As we slide into 2024, after more than two decades of financial independence, I feel as if my spouse and I are reaching an inflection point.

We’ll highlight the changes. It’s all good.

Slow Travel 2023:  Flying Space A

During September and October we took our first military Space A flights in four years. (Because global pandemic.) The Air Force resumed Space A in early 2022, but it took us another 18 months to work our plans around the mission schedules.

We’ve flown Space A for nearly 40 years, and this benefit has improved tremendously. (Way back in the day you had to telephone every 12-24 hours for the flight schedules, show up for every roll call, and occasionally sleep overnight in the terminal.) After the pandemic it’s clear that the passenger terminals took care of sorely-needed structural & services upgrades. We’re even seeing additional touches like rental-car desks & shuttle buses.

Better yet, this time Hickam AFB let us park in the long-term lot for 46 days instead of 30.

If there’s a downside to Space A, it’s: fewer flights. The passenger terminals (especially Hickam) seem to put all of their missions on the schedules before knowing whether the crew will actually take passengers. We wasted a lot of time showing up for roll calls that were canceled just before they started.

The best news is that there are fewer flights because, for the first time in over two decades, the U.S. military is supporting far fewer combat zones. This welcome reality means there’s less need for moving personnel & consumables. The remaining flights are mostly handling hazardous cargo or classified missions, not passengers.

In early September we flew from Hickam to Yokota AB (a C-5M). In late October we flew from Yokota to SeaTac (a Patriot Express charter 767-300). Once we actually got onto a manifest, everything went well. From SeaTac we flew commercial back to Oahu.

We took plenty of photos (with captions) which you can view at my public Facebook album.  That link should let you see the album even if you don’t have a FB account.

“You’re Still Flying Space A?!?”

I can hear the comments now: “Nords, you guys can afford to fly international business class and U.S. first class anytime you want. Everybody in the FI community travel-hacks with rewards points. Why in the world are you flying Space A?”

Yeah, I know. Another financially-independent blogger suddenly avoids spending money.  Maybe two decades with that 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate isn’t working out after all?

No worries:  that 4% SWR is working better than ever.  We’ve won the game and now we’re just running up the score while we still can.

We fly Space A for the challenge, the camaraderie, and the reduced security hassles.

I still enjoy rolling out my air mattress on the deck of a C-17 and snuggling into a sleeping bag for the flight. I like watching the crew do their jobs. Sadly, even with TSA Pre-check for first-class seats on a commercial flight from Honolulu airport, Hickam’s passenger terminal can move us faster from their parking lot onto a military flight– and military families are much easier to travel with.

We know we can abandon on the passenger terminal anytime for a commercial flight, but Space A is half of the adventure of our retiree slow travel.

Slow Travel 2023: Japan

Speaking of adventure: the cardinal rule of Space A is taking the first flight in the direction you want to go. That eventually turned out to be Japan but we also packed (and repacked) for Australia, New Zealand, Guam, Thailand and even… Europe. After a few days of roll-call roulette I accidentally ended up hauling my snorkel gear all over Japan.

During our active-duty 1990s we’d both been to Japan several times. I had too much time in Yokosuka with submarine upkeeps (and post-mission… repairs) while my spouse spent her share of time at meteorology conferences or teaching tactical oceanography.

Back then we also managed to get a couple days of Tokyo liberty, but it was a struggle. We were dealing with paper maps, printed instructions (with drawings of the kanji to watch for), and sky-high prices from the strong yen.

When we arrived in Japan in September 2023, we had big plans. We had plenty of liberty and lots more money, so we were not frugal. Tokyo & Kyoto, sure. What about Hiroshima? Nikko? Miyajima Island? Fukuoka?!? Hey, we could Space A to Singapore and then fly commercial to Thailand!!

Six weeks later we’d explored all over Tokyo & Kyoto, and the weather was starting to get chilly.

We fell into a very comfortable routine among military lodging, hotels, and AirBnBs. We did our best to avoid the most popular visitor sites. (Been there, done that.) We met up with Facebook friends, got great crowdsourced advice from social media, and refrained from racing around.

Our days were leisurely breakfasts, a morning or afternoon adventure, and plenty of walking. Public transportation in the cities was widely available, once we figured out the systems. Lunches & dinners were usually hole-in-the-wall diners or a small restaurant. (We even found food trucks!) Evenings were mostly relaxing around our lodgings and planning the next few events. Every 2-3 days was a down day for groceries, laundry, and local neighborhoods.

