Our Rove Has Started

After three and a half years living and working in Cebu in the Philippines it was time to start roving. Time to live my dream and experience the world as a digital nomad. As I left I had slight feelings of apprehension ... aged 68 and “homeless” for the first time in my life.

Over the last few years our possessions have shrunk. After selling my car when we left Cebu our worldly possessions fitted into 3 big cardboard boxes, 2 small cardboard boxes, a few odd items like a Nespresso machine and a blender, 2 bicycles and a set of golf clubs.

Looking back, it was very much the same as we took to Cebu … but then we were moving into a furnished house with a confirmed 2-year working contract.

We took the first steps to our minimalistic lifestyle when we moved to Cebu. We sold or gave away nearly all our possessions.

Now into the unknown. No firm long term plan. Just some ideas which seem to change every few weeks.

After leaving Cebu the rove started with three weeks in London, then a week in Dubai and now five months staying in my sister's house in South Africa. While she headed off overseas to visit her children and grandchildren … I had the responsibility to visit our 92-year-old mother.

Our Family

Our children have scattered … blown across the world by their own circumstances. Six children between us living in the US, the UK and Dubai with one cruising the Mediterranean … crewing on a luxury mega yacht.

So as I sit here today we have no fixed home, a very few possessions but a mind filled with imagination, a sense of adventure and a thirst for life and challenges. Looking forward, with odd stomach butterflies, to the many unknown experiences which lie ahead.

More questions than answers. Faced with degrees of confusion. Not pioneers but pioneers. Looking for opportunities, experiences, challenges, to be of service and seeking freedom.

Not the traditional route. But what is the traditional way? Life has changed and with it retirement has changed. Traditional retirement used to follow a traditional working life. Often trapped in a job that you couldn't wait to leave ...but didn't. Trapped by tradition and expectation. Conditioned from early life into compliance and toeing the line. Educated by a system designed to provide corporate slaves.

The utopian lifestyle envisaged in one’s twenties interrupted by corporations who decided it wasn't in their interest and started downsizing, right sizing and restructuring. Major economic systemic failures leading to stock market crashes in 1987, early 2000 and 2008. The casualties are the traditional retirees.

These retirees are now looking for new opportunities to enjoy life on a shoestring budget. Or at least on a lot less than planned.

There are ways. There are resources. We plan to explore some of them.

We know that many of you will find our escapade interesting and we hope that during our travels we'll meet some of you. Possibly some of you will even join us.

Sign up now to get the interesting and enticing updates.