One Year of Nomading

Yesterday marked one year of our nomad life. We’ve done some reflecting over the past few days. Was there anything we learned about ourselves? About the world? What surprised us? What do these things mean for the future?

Here are our top 10 reflections:

Adaptability

Have you ever felt like you had to fit in? Like a fish out of water? Or that other people were judging you? In our “old life” and when we first started this nomad lifestyle, Eric struggled with what is often called Socially Prescribed Perfectionism. Going to a market and having no idea what you are doing. Not speaking the language. Not knowing local customs. It can all be a bit intimidating and make you feel like you stand out like a sore thumb. You want to look like you know what you are doing! When you travel full time, and are never in your native culture, this can be a make or break issue. Lucky for us, we’ve been able to accept it. We’re visitors, we’re not locals. But you know what? Everyone who travels is. These locals? They travel too. We’ve learned to embrace it. Being in a different culture is a chance to learn, be a sponge, and pick up little bits about what makes that culture great.

A Smile Goes a Long Way

When we first launched and told people of our travel plans, one of the most comment questions we got was: “Do you speak XYZ language?” The reality is we are limited to high school Spanish and French. And that was a long time ago…. But the reality is, getting by in a foreign language is a lot easier than we thought.

Everywhere we have traveled there has been some level of English at restaurants, hotels, and shops. Particularly in the tourist zones. We’ve found that self checkout registers at grocery stores and ATMs often have an English button on the home screen. We’ve had a few times where our Airbnb hosts met us for check-in and they didn’t speak English. That’s where Google Translate can come in handy. Reading street signs or food labels in grocery stores? Google Translate. We tried to learn a few words of Portuguese and Hungarian to say a simple hello and thank you. We’ve been able to order from restaurants in Spanish and French. And when all else fails, a smile can make all the difference in the world.

We Don’t Like Cold Weather

We realized we didn’t do the best job planning around weather this first year and are very aware of that with our planning for 2026 and 2027. Our first challenge with changing weather is clothing. In 2025 we went from a hot winter in Mexico, to a cool spring in Portugal, to yoyo weather in the UK during the summer, to very hot in Budapest, and cold in France. That meant we lugged around sweaters, sweatshirts, puffer coats, shorts, and swimsuits in our suitcases!

We talk about weather a lot. We like to be outside. After the last few weeks of cold here in France we realize we don’t like to be outside when it is cold! So going forward, we’ve set some parameters of our ideal weather. No colder lows than 50F and no hotter highs than 90F is ideal. That means we need to be very specific about where we are during summer and winter. And guess what? As nomads, we can do that! Like many nomads, we’re now focused on chasing 65-85F for those ideal temps, and packing lighter because of it!

We Like Water

Coming from land-locked states, living by the water was always a dream. This year we’ve been able to make it a reality. And we’ve realized that when we are not near water, we don’t enjoy it nearly as much.

This year we got to experience daily walks by the ocean in Mexico and Portugal. In the UK and Budapest we were along major rivers. And even when we didn’t have an ocean or a river we had a canal in most of our month long stays. We’ve realized that while we nomad we need to prioritize locations near water!

People Are All the Same

The news and social media these days are full of so much anger and hatred. As we prepared to launch last year, we wondered how people would receive us. We’re American travelers staying in Airbnbs at a time where the stories will tell you Americans aren’t well liked and the world is over touristed. Honestly we’ve found just the opposite. As Americans, we find that we mostly get sympathetic smiles when people learn where we’re from. People are kind and people are smart. They don’t judge us for what’s happening in our home country. They’ll judge us by how we behave and interact. If we are kind and respectful, so are they.

We’ve also tried avoid peak seasons and hugely over-touristed locations, but we’ve hit some. London and Budapest were definitely peak season. Porto is becoming over-touristed. But we make a point to shop local and eat local. When possible we stay in individually owned Airbnbs and not corporate ones. Every tour guide we’ve had has been welcoming and kind. French waiters have smiled and been helpful!

