Retirement For a Person Who Loves to Travel – and Will Work to Get There

The Story
Alicia and her husband, Leon, both found careers in real estate. She’s a broker; he worked with mortgages. But if you met them at a party and were to ask them about themselves, this is not the first thing they would tell you. Instead, they’d likely tell you about their bike tour of The Netherlands last month, and their planned trip to the French Riviera they are currently planning. For them, work has always been a means to an end – not the end itself. This is where our conversations with the couple started.

The Right Question
During our initial meetings, they asked: Can we travel as much as we would like if we worked less? How much less can we work? But because travel is their primary passion, not work, we helped them to re frame that question: How much do we need to bring in from real estate transactions to support the travel we would like?

Approaching retirement in this way shifts emphasis to what is most important to Alicia and Leon – work defined by travel; not travel defined by work.

The Plan
So we did the math. Alicia and Leon identified their ideal amount of travel and standard of living– necessary expenses like mortgages and utilities, amenities like going out to eat and shopping. We calculated their income from the earnings of investments. From there, we determined how much additional money they’d have to bring in from real estate transactions to
make their ideal travel possible. When we brought that number to Alicia, it was a done deal.

She’s not working just to work. She’s working for the freedom it provides. It’s not about the money; it’s not about keeping score. It’s about the experiences they are able to create.