How Could We?

How could we afford to do this? And, how can YOU also afford to do this?
We did it simply by being rich...

I'll bet that brought you to a halt. That wasn't the case at all. We're not rich, far from it. We weren't particularly lucky either, except in one or two instances, but, I think we would have been able to do what we've done even without those lucky instances.

Of course, we didn't have kids, but I think even if we had, we would have found a way (our family motto - Ibi Est Voluntas, Ubi Est Via – Where There's a Will, There's a Way) to do this anyway.

The story began, like all good stories begin... Once upon a time, in a land far away...

Many years ago, I had been working for the State of Washington for about six or seven years. Dianna had been working for the Washington State Association of Fire Chiefs for about as long.

A co-worker of mine and good friend, Joel Aggergaard, who, some years later passed away after a rare recurrence of Hodgkin's Disease, was always ragging after me to “Max out your deferred comp, Man”. At the time, I had a whopping $25.00 US per pay period (2-weeks) deducted from my pay.

Eventually, I contacted the Deferred Compensation folks at the Department of Retirement Systems for Washington State, and inquired about how much it would hit me in the wallet if I did max out my deferred comp. Turns out that I would see a negative four or five dollars each pay period.

Needless to say, I filled out the paperwork and began socking away a tidy fistful of money each period. At first, the statements looked paltry, but, believe it or not, before too long, it began to look like real money to me, and the beauty of it all – I didn't miss any of it.

That was step one. Maxing out Deferred Comp and making sure, as time went on, that each raise that occurred was reflected in the amount going to Deferred Comp. It was too easy. It just seemed so transparent to me in that Dianna and I didn't miss the money at all.

Next thing we did was to join an investment club, since we knew nothing about stocks, bonds, and the stock market. We figured this would be a good way for us to learn without loosing our shirts.

This was serendipitous event number two. In the club, we met a young stock broker who was just getting started. He was one of the founders of the club, in fact. He and another young man (we were several years older than either of them) had developed a spread-sheet program to analyze a person's portfolio and overall financial picture and project several scenarios into the future.

We stayed active in the club for a year or so. And, about that time, the club began to disintegrate. After the club folded, we stayed with the broker as our financial and investment advisor. On his advice, we also hired the young analyst to run some projections for us to see where we might end up (taking a first look ahead to early retirement, but with no concrete goal at that stage).

To our utter amazement, his charts and figures indicated that we would be able to actually retire early and have a fairly (for us anyway) substantial nest egg to do it with. We didn't actually put much faith in those projections but, they did make it seem “possible”.

Time went on. We were continuing with Deferred Comp and had begun to put about $150 a month into the market through our financial advisor. He was, by this time with Smith Barney, and was in a suite of offices in an office building in downtown Olympia.

Each time we visited him at his office, we felt like we were going to be “found out”, that we really shouldn't have been there, that we were such small time players. To his credit, our advisor never once made us feel that was justified. He just kept saying the scenarios were correct and to keep on the way we were and it (early retirement) just might happen.

Eventually, we began to believe that we might be able to retire early as well. Although we frequently pestered our advisor to run scenarios of his own (he was now with Charles Schwab and in even fancier digs down on the Swantown waterfront area of Olympia).

We began seriously looking at how we might implement this plan sooner than later. I had also gotten interested in doing “working vacations”. One scheme that really caught our attention was helping with an archaeological dig in the Brazilian Amazon. This place was 300 miles upriver from the nearest town, and seemed ideal. We could go for three weeks and it would be a grand adventure. We didn't care if we had to wheelbarrow debris all day long or what. It just sounded romantic and exciting and just, so out there.

Before we actually signed up for it, I found out it was designed for educators who wanted to observe the workings, with no actual labor involved. That burst our bubble. But, the bug had been planted for adventure.

I found another archaeological dig in Jordan (probably too hot in the middle of the Biblical desert), and another on the Bay of Galway in Ireland, excavating an old monastery and you'd stay with people in town. But, they wanted a six week commitment. We just couldn't finagle six weeks from our jobs (mine with the State and Dianna's with the Fire Chief's Association).

The spirit of adventure was really beginning to grab us. Sometime during this period, I think I watched a program on TV about the Peace Corps. That did it. We both thought, Wow! There's our way out. It would give us the grand adventure we'd been seeking, put us somewhere in the world we'd never get to on our own, and it would pay for two years of that adventure while our Deferred Comp and investments continued to do their thing. Then after two years we'd be able to settle down somewhere, maybe even where we'd been assigned in the Peace Corps – who knows?

So, we began the application process for the Peace Corps. As luck would have it, we went to a recruitment presentation at the Olympia Civic Center. The presenter was the Regional Director of the Peace Corps and he had done his two-year service in Belize, working with inner-city youth in outdoor adventure programming – which was my college area of emphasis. Anyway, that was our first introduction to Belize.

We wanted to be assigned, if possible, anywhere in Central or South America, preferably the Eastern Caribbean islands (of course). They offered us Africa. That was OK too. We thought with our backgrounds in emergency management and non-profit association management, that we'd be offered a similar activity in the Peace Corps. Not so. They wanted us to work in agriculture, and even asked me if I'd be willing to learn bee-keeping. Of course, we said yes all the way around.

In preparation for Peace Corps service, we actually sold our house. That lucky thing I mentioned at the beginning, occurred right here. We picked just about the best time of all to sell our house. The market was just topping out. We asked more than we thought we could get. We had three couples interested in the house, and we got an offer for more than we were asking from one of them. We were happy. They were happy. They've since become very good friends of ours and have even visited us down here in Belize – helping to install some of the plumbing in our house (when they visited, we had no kitchen, kitchen cabinets, or anything). And, they want to come back.

Well, a year and a half later, we still hadn't gotten an assignment. It seemed there was always one more question to answer, test to have done, etc.

About this time, Dianna retired from the Fire Chief's Association and she didn't seem to be missing work at all. We went for a couple of weeks to visit some friends of ours in Florida. While there, we came to the realization that we wanted adventure now, that we were done waiting. So, as soon as we got back, we canceled out of the Peace Corps (which we still have some regrets about doing so), I submitted for retirement in two weeks, and we booked a flight to Belize for a month's vacation.

Fully intending to arrive in Belize at Phillip Goldson International Airport, travel to Corozal and stay at the Copa Banana Guest House for a couple of days, then spend the rest of the month traveling throughout the country to see if we really did like it, really did want to live there, and what part of the country we wanted to live in.

Three days later, we had bought property, bought a car, and had found a place to live, house-sitting for a Dutch couple who spent the rainy season back in Holland. On that trip, we never did get to the rest of the country.

We flew back to the states, had a big garage sale, packed up what was left, shipped it down to Belize. We grabbed our two cats and flew ourselves to Cancun, and took a taxi to Corozal and our new life.

We haven't looked back once. It was, without a doubt, the best decision we ever made in our lives. And we aint' rich! We were working stiffs like everyone else we knew.

If you want to do something, we're good examples of goal-driven behavior, it is doable. We're living the dream here in paradise. You can too! Discipline, stay focused, and when the time comes, the hardest part of the whole thing, is actually making and doing the decision. Turning in that retirement form. From that point on, everything was a piece of cake.