I was living in Jackson, Wyoming when I went through my divorce. This was 2005 or thereabouts. My wife at the time was keen to concentrate on her career and I was quite disenfranchised with mine. We moved there in 2003 after I simply walked away from the best paying job I thought I would ever have.
Jackson is an expensive place to live. The joke was always that the billionaires are running the millionaires out. Most land there is public and the little that is left over is either held by money-hoarders bemoaning the loss of their cattle empire to wolves, or is already built-out. Housing is scarce.
With two incomes, it was a struggle to pay the rent but one I was willing to deal with for the tradeoff of living in one of the most magical places on the face of this earth. I was outside having adventures every chance I got. I was mountain biking, kayaking, hiking and backpacking, and skiing every chance I got. The quality of life there is worth the price of admission without a doubt. With one income it was impossible to pay the rent, especially when I had to maintain a household that was suitable for my children to visit me during the weekend and two weeks every summer. I took a second job. I took a third. This was never going to work.
I thought through all of the solutions to my problem that I possibly could and I had arrived at the conclusion that long-haul truck driver would be a pretty ideal solution. You really don’t have to have a home to go to if your job is away from home. That eliminates a vast amount of living costs in one fell swoop. I decided I was going to go for it. Then I didn’t.
I was browsing the classifieds of the local paper from my windowless office at my go-nowhere job when the help wanted ad reached out, slapped my face, and demanded that I ask myself if I was tough enough to handle Antarctica.
With a puffed up chest and a fierceness in my heart, I answered that with a resounding “Yes!”.
This decision ended up being a far better solution than long-haul truck driver by leaps and bounds. It removed my rent cost, my food cost, medical care, pretty much every non-discretionary cost of living. On top of this, at the end of the season they drop you off in New Zealand and provide you with the information you need to file for unemployment. They’d rather you didn’t find a new job and come back again next year. You can bet I leveraged this.
After my first season, I eventually came back to the United States to sell my remaining belongings as they were a burden to keep in storage and their value would be eaten up in storage costs. I took an epic road trip with my kids and eventually returned for the next season.
Something happened that next season. This became a lifestyle addiction. I was traveling and seeing the world. I was having experiences beyond my wildest dreams. I immediately began to see the world in a different light. There’s a lot that you can learn in books, but there’s a lot more that you can learn by having experiences.
I spent more seasons on the ice. Eventually I spent a winter at the South Pole station. 59 wankers and me isolated together at the end of the earth for 9 months.
At the behest of my parents and because an island in a tropical paradise just sounds like a pretty good idea after 9 months atop 2 miles of ice, I met them in Hawaii at the end of that winter. Aside from the tropical Disney that Waikiki is, Hawaii wasn’t at all what I expected. I learned to surf, I learned to SCUBA dive, and eventually I fell in love. I made a couple of trips back and forth from the mainland during this off-season period and each time coming back to Hawaii felt like coming home.
I returned to Antarctica for the following winter research season, and then back to Hawaii after spending some time traveling around South America. The trip to Hawaii this time was to close on the purchase of some real estate. Hawaii became home for my parents. They were as sick of winter as I was.
While in Hawaii, I met a girl who would become my travel companion and eventual wife. I found another contract job. This time in Taiwan. We packed our things and headed for Taiwan. Once again, my employer was going to be paying a very large portion of my living expenses so I was able to save a large portion of my earnings. At the end of the contract, a return to South America where we lived in Perú for just under a year.
After Perú I took another contract job. This time in Abu Dhabi. Again, most of my living expenses were being paid with company money but Abu Dhabi has a way of keeping money there. These were the high-falutin’ years for sure. We regularly dined at 5-star restaurants. Attended F1 race, the richest horse race in the world, and just lived the high life for a couple of years.
The contract jobs were working out quite well for me financially speaking. I was quite pleased with the life hack that I had figured out. If you haven’t got to pay for your own existence, life can be so much more enjoyable. The physical presence requirement was just too much for me though. I wanted to be free of geographic boundaries to my income. By living in Perú we had figured out that you can live cheaply and that freedom that is gained is worth more than the money.
This was the point where I made a career switch at 45 years old. I flipped it on its head and found a way that I could keep traveling as this freedom was highly valued by me and my wife. We lived in Panamá, Mexico, and finally abandoned the idea of living in any particular place and took a 3 year trip in a truck camper from California to the southern tip of south America.
I went from being beat-down and defeated by divorce to living what will likely be my glory days simply by challenging the status quo and refusing to relent to the traditional program of birth, school, work, death. I was able to leverage my U.S. wages against Latin American and Asian standards of living to enhance my experience, knowledge of the world, and overall happiness. I didn’t wait until retirement to try to live. That’s too risky. Work may kill you before retirement. Better to live while you can and let the company take the loss.