The goal of the DEAL process is to gain ourselves enough time to do the things we’ve come up with in our dreamlines. The best way to live out a dream is to take a mini-retirement. A mini-retirement is a months-long hiatus from work during which you live one of your dreams. Unlike traditional retirement, you can have many periods of mini-retirement throughout your life.
The author spends most of his mini-retirements traveling, so from now on, the term “mini-retirement” will specifically refer to relocating to a new place for several months.
A mini-retirement is a better way to travel than a vacation or sabbatical because when you’re mini-retired you have enough time to truly experience a place. Vacations are so short they’re exhausting—to see a lot, you have to binge it. Sabbaticals are longer, but they only happen once or twice. Another advantage of mini-retirements is that they can be more affordable than vacation. Hotels and hostels are a lot more expensive than renting an apartment, so spending a month living somewhere else may not be any more expensive than a week-long vacation.
(Shortform note: The author both recommends that you disengage from work and gives advice on ways to work during your mini-retirement. The implication is that you can choose whether or not to work during your mini-retirement.)
Fear-Setting
You might be scared to go on a mini-retirement or find yourself coming up with excuses not to go. To get past your fears, recall the fear-setting exercise in Chapter 3. You might worry that traveling is dangerous, or fear for your kids if you have them. Here are some common fears and counterarguments:
- Travel is dangerous. Most major US cities have more violent crime than many of the countries the author has visited. Traveling usually isn’t any more dangerous than staying home. Check the US Department of State for travel warnings and avoid places you’re not comfortable visiting.
- My kids might get lost or hurt. A mini-retirement is safer than vacations because it’s more like regular life. On vacations, you’re constantly visiting different, crowded places, and there’s lots of opportunity to get split up.
- If something happens to me, my kids will be on their own. If you’re worried about this, train your kids to be independent. Get them to memorize phone numbers and addresses so they can find their own way.
- My kids might misbehave. If you’re worried about your children’s behavior, bribe them by paying them per hour of good behavior and docking them for bad.
To mitigate these fears:
- If you’re traveling with your kids, take a short, practice mini-retirement first.
- Whenever you arrive somewhere new, organize a week of language classes. Schools will often help you with logistics such as finding an apartment, and you’ll get to know people right away.
Airfare Tips
Because mini-retirements last on the order of months, you’re not necessarily concerned with the low-cost travel associated with binge vacations. Since you’re relocating somewhere for a considerable amount of time, having a less horrible travel experience is probably worth the extra money you spend on a direct flight. It’s always nice to get a deal, though, so do the following to save on airfare:
- Buy tickets either three months in advance or at the last minute.
- Leave and come back Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
- Buy a ticket to the major airport closest to your destination. Once you arrive, buy a ticket to your exact destination with a local airline, which will be cheaper.
- Use a credit card with rewards points for your muse expenses, and then use the rewards for flights.
What to Bring
Travel is a good excuse to narrow down your possessions because going away forces you to evaluate what you have—you have to either bring things or store them. It might be hard for you to get rid of things. Capitalism has trained us that if we bought something, it was valuable. But once you get momentum going, it becomes easier to let go of things. Having fewer possessions can also make you happier—less physical clutter means less mental clutter.
Don’t bring too much when you travel. How much luggage you have will significantly affect your trip. You’ll have to carry it and store it. Bring only things you really need. The author recommends bringing only:
- A week’s worth of clothing.
- Copies of important documents.
- Debit, credit, and cash in the local currency.
- A lock for hostels and lockers.
- Digital dictionaries.
- A travel guide.
- IF you’re a writer, a laptop_._ Otherwise, if you need to access your computer while you’re away, use remote desktop software in an internet cafe.
Convince yourself to pack so minimally by:
- Bringing a “settling fund.” A settling fund is money you’ve put away to buy anything you left behind and discover you do in fact need, or to buy anything annoying to bring such as umbrellas or sunscreen. Err on the side of bringing less, because you won’t need as much as you think you do. The author’s settling fund is $100-300.
- Plan on borrowing things. For example, if you’re going on a whale watching tour, someone else on the trip will definitely bring binoculars, so you don’t have to.
How to Plan a Mini-Retirement
There are four steps to planning a mini-retirement. You may not have to do all the steps for each mini-retirement. Here are the steps:
- Assess your finances. Write a list of your assets and how much they’re worth, incoming cash, and expenses. What can you get rid of? Consider how much you use it or if it creates more stress than it’s worth.
- Fear-set. Fear-set one of your dreamlines or a one-year mini-retirement in Europe.
- Choose where you want to go on your first mini-retirement. You can stay in your own country, but it’s easier to get out of the working mindset somewhere with a different culture. To find a place:
- Pick a place to start and then wander until you find somewhere you like.
- Choose a place you know you like, and do some shorts trips in the area.
- The author recommends Argentina, Thailand, and Berlin if you’re looking for a low cost of living and somewhere easy to start.
- When appropriate, start your mini-retirement itinerary.
Mini-Retirement Itinerary
This itinerary covers the time from three months before you leave until a week after you’ve arrived:
- Three months before:
- Apply the 80/20 rule to your belongings.
- Look into travel medical insurance.
- Figure out what to do with your current home, whether that’s ending a lease, renting/swapping, or selling.
- Two months before:
- Set up autopayments for your bills with credit or debit cards.
- Get credit cards for all your checking accounts, set the cash advances to $0, and leave them at home. They’re to protect against accidental overdraft.
- Give your accountant or a trusted family member power of attorney so they can sign documents for you while you’re away.
- One month before:
- Set up mail forwarding to someone you’ll pay to email you descriptions of your mail.
- Get all vaccinations.
- Trial remote desktop software to make sure it works.
- So that you continue to get paid by resellers and distributors, if your muse’s fulfillment house accepts checks, switch to direct deposit, get the fulfillment house to handle them, or get people to use Paypal or send their checks to your power of attorney person.
- Two weeks before:
- Make copies of your important documents.
- Change your phone plan to something cheap and change the voicemail message to something that tells people you’re away, won’t be checking your voicemail, and gives your email address.
- Set up email responders to tell people how often you’ll be responding.
- If you’re an employee, set up a way for your boss to contact you.
- Find accommodation. The author recommends you start with a hostel and choose an apartment after you get there, so you can check out neighborhoods and talk to locals first.
- Optional: get foreign medical evacuation insurance.
- One week before:
- Decide a batch schedule for your routine tasks. This helps you maintain discipline to do them once you’re traveling.
- Save digital copies of important documents to a USB drive.
- Pack, store your things, and move in with a family member or friend until you go.
- Two days before:
- Store your car safely.
- Cancel auto insurance.
- First morning and afternoon after arrival:
- Tour the city on a hop-on-hop-off bus and bicycle to check out apartment neighborhoods.
- Don’t buy souvenirs until the last two weeks of your stay.
- First evening after arrival:
- Get an unlocked cell with a prepayable SIM card.
- Set up apartment showings.
- Days 2 and 3 after arrival:
- Sign a one-month lease on an apartment. Start with a month in case you don’t like the place.
- Move-in day:
- Buy local health insurance.
- A week after move-in day:
- Get rid of anything you brought that you don’t need.