Retire Early and Travel is a blog about living an international lifestyle. From retiring as early as possible to living abroad to traveling to new places to learn about and experience different cultures. We want to experience, first hand, as many different cultures as possible and meet as many different people as possible. We bring all of that adventure to you in this blog. Why did we start this b
log? Because we are experts in retirement or travel, certainly not. We have traveled a lot and were both born with wanderlust. We dreamed at 18 of visiting every country in the world! We have been together since we were 18 years old. We traveled abroad together for the first time that year because we both yearned to see the world. In time we married, had two children and our travels outside the country slowed because of our increased responsibilities. Once our children were old enough to appreciate travel we bought a large RV and began to explore all of the United States. We took them explore Mammoth Caves and to see the Blue Ridge Mountains, we White Water Rafted in North Caroline; we climbed Mount Cadillac in Bar Harbor Maine. We visited Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, the Badlands, and Yellow Stone National Park. We mined for diamonds in Arkansas. We appreciated art and spirituality in Sedona Arizona. The list just goes on and on. Fast forward, our children are grown and finished with college. Our son decided he wanted to move to India to help local people reforest the land that was deforested by big business. After doing that for six months, he moved to China to teach English for four years and then moved to Thailand to teach English. Our daughter finished college, and within 30 days she was living in China, where she found a job marketing a phone app to Americans to pay her rent and food. She also lived in Barcelona Spain, Paris France, and South Korea. In two years she traveled to Hong Kong, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Tunisia, Africa and all over the country of France. One day we said, “Boy, it must be nice to be our kids.” We were not funding any of this. They managed to work and save enough to afford to do this travel. Neither of them feels they need much. They both can pack up their lives and fit it into a suitcase or two. At about this time we learned that people were retiring in foreign countries to stretch their retirement dollars and to experience a new and exciting lifestyle. We always thought that we might retire when we were 65. When we started looking at our finances and the cost to live abroad we figured we could do it now. That was all it took. We researched to find the place where we would like to start retirement, and we found Cuenca, Ecuador. We made a list of the things we wanted in a place to live. The list was: a walkable city, temperate climate without humidity, a large enough city that we would have plenty to do, somewhat of an expat community so we could make friends while we improved our Spanish and could make friends with the locals. Most importantly a place we could take our two dogs Max and Molly with ease and without any quarantine. Cuenca met every item on out list. We visited for two weeks and loved it. As soon as we were back in the States, Keith gave notice to his employer that he would be retiring in 7 months and I began to look for someone to buy my practice. We started gathering everything necessary for a residency visa. Things all came together. We traveled to Cuenca one more time and rented an apartment. When we finally arrived with our dogs, we had a place already lined up to live. We now fill our days touring Cuenca; there is so much here to see and do here, having lunch, dinner or just visiting with friends. We both took Bridge lessons. Keith takes art lessons two days a week, and I play Bridge two days a week. We play cards with friends or play games just the two of us. We walk everywhere including the grocery store and the market. Most importantly, we are also always busy planning out travel itinerary. Thank you for stopping by! We hope you find our information useful and entertaining. Please send us any questions you have or if there is a related topic you would like to see us cover on our blog. You can also follow us on Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter and like us on Facebook. PS….In our former life, Keith was the Chief Technology Officer at the University of Southern California Medical Center and School of Medicine in Los Angeles, CA. He has also been the CTO at JPS Hospital in Fort Worth, TX and Florida Hospital, Orlando, FL. Tina was a naturopathic doctor in private practice in Sierra Madre, CA (Pasadena area). Before that, she was a book dealer and taught Science in public school for 15 years in FL. When we retired, we were living in Sierra Madre, CA. We were both born and raised in New Baltimore MI. We moved to FL, shortly after we married and lived there a little over 24 years. We also lived one year in Fort Worth TX before moving to CA.
