Travel During COVID, Money, & Nomad Life Q&A

We did our last Q&A video five months ago in Greece to celebrate growing our YouTube community to 1,000 of you. Since then we’ve been in Croatia, Turkey and most recently, Malta and there are now a few thousand of you tuning in every week. But we’re not in Malta anymore, which brings us to our very first question of the Q&A from beacostablanca on instagram: It’s not easy to travel now even within one country. Where are you going next?

Surprise…we’re in Canada! That’s right, we’ve come back to our home country to spend time with family. We’re in our hometown of Toronto right now. And to come back to the first question, it wasn’t easy to get here from Malta. We had to do COVID tests, take three separate flights, narrowly dodge Canada’s new mandatory hotel quarantine and finish up a two-week self isolation. But it was all worth it to spend time with our family. 

We actually received many questions about the hot topic of 2021, which is traveling during COVID.

Travel during COVID

From Larzh220469 on Youtube: The pandemic puts some limitations on where you can go. I have the impression that you so far have focused on the Mediterranean region…Is this in line with what you had originally planned?

Not really. Back in February 2020, we were in Italy. We planned to take a ferry to Croatia and slowly make our way across Eastern Europe by train. This is a part of Europe we’d never been to before. And we were really excited to explore it. We did make it to Croatia many months later but that was the only country we visited from our original list. The rest of our travels have been driven by which countries will let us in. And that list has been getting shorter and shorter. 

That brings us to hoshoro’s question from instagram: Would you still recommend slow travel overseas during Covid lockdowns? Do you feel like you’re being deprived of really experiencing a place?

If you are someone looking to take a two-week vacation, this is definitely not the time to travel. Getting in and out of countries is really complicated right now and the regulations keep changing. You never know when the next flight will be cancelled or a country will suddenly close its borders. 

But if you are a nomad like us with no permanent home anywhere in the world, then yes, a life of travel is still possible — with caveats. You need to be really flexible about where you’re going and when. And you need to keep an eye on the news for the latest developments. And also be prepared to spend a lot on COVID tests. 

Part two of the question: Do we feel that we’re missing out on experiencing a place during COVID lockdowns. In the last seven months of travel, there are only two destinations where we felt impacted in any major way. We went to Zagreb in December specifically to experience the award-winning Christmas Markets. However Croatia just went into national lockdown that week and all the markets were closed.

We also went to Istanbul right afterwards to live out our fantasy of once again enjoying a lavish Turkish breakfast sitting on a patio. But Turkey also declared a national lockdown — just days after we bought our tickets — and restaurants were doing takeaway only, not to mention all the other closures and curfews. 

All in all, these were minor inconveniences. In fact, we’ve been able to enjoy so many special experiences over these past seven months, which brings us to our next question from Virnsky on instagram: During your 7 months of travel during CoVid, what is the best and the worst experience you have encountered so far?

We’ve been very fortunate to have enjoyed many special experiences over the past seven months. We explored the Acropolis in Athens with almost no one else around; we watched the sun set over the ancient monasteries in Meteora in Northern Greece; we had the entire wall walk in Dubrovnik to ourselves; we toured around a basically empty Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. 

You’ll probably notice a theme here. We had once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to experience bucket list sights with hardly anyone else around. All those places that we mentioned are normally jam packed, shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists.

That said, there have been some challenges as well, mostly related to travel planning. The worst experience was our recent one of trying to get from Malta to Canada on short notice. The only route still running had multiple connections. Plus our flights kept getting cancelled. In the meantime, all the Canadian news headlines were about upcoming mandatory hotel quarantines that would cost travelers $2,000. We did finally make it here but it took literally days of phone calls with Air Canada to make it happen. 

Next question from our friends Tim and Amy from GoWithLess (and if you’re not already subscribed to their channel, you should really check it out): What do you look for in a rental in the post-Covid world that wasn’t on your radar beforehand? 

We have a very long list of must-haves for our Airbnbs. But the number one thing that we NOW look for is a good cancellation policy. We never know when a flight might be cancelled and our whole trip needs to change. 

We used to always book 28 days or more in our airbnbs, which gives us the long stay discount. However there is no flexibility when you book 28 days; you basically can’t cancel those stays without a huge financial penalty. So now we book stays of 27 nights and negotiate with the host for a long stay discount. This way we get a better cancellation policy; it just takes a little more back and forth with the host. 

Next up is From Jessie C on Youtube: How are you going to be vaccinated? 

Great question! We would love to be vaccinated as soon as it becomes available to us. So we’ll wait our turn and get the jab whenever the timing is right. 

Money

The first money question is from Fred W by email: After one year of full time slow travel, do you feel you are still on track financially? Any lessons learned or surprises? 

Yes, we are very much still on track financially. As community members know, we retired early from our corporate jobs in 2019 and have been living off the returns of our investments ever since. We would say that we were conservative in our financial planning. We made sure that all the risk management pieces were in place: we are living on less than 3% of our net worth; we have a year of cash as a buffer; and three month’s living expenses as an emergency fund. 

