Welcome to the bigger pockets money podcast show number 279 where we check back in with Amy and Tim from go with less and see how they're travel around the world retirement is going in the middle of COVID.

So being financially independent is one of our biggest assets being healthy is the one of our biggest assets, but being flexible is certainly on the very short list.

And we have found that we are so flexible that we're kind of like yoga teachers because the pivoting and adaptability we've had to a exhibit is mind blowing.

Hello, hello, hello, my name is Mindy Jensen and today I am flying solo. I am here to make financial independence less scary less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story because I truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you're starting.

That's right whether you want to retire the early and travel the world go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate or start your own business will help you launch your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.

Our regular listeners will know that Scott usually says that the keys off being CEO today so I am talking to Amy and Tim by myself.

Joining me today are Amy and Tim Rutherford from go with less we last chatted with them in January of 2019 on episode 57. Okay, before we get to the show let's hear a word from today show sponsors.

Amy and Tim shared their money story of being high income earners who also happen to be high stavars they thought they'd be able to retire by age 55 but within one year of learning about fire they were financially independent they were really big savers they had been spending a hundred and 15 thousand dollars per year living in a big house and thinking that they were being super frugal.

If you listen to their original episode I said I wasn't going to judge them but I totally judge them because after discovering fire they cut their spending down to thirty six thousand dollars a year living in a paid off townhouse and missing absolutely nothing about their former life.

In fact their new life their retirement life was going to be filled with travel both domestic and international house sitting and pet sitting for complete strangers all around the world. Amy and Tim welcome back to the bigger pockets money podcast and let us pick off pick up where we left off in the beginning of 2019 you were waiting for your younger started to graduate high school and then you are going to get rid of everything sell the townhouse and travel the world.

Everything happened the same way you played it right.

Yes okay from episode 279 thank you.

Okay so what happened.

2019 we still did a massive amount of traveling we spent well over a hundred days traveling we had a house sit in the out the French Alps that summer we spent some time in northern Italy our daughter did graduate from high school and not only did she graduate but she became completely independent herself which was really surprising at the age of 18 we weren't expecting that we were expecting to give her quite a bit of help but she went off to Boston and just became independent she's.

Now a student there and we she just kind of enrolled a couple years after she graduated and so we are paying for her education but still we were we're very proud of that so.

For her so so we got rid of most of our stuff in 2019 that included every piece of furniture every lamp every rug most of our stuff and we got down to a five by 10 storage unit by the end of 2019 and in the very first week.

January 2020 we sold our town home and we hit the road with plans to go.

A plan all 2020 if I'm to go from the province and Scotland to Koala, the poor of course all of that change from COVID and we had a giant pivot camera in our episode if we talked about the fact that we were moving to Texas so we moved to Texas we now domicile in Texas we have a service there that allows us to do that.

And so we were officially citizens of Texas so we did that and then like Amy said we had I think we had over 200 you already say this over 200 nights in houses that we had planned for 2020 and every single one of those everyone every single one of those felt part with COVID so we had to.

Rearrange our year based around the what happened with COVID and so we got lots of comments on our our YouTube channel about the you need to buy a house you need to move in you need to buy an RV you need to do something different.

And so we were thrilled to not have those things in our life so we we like to say that we were obviously this lifestyle is something we were designed to be doing otherwise in COVID I think most people would have just given it up and said okay this is kind of crazy and and buy a place and move back in so we are more

than that. Well let's remember back let's go in the way back machine to March 2020 where all of a sudden everything in America shut down I remember talking to you and you're like we're stuck in New Orleans that was like the height of the New Orleans the original New Orleans

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