Retire oversea for $700 a month? Hali brought home this clipping and right off the bat I thought, no way!! That's $23 and some change per day. So it got me thinking, that $700 refers to monthly expenses for 1 person. If I double it, could 2 live on $1400 a month? Yes, probably.
I took out a notebook and jotted down our monthly expenses: newspaper, heat, water, insurance, etc. I had a full page of our expenses not including property taxes or mortgage. Imagine what the total was? Somewhere between $1200-$1400. Without these expenses, we'd have $50 a day in our pockets.
On our first trip to Europe in 1985, I brought 2 guidebooks. Travel guru Rick Steves' Europe Through The Back Door and Europe on $5 a Day. At that time Rick Steves was a little known travel writer from Seattle with just Back Door, should I say, under his (money) belt. But I was fascinated by his travel savvy. Now he has his entire Europe guidebook empire which I refer to for European insights but I'm pretty sure he's no longer staying in hostels. That's why Europe on $5 a Day came in handy. It was written by broke college students willing to take a room in a convent. Our budget allowed for something in between both travel philosophies. That year we did 3 months in Europe for about $50 a day including rail passes. If we did it then, we certainly could do it today.
From the time I saw that clipping until today, our strategy for the end game was inspired. Stay tuned.
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