But like everyone else, we never could have predicted how many ups and downs we would experience in our first year of retirement. We’ve weathered a pandemic, extra emergency spending, global lockdowns, a market crash and recovery — all in one year. Somehow we’ve stayed within our budget. In fact, our net worth has actually grown, which brings us to this question from j_d_prescott on instagram: Did you always know your FI plan would work?

We were very confident that our financial plan would work. But we had to be. Before we retired, we had great jobs with great salaries in a great country; we were living in Singapore and loving the opportunity to explore Asia. We needed to be really really sure of our plan before giving it all up: our jobs, our home, and all our security. 

We had looked at the numbers every which way and we purposely decided to live on less than we could afford in order to have an additional buffer. We’re at a place in our lives when frugality is still fun. And we can be flexible about which countries we spend time in to make the numbers work. 

A related question from Edwina W on Youtube: Could you share your monthly/yearly budget, and whether it matches your investment withdrawal rate? 

We share a selection of our monthly costs in our cost of living series. For these videos, we focus on the expenses that most people would have when they’re travelling, such as accommodations, food, entertainment and transportation. For these, we seem to be spending around $2,500 USD each month.  

Of course, there are a number of costs that we don’t share in these videos because they are specific to us and our personal needs. Those expenses include our international transportation, our personal expenses like clothing or technology, gifts and donations and any costs related to flying around the world with two dogs. And, yes, the total for all our spending is comfortably within our withdrawal rate.

Next from Nosilla928 on Youtube: What adjustments would you have made to enjoy the journey as well as the destination? 

This question is about something that we’re really bad at doing: enjoying the present versus planning for the future. We’re very goal-oriented, action-oriented people. Once we knew about financial independence, our entire lives were focused on achieving that goal. Our approach was to save all the freedom for after we reached financial independence. So we worked, worked, worked and saved, saved, saved. Then we retired and finally had a chance to enjoy our freedom. Our approach was exhausting.

If you’re five or ten years away from retiring, we would recommend to not be so focused on that one goal that it becomes the most important thing in your life. Instead, think about the life you want once you’ve achieved financial independence and then bring some of those elements into your life today. Maybe even take a sabbatical or a mini retirement along the way so that the journey becomes as enjoyable as the destination. 

Dogs

We had quite a few questions about our dogs….

From yourgirlinitaly on Instagram: How complicated has it been to travel with your pets?

From wrfarina on Instagram: How is traveling that much with dogs!

And from K. Johnson on YouTube: I would like to hear more about your dogs…

We love traveling with our dogs but honestly it’s pretty complicated. We need to make sure we have all the right paperwork every time we enter a new country. We have to find pet friendly Airbnbs. Not every airline will take pets in cabin — and certainly not the budget airlines. So we often end up paying more for our tickets and of course we have to pay for the dogs as well. We have to find out the rules for every mode of transportation — cabs, trains, ferries and buses — that we want to take in each country. 

So with all that fuss, is it worth it to bring them along? Absolutely. We love having them with us. They make every place feel like home. And it’s always so great to see them on the hiking trails in Turkey or Malta or wherever we might be. For us that’s the big reward and they love it too. 

Nomad life

Yourgirlinitaly on Instagram asked What about the slow travel experience gets old for you? 

We love our slow travel lifestyle but the constant planning does get a little tiring. When you live in one place, you choose your home and stay there for years. But with our lifestyle, we need to find a new apartment every month or two. That means combing through literally hundreds of Airbnb listings every month, figuring out neighbourhoods, and negotiating with dozens of airbnbs hosts. Sometimes it feels like planning our travels is a full time job. But we actually love the experience of being in new places every month. It may be a little work to figure out our plans but that’s part of the fun of it too.

From John M by email: For people who have never slow traveled compare it to the ‘normal’ 10-day vacations that most of us take. 

What we love about slow travel is the opportunity to get to know a place slowly. There’s no time pressure. There’s no need to take expensive tours to see it all in one afternoon. We can explore at our own pace and get to know a city beyond the famous sights. Our previous experience with two-week vacations is that you cram so many things in you’re just exhausted at the end. And then suddenly it’s Monday and you’re back at work answering emails as if you never had a vacation at all. 

That said, we do miss some elements of taking vacations. We used to love grabbing a backpack and flying off for a week of inn-to-inn hiking. In fact, this is exactly the type of travel we really wanted to focus on once we retired. But the logistics are a little more complicated now. We’re not traveling light anymore; we’ve got our whole household with us including huge pieces of luggage and two dogs. So it’s not as easy to organize those types of experiences these days but we’re working on it.

And a final question from neilmitchelluk on instagram: In your last couple of videos you seemed less certain about how long you would consider travelling. Has Covid shaken your resolve and how long do you *think* you’ll still be on the road for?

We are still wanting to travel and planning to travel for the next few years. Yes, COVID has made it a lot harder. It’s been increasingly difficult to get from one destination to the next. But we don’t plan to stop traveling anytime soon.

We have started a new series where we share our thoughts on what it would be like to make a home in the countries we’ve been to. But that’s for a far-off distant future. For now, we’re very keen to keep having new experiences in new places.

If you enjoyed this Q&A and still want more, you can check out our last Q&A right here.