Many avid travelers fantasize about ditching all their possessions and hitting the road during retirement. Lynne and Tim Martin have actually done it.
Three years ago they sold their house in California, gave away any belongings that wouldn’t fit in a 10 foot by 15 foot storage locker and declared themselves “home free.” Her memoir, Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World, is one of two new books that cater to an apparently growing number of baby boomers who would like to spend their golden years as ex-pats.
For the Martins that has meant renting apartments or houses in various locations, mostly in Europe, for two or three months at a time and going native: stocking up in the spice bazaar of Istanbul, shopping for produce at the biweekly market in the 15th Arrondissement of Paris and exploring London from a suburban outpost. About 18 months into the journey, work became part of their routine, after Lynne Martin’s Wall Street Journal article describing themselves as “senior gypsies” led to a book contract. By then they had already lived in Mexico, Argentina, Florida, Turkey, France, Italy and England.
“We meet people who are realizing that they have a lot longer to live than anticipated,” she says. “They are thinking, ‘maybe I can do something more exciting than live at 234 Poplar Street’” (or wherever).
I caught up with Lynne, an effervescent 73-year-old and Tim, 68, her muse, this week in New York. It’s their latest home-free destination and they have rented a house for two and a half months on Staten Island – a remote borough that many New Yorkers have never visited, but where money goes further. In fact, for $2,700 per month, they snagged a two-bedroom apartment in a rambling Victorian that’s been carved into rental units, with a head-on view of lower Manhattan. By New York standards, it’s a steal.
They arrived there refreshed after several months in California, most of it in Paso Robles, which is the place they used to call home. Now it’s where they touch down between jaunts, to see their four adult children and seven grandchildren, whose ages range from 6 to 15; and schedule dental and medical checkups. In a town where they once owned a spacious house with a garden, they now hole up in a one-bedroom rented condo. Sure, they could have kept the house or rented it, but made a “psychological” decision to sell, Tim Martin says. “We needed to separate ourselves from our stuff,” he explains, and not to have the responsibilities of home ownership trailing them around the world.
They have given a financial advisor total authority to invest their nest egg – to some minds a risky proposition, but not to them. It consists of the proceeds of their home sale, plus what they’ve been able to save during what for each of them has been an eclectic work life. He’s been a lyricist and owned an electronics store; she’s a serial entrepreneur who worked most recently as a publicist.
They live off the income from these investments — about $6,000 dollars a month — plus their Social Security checks. It’s easiest to budget on an annual basis, so if they spend more than usual for a stay in London, for example, their next stop might be Berlin, where it’s possible to live more frugally.
He books rentals far in advance through vrbo.com and homeaway.com, both of which have local representatives who can help them get oriented in unfamiliar lodgings. They are not keen on the idea of Airbnb, which typically doesn’t involve human contact. And if they don’t like a place, they’re not beyond making an early exit — like the time they bolted from an un-air-conditioned Florence apartment in the middle of a heat wave.
Though they pack light, she carries several items that are handy in the kitchen: a meat thermometer, small packets of spices and a miniature knife sharpener. To help turn ingredients foraged at local markets into meals, she consults Mark Bittman’s book, How to Cook Everything. She reads it, along with everything else, using the Kindle app on her iPhone. It’s also available as an iPhone app. (For others, see “Road-Tested Travel Apps.”)
They are blessed with good health and, unlike others their age, don’t take any medications for chronic conditions. During our lunch at a bistro near the Forbes offices, she showered her chicken and avocado salad with at least a tablespoon of salt. (He ordered quesadillas with guacamole and sour cream.) Both pay Medicare premiums, but since it doesn’t generally cover healthcare outside of the United States, carry travel gap medical insurance. It costs $400 per month for the two of them, with a $2,500 per person deductible and also covers health-related evacuation, which so far they haven’t needed. Less healthy folks might have to pay more for the same coverage, or find it excludes preexisting conditions or medications taken on a regular basis, as noted here.
Though the book is sprinkled with references to age and the difficulty of finding comfortable furniture (especially chairs) in their lodgings, they are flexible in both mind and body and seem none the worse for wear. Still, after several bouts of road weariness, they have learned to pace themselves. They might alternate a day of activity with a day at home, for instance. To take a break from housekeeping, they periodically leave their home base on excursions that involve several nights in a hotel where someone else can make the beds and cook the meals. And instead of transatlantic flights, they book passage on “repositioning” cruises, which provide them with down time as they travel to and fro. They have also had to navigate visa requirements and the so-called Schengen Agreement, which limits how many consecutive days nonresidents can spend within the European Union.
In person and in the book, they are as giddy as a couple of newlyweds, which they practically are by an aging boomer’s standard, since they have only been married for seven years. They were an item in their salad days, each married someone else and reunited 35 years later after he got divorced and her first husband died of Alzheimer’s. That makes them different, they acknowledge, from couples their age who have a house full of memories together, or whose annoying habits would get on each other’s nerves if they were joined at the hip 24/7. “We were apart for 35 years, so it isn’t hard for us to be this close,” Lynne Martin says.
A bold move like theirs would also be harder without a spouse or partner for companionship and support. But they’ve noticed that single people are using their Facebook group, Home Free Adventures, to connect with others who share the dream.
The questions people ask most often — in person, on the Facebook page and in comments on their Web site, Home Free Adventures — revolve around friends and family. Some are tethered by responsibilities to aging parents or young-adult children. Leaving everything behind could also be “stressful for long-time marrieds with deeply-rooted connections to their home and community,” Lynne Martin observes.
For those not ready to live home free, there are less radical options. One, of course, is extended overseas stays without giving up your home base. Another is setting up a full-time or part-time residence in a foreign country.
International Living has long dominated the retire overseas market and its new book, The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on a Budget: How to Live Well on $25,000 a Year is a practical primer on the subject. The authors, husband and wife team Suzan Haskins, 58 and Dan Prescher, 59, are Nebraska natives who have lived in 4 countries in 13 years. I recently spoke with them by phone from their current home in Cotacachi, Ecuador (population around 9,000), a town in the Andes where they don’t need to own a car and can live for about $1,500 per month.
Before buying real estate the authors, who are journalists and experienced marketers, encourage
readers to plan a trial run and immerse themselves in a locale for as
long as they can manage. The United States is “the most convenient place
on the planet,” Prescher says. So it’s important to honestly
profile yourself and identify your “personal deal breakers.” For
example, they thought they wanted to live at the beach, but after
spending time in various destinations decided they didn’t like hot
weather and high air-conditioning bills. When Haskins’ father developed
terminal cancer in 2002 shortly after they moved overseas and she needed
to make several trips back home, they appreciated proximity to an
airport.
For these authors and the Martins, a fast and reliable Wi-Fi connection is essential. It’s a tool for making travel plans, communicating with friends back home and most importantly, goofing around with the grandchildren on video Skype.
Archive of Forbes Articles By Deborah Jacobs
Deborah L. Jacobs, a lawyer and journalist, is the author of Estate Planning Smarts: A Practical, User-Friendly, Action-Oriented Guide, now available in the third edition.
