How do you DO it?
Living ‘large’ without a trust fund.
I am frequently asked iterations of, ‘How do you do it?’. I assume this question is mostly in regards to finances because Aaron and I have not worked for the past year and a half and we certainly do not have a trust fund. We lived in our converted travel trailer, generally following our whims. We have now settled on our dream property, which happens to have a single-wide trailer on it. Actually, there are two park models here, so we are currently enjoying all of the jokes about owning our very own trailer park.
So back to that looming question, ‘How do you do it?’. I am sure some will consider it tacky or uncouth to talk about money so publicly, but I really want to demystify. I know people are curious, and in an age of influencers jet setting from Thailand to Italy, on who’s dime I really don't know, I want to be transparent. Again, we don’t have trust funds, high level remote jobs, or anything like that. I started with teaching credentials in California as that was pretty much the only thing I could do with my BA in History. I never pursued teaching and went back to school for my RN after having kids. Aaron was medically retired from the Coast Guard after wrecking his back in 2018. He has since worked at a ski resort, coached a youth bike team, and is now going to school for a marketing degree. The medical benefits that come along with Aaron’s retirement are really the key to being able to do all of this. Without the health care piece, there is no way we could go without jobs with benefits. I cannot overstate what a huge role this has played in our lifestyle; we understand how fortunate we are. Outside of that, we do get some retirement income from Aaron’s time in the Coast Guard, though that is certainly not enough to live on; even boondocking and with no debt.
The rest of the story comes down to dumb luck. The truth is, we have taken risks on real estate and it has paid off. I bought my first house in 2007 before the crash. I was twenty, a student and a waitress, and they were handing out loans like gumballs. Anyone remember the term ‘stated income’ or ‘interest only’? I used both strategies to get into my house. The market crashed but because I was in a college town, there were always renters and I managed to hold on to that house until it came back up and we could at least break even. I learned some lessons there and have been leap-frogging to upgrade since.
The first opportunity Aaron and I had to buy together was when we transferred from Puerto Rico to Bellingham, WA in 2014. We bought a foreclosure sight unseen, a couple of months before we even got back to the mainland. Had we waited those two months, it would have been the height of real estate season and we would not have been able to compete with the tech commuters from Seattle that would flood Bellingham over the next couple of years. We put a lot of paint and cinder blocks into that house, honed our DIY skills and learned that people go nuts for open shelves! When we sold at the end of that tour, we had literally doubled our value.
From there we moved on to Whitefish, MT with a good down payment, dual incomes (I had just graduated from nursing school) and before COVID did what it did to Montana real estate. Aaron had happened to be in Whitefish, looking at another house that he hated, when our house hit the MLS. I was back in Bellingham, at the lake with the boys, specifically. He got in for a quick tour, called me and we made an offer within the hour. It was at the top of our budget but we did it, confident the discomfort would be worth it. We also really believed it would be our forever home. Fast forward four years and one global pandemic, when we got restless and decided to move, we doubled our value on that sale as well.
Following that sale, our one adult act before taking over a year off of work to travel, was to buy an investment property. We looked everywhere between Whitefish and Bellingham, being familiar and comfortable with those markets. We ultimately stumbled (again!) on a sweet and meticulously cared for home on five acres in a quiet pocket of Bellingham. The goal was a house we could rent, on some land we could park the trailer on when we were in town, and we nailed it with this place!
It was great to have a home base in Bellingham as it is the geographic hub of all the places we travel to for bike events. We spent a spring and summer coming and going from that property, but knowing that we would have to figure something else out before the rainy season hit. The grassy property would be too wet to get in and out of, not to mention the trailer might start to feel a bit cramped through a PNW winter. That leads to our next adventure, fueled again by dumb luck.
There is another important, far from glamorous, piece to this puzzle. Along with lucking out on the houses, we lived very small while we were enjoying our nomadic lifestyle. At the outset of our travels, we quickly realized how expensive camping in traditional parks could be, not to mention claustrophobic. Fifty dollars a night adds up quickly! Aaron did a beautiful job of puzzling out a solar power set up that would allow us to live off grid. We learned about each state’s rules around ‘dispersed’ camping and planned where we spent the bulk of our time accordingly. After some practice, we could go days without spending money, other than on food.
Otherwise, obviously, we were extremely limited by space, so we had to live physically small as well. That simply meant saying ‘No’ to many purchases we would have otherwise made. Cruising around a cute little downtown and found a beautiful dress? Sorry, it doesn’t fit in the clothing bin. Also, who am I kidding, this wasn’t exactly a sundress lifestyle! The boys are begging for souvenirs from some gift shop? If it didn’t fit in their bunk, the answer was no. Saying ‘No’ to so much stuff was actually incredibly liberating.
After years of pressure, trying to keep up with the affluence all around us, where, ‘We can’t afford that,’ would have been shameful and whispered about, it felt great to have those honest conversations. We talked often about time and experiences being the true luxury items in life and my hope is that this time makes a lasting impression on my boys.
To sum it up, we were able to take over a year off work and travel as a family thanks to a combination of Aaron’s retirement benefits, a well placed rental property, and generally living very small. It was actually a huge amount of day to day work to make trailer-life work, but I wouldn’t trade that time with the boys for anything. We probably would have remained unemployed and in the Wagn if we hadn’t found this current property. It was so tempting that we are staring down employment, our return to society, and responsible adulthood to make it happen! This next property starts our present saga and gets its very only tab. Read about what we’ve got going on now in the ‘Roots’ section.
