someone is reading this.
Our dream began taking shape in 2017. Until then, we had an arbitrary goal of retiring early. Sort of a “wouldn’t it be nice” type of thing. But a quote by Antoine de Saint Exupéry has stuck with me for most of my adult life which says, “a goal without a plan is just a dream.” So, we needed a plan.
First step was to sell our Northern California home and downsize to an apartment. Our only child was grown and had moved out, so we didn’t need a 4-bedroom house for just the two of us. The housing market had been climbing for a while and the equity would provide a strong launching pad for our savings plan. We invested the equity in the stock market and started saving toward a goal of retiring within five years.
This date coincided with my employer’s retirement benefit eligibility. Kara would be 53 and I would be 49. It could be possible. It would be scary, but we had to try. If the market turned against us, we still had two well-paying jobs we enjoyed, and no one was forcing us to leave. Our worst-case scenario would be to postpone.
Over the next few years, we focused on our savings. We didn’t go to the extreme of eating Ramen noodles to save 90% of our income like some of the extreme examples of early retirement bloggers, but we did make sacrifices. We still took vacations and went out to eat on occasion, but we cut what we felt were frivolous expenses from our budget.
Any money left over at the end of each month, or unexpected refunds or bonuses went into our “Retirement Bridge” account. We called it a bridge because this savings would be the bridge we’d live off until we could access our 401k accounts at 59½. As we downsized, we sold more and more of our possessions, funneling it all into the bridge account.
We shared our plans with our friends and family, so they understood why we were slowly selling everything we owned. We did not tell our employers, though. If our plan went sideways, we didn’t want anything to jeopardize our jobs. Reactions were mixed from family and friends. They ranged from most congratulating us with, “Wow, that is so exciting!” to those that didn’t fully understand or were silently judging our decision. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. What mattered was Kara and I were on the same page with what we would need to achieve it.
I will admit, Kara has been further ahead of me throughout this journey, especially on purging possessions. I was reluctant during each increasingly painful cut as we downsized further and further. I am a logical person. I know we cannot move from place to place around the world with a house full of stuff. But I liked my stuff and had spent years accumulating my stuff.
Logically, I knew our oh-so-comfortable recliners could not come with us. But it didn’t make it any easier watching them get carried out of our apartment by a stranger who had bought them for an absolute steal. While many of our “things” were painful to let go, we found it freeing after a while. Minimalism isn’t so bad after all.
We finally took the leap and informed our employers of our intention to retire at the end of August 2022. This is the day it officially became real. Could we still back out? Sure. But then it would feel like quitting on this grand plan after we’d already told everyone about it. We had to do this! Courage is feeling fear but doing it anyway. What we’re about to do is by no means life threatening, but it is scary and is taking all the courage we can muster to walk away from the security of our paychecks.
On September 1st, five years after selling our home to start this process, we give our laptops back to our employers and board a flight to Spain to begin our grand adventure.
We will be walking the Camino de Santiago from Southern France all the way across northern Spain to the Atlantic Ocean. We expect it to take us nearly two months to complete the 562-mile / 904-kilometer journey which will hopefully allow us time to decompress from our hectic, scheduled lives and slowly transition into a more relaxed nomadic cadence. There will be much more to come on this, so stay tuned.
We hope you’ll find interest in our adventures and decide to follow along. We will share our journey, experiences, learnings and at times, random thoughts with you on this blog. Come roam the world with us!