If you put kindness into the universe, it will be returned many-fold.

We Like Not Owning Things

Getting rid of everything we own was scary. For me, it was clothes and shoes. I like variety. And if you’ll notice these pictures, we don’t have much variety! For Eric it was the Jeep. We were unsure how we would adapt to life out of a suitcase. Twelve months later, the answer is we love it. We feel completely unencumbered. There is nothing we have to worry about. There is no lawn to mow, no fear of an appliance breaking, no tires to replace. Do we miss our air fryer and espresso machine? Yep. But for now, we’re embracing the minimalism that this life requires.

I Do Miss the US Sometimes

This lifestyle was my idea. It took some convincing for Eric. I was ready to go explore the world. Learn new cultures. See new things. And it has filled my cup 100%. But as we have wrapped up our first 12 months outside the US, I’m looking forward to heading back in a few weeks. I’m excited to be in the homes of our families for Thanksgiving. I’m excited to eat all the foods we’ve missed (here’s looking at you Chipotle). I’m excited for a traditional Christmas with our kids. I’m excited to be surrounded by American accents.

Will I be itching to get on the road again in January? You bet. But I’ve learned that I need some small doses of the US throughout a year to enrich my time exploring the rest of the world.

We Like Daily Living

We spent most of our adult lives in very specific routines. Work Monday-Friday. Saturday was for fun. Sunday was grocery shopping for a week’s worth of groceries and doing a week’s worth of laundry and cleaning the house. Sunday was stressing and preparing for the week to come. We’ve now completely flipped that script and we talk all the time about how much we love it. Much has to do with being retired empty nesters. Our time is our own. We’ve embraced daily grocery shopping. We waste far less food when we only buy what we need for 1-2 days at a time. We actually eat all of our produce! We do laundry several times a week (a necessity when you don’t own much and you have to air dry everything!).

We take one day at a time and enjoy every moment. This is living.

We Like Each Other!

Working from home during and post Covid meant we started spending more time together than in our first 25 years of marriage. But as we set to launch our nomad lifestyle, we wondered how we would do being together 24x7x365. Most days find us in the same room together all day every day. We go on walks together. We run errands together. We stream Netflix on separate computers with headphones on in the same room. We cook together. The longest we’ve been apart was the 36 hours I was in Paris with my sister.

Do we annoy each other? Of course. Don’t all couples occasionally annoy each other? But we wouldn’t do this life with anyone else. 30 years of marriage and going strong!

We Unknowingly Set Ourselves Up For This

As we reflected on our past year, we wondered how the transition has been so easy for us. And then we realized that so many steps we took in the past have set ourselves up for this: traveling the world and retired in our early 50s.

We’ve travelled a lot over the past 15 years of marriage. Many times it was because of my work, and we took the opportunity to extend a work trip and have Eric join to turn it into a vacation. We prioritized travel in our budget, often taking 2-3 long trips and several weekend trips a year. We got the bug and knew it would be an important part of our future.

During Covid we bought a lake house in NW Arkansas. Was it kind of a crazy thing to do? Yep. And we loved it. We loved the quiet and solitude when we were at the cabin. We loved the access to hiking, one of our favorite past-times.

The move to London in 2022-2023 really changed us. It opened our lives to living a completely different kind of lifestyle. Apartment life. Life with no car. Life outside the United States. A life of exploration.

When we moved back to Kansas City after London, I scaled way back on my career. For the first eight months I was looking for a job (and watching YouTube videos about the nomad lifestyle!). Then I took a role with much less responsibility. I no longer let work define who I was or consume every aspect of my thinking. I realized that there was much more to life than work. That mindset allowed me to easily transition into part time work during the first half of this year, and fully retire now.

Looking Forward

This year has been incredibly fulfilling to us and we have absolutely no regrets on our decision to sell everything and travel the world! At this point we don’t see an end in sight. Someday we’ll be ready to settle back down, but until then we’ll keep exploring, learning, and wandering the world!