Some travel metrics and a forever home

 I've listened to a few more episodes of friendsonfire. I really like the girl Maggie's voice, I think. She's talkative.

Anyway, I, of course, love the episodes where they talk about their expenses. I couldn't easily find the first one where they compared their expenses on a vacation. But Mike had broken down his cost per day, and if I remember correctly it was somewhere around $80ish/day.

It seemed like a made-up metric but it's something he uses. 

Since I'm still figuring out a good budget for my travel and other lifestyle expenses and really all things money related in this twilight stage I am post LeanFIRE, my memory held on to it for later.

Another interesting thing he does which we all kind of do is even though he's reached a pretty steady state of optimization, he still makes it a goal to spend 15% less each year. I don't really do that, I still have $20k/yr as kind of my magic number. At this point, it pretty easily covers my core expenses. It's the Other that doesn't quite fit in $20k/yr that I still grapple with.

Anyway, I did relisten to another episode of a 6 week trip to Europe he did with his family of four. They travel hacked some flights and mostly stayed with family. And that trip cost him $121/day (something like $3600 or $3900 for the entire trip). 

So for fun, I looked back at my Seattle expenses to come up with a cost/day.

I was in Seattle for about 14 weeks in 2022.

14 weeks x 7 days/wk = 98 days (I just rounded it to 100 because who knows if that counts the overnight flights where I was still technically traveling the day I returned...hehe #magic math). 

And my expenses in Seattle according to my chart was about $18k (rounded).

So 18k/ 100 days = $180/day. 

That's my baseline and I already outlined in my Seattle trip report some places where there were opportunities for improvement. 

I also kind of fell in love with the idea of spending 100 days away from home and in Seattle. That was almost a third of the year! 

Then when I added in the 15 days I just spent in Maryland, that's about 115 days away from home. And if I count the 2 trips I took to Maryland for work (that's at least another 5 days), I'm easily up to 120 days away.

So I decided...hmm I like that number. That's a cool metric to hit. 

So I think next year, I want to replicate it (no more hard goals). I liked spending 120 days away from home. It breaks up the monotony; it's achievable; and I can take advantage of my flex work schedule.

And when I added another $500 for the 2 weeks in Maryland to my trip total, it brought my cost per day to about $160/day total for travel in 2022. These are very much estimates but a great metric to track nonetheless.  

In summary, here are my travel metrics for 2022:

Days away from home: 120 days

Cost per day: $160/day (doesn't include work trip)

If I wanted to trim just 10% off my cost per day, I could aim for $144/day in 2023. We'll see.

But I do like the idea of trying to reach 120 days away from home. I'm not setting it as a goal per se, but it'll be interesting to see and track. 

The podcast duo also challenged themselves to reach 500k bonus miles each in a year. I think I might try to reach 100k miles this year. But the default goals are more like: 1 free leg of travel > 1 free rdtrp travel > 60k bonus miles > 100k bonus miles. The reason it's a challenge at all is because I keep getting denied for travel cards! 

I think I'm more and more interested in seeing people reach their different steady states and see what that looks like, but still dabble in different personal finance pursuits. 

I think we've already identified that travel to me is the least offensive pursuit of people in my peer group, so it's my default plan.

Every so often, I read a story of someone FIREing off to Mexico or Thailand to live for super cheap. And I just wonder if that's for me. Or does it seem impossible like FIRE must for most people (even me when I first started). Am I scared of the struggle? I think because outside of the cheaper cost of living, I'm not sure what else I would be doing there. And I don't really want to struggle. 

Or is it a bit of a sunk cost fallacy - I spend the last 30 years getting to master life in America. Do I just give that all up?

It's just such a big deal to live in another country. I don't want to have to learn to live in a new culture. I like my creature comforts. I gave up the dream of learning a new language a while ago.

But if I keep working, maybe it'll be fun to work from those locations. 

So it made me wonder, is this Hospice House my forever home? 

The reason this matters is, if it is.. I want to make it more comfortable since I'll be spending at leas 2/3 of the year here. 

I want to get something comfier to relax in for the home office.

I'm already getting overwhelmed thinking about the long term.

Wow, this March will make 3 years since I've been in this house. I need to get my water heater flushed.