Additionally, I’d had two pretty major health scares, both related to working in a high-stress environment, and 30 years as a litigation attorney certainly qualified. So it was time to figure out a plan for the next 30 years.

Oddly related to all of this was my entry into the world of crypto currency in 2021. A relative had been involved in Bitcoin since the very beginning, and we’d spent countless holidays over the years with him trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to explain it to me. For years, I told him to just “dumb it down for me,” but every time we talked, I came away more confused than ever. But in 2021, he finally convinced me to invest some of my money – and more importantly my time – so I could learn more about it. After a few months of fairly intensive research, I finally started to grasp some of the concepts he’d been trying to explain to me for years. It was a new and exciting space, and I quickly discovered that I was more interested in researching cryptocurrency than I was practicing law. That realization probably solidified for me the need to find a new path.

Though still a full-time practicing lawyer and a part time crypto trader, most of my “spare time” was consumed with trying to figure out how to change my life in ways that would work financially, be better for my health, and give me an opportunity to spend more time traveling. Fast forward to 2023, and I was finally ready to start sharing my thoughts on my still germinating plan with friends and family. And what was the plan, at least at a rough, conceptual level: sell our house, all of our stuff, and simply travel the world like some of those Youtube content creators I followed so closely.

The initial response, as you might expect, ranged from disbelief to wondering if I’d quietly gone insane. After all, I was a mid-50s attorney from California, with a wife and two kids, one in college and one still in high school. At first, most people laughed off the idea, figuring nothing would come of it.

But in 2024, I convinced my wife that it was time to sell our house of 24 years so we could live off of the equity for several years. And this really is the core of the plan as it’s come together: spend 10 years, roughly from 55 to 65, traveling the world and living off the equity we’d built in our house. This would allow my retirement savings to grow untouched for 10 years, and with even reasonable market appreciation, I calculated I’d have enough money when I turned 65 to return to the United States and live a comfortable lifestyle.

Refinements came along the way (and are still coming). We decided to use a significant chunk of our equity to purchase a house in the Pacific Northwest. This serves several purposes. First, since we think that may be where we want to land when we return, it gave us a safety net in case the housing market just goes crazy the next 10 years, pricing us completely out of the market. Second, it provides us with a steady income stream as a rental property. which is good because we need income if I’m not working. Third, it provides us with a passive income stream that may help us qualify for a residency visa in many countries if we decide we want to stay somewhere long term. Without Social Security or a pension, many retirement visas around the world are going to look for another passive source of income in order to qualify, and in many countries I’ve researched, rental income can qualify. And finally, we bought a house with a three-car garage and turned one of those spaces into long term storage for some of the things we just couldn’t part with. A few pieces of furniture, and lots of memories packed away behind a temporary wall we built to separate our storage area from our tenants’ now two-car garage. I realize that most content creators embarking on this type of journey recommend getting rid of everything, but that wasn’t going to work for me or my wife. And I didn’t want to be paying hefty monthly storage fees to keep stuff I might never use again. So the rental property served that purpose as well.

We also decided to sell our house in 2024, even though we knew we would not leave until 2026, after our son headed off to college. We wanted to make sure he could finish high school where he started, but we were able to rent a house close to the school and live there for a year. Why not simply hold onto the house for another year? Two reasons. First, I saw what our house was worth in 2024, and crunching the numbers, I was confident I could make the math for our plan work. If the housing market dropped even 10 percent, it could have destroyed our plan, so I thought the conservative approach was to sell when I knew I could get a price that worked for us. Second, the idea of trying to sell the house and to time the sale to match our departure date seemed almost impossible, meaning we’d likely need to move to another location in California before leaving anyway, and it was much easier to structure things with a 12-month lease and a sale without a fixed deadline.

Finally, we decided it would make sense to change our residency from California to Washington before leaving the country. We knew that we did not want to return to California, and that Washington is a likely landing place, so it makes sense. But it also allowed us to leave high-tax California in favor of low-tax Washington. If I don’t generate income, that might not matter much, but if I do end up working a lot remotely over the next 10 years, it could have a huge impact. I’ll have another post soon on the complexity of trying to establish residency in Washington (and out of California) in the near future, but the bottom line is that we have in fact moved to the Pacific Northwest for our final few months before we depart, and it’s worked out great.

I guess I’ll address one final question in this post: what does being a “(mostly) retired attorney” mean? To be honest, I don’t yet know. But I still have a relationship with my law firm of more than 30 years, and I still plan to do at least some legal work remotely. I don’t plan to try any cases; those days are over for me. But I can write legal briefs, consult with clients, and do plenty of other things from wherever I happen to be in the world. (There will be a post about how that works from a technological and packing perspective down the road as well.). At this point, when we haven’t even left the country, I have no idea how much legal work I’ll actually do, and it may change over time. But I’ve intentionally left that door open, both to ensure I have a way to make some money as needed, but also as a way to give myself something to do if, like so many I’ve heard about, early retirement winds up being a bit, shall we say, monotonous.

So that’s the basics of how I’ve gotten here. At least three years of planning have us just a few months away from boarding that plane. I hope you’ll follow along with our journey.