Follow the sun
Following the sun was the foundation of my retirement plan or, to be more precise, the entire depth of the plan. Profound in its simplicity, disguising half-formed thoughts of days spent exploring new landscapes, cultivating new skills and contemplating the mysteries of existence.
So far these lofty ambitions, have turned out to be somewhat less holistically life-remediating than I’d envisaged. Now I’ve picked up my pen, rather than diminishing my time doom-scrolling, perhaps I’ll glimpse some chinks of enlightenment.
Backstory
The book four-thousand weeks, (work it out), that made an impact. Never mind weeks, months have gone by on the hamster-wheel that have seemed to just vanish. Now, with perhaps 30% of these four-thousand weeks left, at age 56½ a pause beckoned.
My career in Local Government, such as it was, seemed to have prematurely stalled. My wife was more than ready to take a break from fostering after 10 years. Our children were grown, although not yet established. We figured we still had a few years before creeping decrepitude would start to curtail what we could do. So, we jumped.
We’d managed to pay-off the mortgage, blessed by having bought a house and climbing a rung on the ladder before prices exploded. I could, by virtue of being over 55, make use of a pension from an earlier more financially-rewarding career. We could maybe, perhaps, just about, live in England and stretch this out for 10 years until our state and other pensions kicked-in but this would have meant a very frugal existence.
To fund travelling and to live a little more we rented-out our house. It’s still early days but it seems to be working out. It gives us enough to travel for most of the year, to eat (at home) and to pay for accommodation, mainly AirBnBs, in the more affordable parts of the world and in the off-season elsewhere.