TL;DR, This post could be called No Job, No Home, Many Kids: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (roughly in that order).

It’s been over two years since we both quit our jobs, sold our home, and took to the road in our small RV with our child and two dogs; Since that time we’ve had fun, headaches, learned lessons, doubled the number of children we have, watched our net worth increase and oscillate wildly, and also greatly increased the amount of time we spend with our kids each day. If you are wondering how retirement has been going so far, read on. The finances are easy, the big existential questions are harder: “Who are you?” and “What do you want?”. Consider this a belated follow up to the post documenting our first six months of retirement in a motorhome.

A brief summary of what we’ve been up to in the intervening year and a half since my last update: continued traveling in the motorhome (around the Great Lakes, to the US capital and then cross country across the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains before heading down to the desert Southwest), picked up temporary home bases here and there as convenient, delivered a child successfully (only one of us really did the hard work related to that), repeatedly navigated health insurance bureaucracy, experienced the terrible twos (I’m wondering if the saying doesn’t refer to the two decades until they move out), tried our hand at a bunch of pet and house sitting as we bounced around the country, spent a month or so in Southeast Asia, jumped back and forth between the US and Canada, chased good weather north and south while discovering we are horrible snow birds, subsequently missed coastal California climate, tried to sleep in as much as possible while fighting the natural tendencies of toddlers and babies to ruin your sleep; and lately starting to think about a new home base and figure out if it’s possible to get a mortgage while retired. It sounds busy when you write it out like that! Here are some big picture ideas of what we’ve found and learned during two years of a semi nomadic retirement.

Not Having A Job

The no job part of retirement is pretty awesome. I’m someone who enjoyed their work, found it intellectually stimulating, etc., but even given all that, not having to work has been great and very relaxing. Deciding how to spend your time each day without worrying how to fit life around a job has been a positive development (for caveats on how free we actually have been about choosing how to spend our time, see section three about the joys of spending time with your children). At this point, it would be hard for me to think about going back to traditional employment, but strange things happen all the time.

I thought I would miss the firehose of cash once we quit our jobs. That worry would sometimes creep into my head at the beginning of retirement, but it doesn’t cross my mind anymore, with two exceptions:

When evaluating new home bases, the uncertainty about the cost of living in whatever area we might call home in the future is more annoying without a firehose of cash, especially as it seems that we are most drawn to HCOL areas. If we had gone into retirement with a homebase already picked and the expenses figured out, we’d have one less reason to worry about the lack of steady income. Realizing that you naively thought you don’t need to pay for daycare anymore in retirement but then realize how much you miss having access to paid childcare. I wouldn’t let this worry stop me from paying for childcare, one of the purposes of money is to throw it at problems until they go away right?

There are two aspects of having a job that I have missed in retirement, both related to my health and fitness routine: bike commuting and having access to an on-site gym. I commuted to all my jobs by bicycle. It made the most sense financially, environmentally, etc. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was the advantage of a “forced” long bike ride everyday. I enjoy bike riding, and I feel better on days I get in a good bike ride. In theory, I have more time to bike for pleasure now, but in practice I biked more regularly when I “had to” twice a day and it was a fixed part of my daily routine. When I was a commuter, I didn’t need to think about getting on the bike, it wasn’t a a choice, it was a habit. Now, it’s a little too easy to think that it’s too hot or cold outside or that I’m tired (lazy) and make up an excuse not to get on the bike.

Similarly, I was fortunate enough to work at places with onsite gyms. I made sure I took advantage of that perk. For me, having a gym at the office made working out quite convenient and a fun excuse to take a break from work. While working, it would be easy to think “code compiling, simulation running, time to hit the gym”, and then it was easy to step next door and do a few sets on the weights. Now I have to make a conscious effort to work out and go somewhere else to find weights (a home gym might solve some of this, but doesn’t tie in well to being nomadic). My takeaway here is to build a good routine into your working life when you can, and then find a way to take that into retirement as well.

On Being Nomadic

Pick a day, and a different feeling: liberating, stressful, fun, inconvenient, adventurous, rootless, flexible, tiring… Sometimes you want to go wherever the wind takes you and you appreciate the freedom to be able to do that. Other days you want to establish a routine, get comfy at home, and build connections with people. The more flexible you are and slower you travel, the easier it is to set up semi-regular home bases, but building connections with people is still hard if you are always flying in and out of their lives. Regularly coming back to the same place, your hometown for example, can counter this; especially since without a job, you have a more flexible schedule than most, it becomes possible to fit a lot of socializing with friends and family in during visits.

As we’ve been retired longer, our style of visiting places has evolved and we have gotten much slower in our pace of travel. Previously, a week in a new place might have seemed sufficient, but now six weeks barely scratches the surface. We’ve found it worthwhile to find ways to settle in for a while in places when we can: house and petsitting for example, or getting temporary furnished sublets in places we like.

As a wanderer, you have to make an effort to meet people and socialize, but if you can be open minded, out going and flexible, it can work. We’ve also been very happy that we went out of our way to adjust our travel plans any time we might be remotely near old friends and far flung family members. We are flexible and nomads, we can visit and rekindle old ties, it has always been worth the experience.

Being nomadic in general has been a a fun experience but not without its ups and downs.I would do it again, and I’m still learning how to do it. A season for everything.

On Retiring With Young Kids

If you retire while your kids are still young, you get to spend lots of time with them. How is that? Do you know the saying, if you have nothing nice to say… I kid, but maybe there is a reason the happiest retirees live at least ten miles away from their children. That’s harder to do when your kids are under five, unless you want to get child services on your case. Though it may seem obvious, I hadn’t thought about it when we quit our jobs: If you retire while you have young kids, you are becoming stay at home parents. Some people enjoy the experience, some don’t, some people like eating fermented shark meat. There’s no accounting for taste.

In our case, before retirement we only had one child, he spent most of his waking hours in daycare, we’d see him for a little bit in the morning as we rushed to get everyone ready, and then we’d see him for a little bit in the evening when he was already tired out from a full day, then he would shortly be asleep. Now, we have two kids, we get to spend lots of time with them, they tend to set each other off, and we are solely responsible for interacting with them and tending to their needs. It turns out the former was a much more civilized way to live. Some of these concerns can be alleviated with paid childcare, we’ve taken advantage of and enjoyed that when possible, but finding reliable childcare while being nomadic is difficult, and the costs do add up.

Lesson learned in the last two years: Before I might have thought first retire then have kids was a good idea, now my advice would be have a plan and budget for childcare in retirement. So if your plans for retirement include cancelling daycare or having more unprotected sex, be forewarned. Or don’t, it’s your life, and it would be nice to see more retired people around while visiting a playground for the umpteenth time.

On Other Small Mammals

To end on a more upbeat note. Retiring and spending more time with your dogs is pretty great and relatively trouble free. Even in only two years, I realized they are getting older, time will fly fast. Find ways to spend time with your loved ones of every species.

Enjoy retirement, however many small mammals you have roaming around underfoot!