One of the highlights of the trip was exploring Kyoto’s Kamo River on e-bikes. YOLO, dude.

To our surprise, we were also able to get rooms in the U.S. military recreation centers of Tokyo Recreational Lodging (Hardy Barracks) and the New Sanno Hotel. They were crowded but my spouse persistently checked daily and scored last-minute reservations from cancellations.

Japanese Suite at the New Sanno Hotel

We even upgraded to one of the Japanese Suites in the New Sanno.  (Check the rest of the photos in that Facebook album.)  Highly recommended.

Japan was on sale last fall due to the very strong dollar. We found a couple of nice AirBnBs and could easily have spent more time exploring local neighborhoods.

Around our third week, though, we realized that we didn’t need to add more air travel to our itinerary, let alone customs in Thailand or Singapore. Even a three-hour Shinkansen train seemed like excessive logistics. We were cleared to stay in country for up to 90 days but we felt we’d done enough.

We’ll explore the rest of Japan on a separate trip… although for 2024 we’re more interested in visiting New Zealand & Australia.

We made it!

Before anyone asks in the comments: T-Mobile’s Magenta plan (with a military discount) gave us seamless connectivity with unlimited data, 256 Kbps bandwidth, and free texting. “It just works”, which is very convenient if a Space A flight ends up getting diverted to a different country than you planned on.

When we returned to the U.S. (at SeaTac), we used the Global Entry Mobile App to speed our clearance. We didn’t even need to use the kiosk– we filled out the app while we waited at baggage claim. We picked up our luggage, rolled past the arrivals crowds to the customs agent, showed him our phones, and headed into the airport. We spent less than a minute chatting with the agent.

All of our Facebook album’s photos have captions with more details. Contact me if you have more questions about specific attractions or logistics.

Slow travel with Google Maps & Google Translate

In a word: awesome.

On this trip we dove deep into Google Maps’s train, subway, and bus menus. Tokyo and Kyoto have excellent maps in the downtown train & metro stations (and even some of the bus stops), but the tourist features are harder to find in the suburbs.

The app made it absolutely seamless to navigate between locations with multiple options. We even knew which platforms to use and whether to skip the local train (using the same platform) or the limited express.

Google Translate gets better every year. Again, both Tokyo & Kyoto have plenty of English speakers (especially in popular visitor destinations) but it can be more difficult outside of the tourist districts. We had plenty of experience at bringing up the app, turning on the mic, and talking with people. I even went to an eyewear shop for a new presbyopian prescription and did the entire transaction through Translate. The clerk only knew a few words of English for eyeglasses (and I know zero words of optical Japanese) but Translate knew all the words– and it backed up the audio by displaying both English and kanji.

Inflection Points

During the four years since our last Space A travel, my spouse and I both entered our 60s. I’m 63 years old now, with osteoarthritis and torn ligaments in my creaky knees, but we still managed to walk 125 miles of Japan’s two largest cities. Thank goodness for Grandpa Skechers.

I’ll never get around to climbing Mt. Fuji… and I’ll have to carefully manage my scampering along the hiking trails of New Zealand & Australia. Yet I’m still pretty confident that we’ll do plenty of Great Barrier Reef diving and several surf sessions at the more popular breaks.

Action shot of a typical recovery day.

“Slow travel” is turning into snarky humor about not just staying in local neighborhoods for weeks at a time, but also moving more slowly during our wanderings. We’ll still be out & about for most of the day, but every 2-3 days we definitely need that recovery day to just stroll the local neighborhood and catch up on housekeeping chores.

If you’re wondering how our travel budget is doing after more than two decades of financial independence: our days of flying coach are largely finished. We’ll still fly Space A for the adventure, and we can still travel hack if we care to, but for any flight over a couple of hours we’ll be at the front of the plane. A lie-flat seat on an eight-hour flight saves us an entire recovery day in our destination lodgings, too.

We’re not trying to Die With Zero, but we’re absolutely enjoying life while we still can. If we don’t fly first class, our descendants certainly will. In our case, we’ll do that with all three of our generations while we’re all still around to enjoy it together.

2024 Plans

Our daughter, son-in-law, and toddler granddaughter are moving back to Hawaii. He has active-duty orders to a Navy command, and this time it’s shore duty! He’s approaching his own career inflection point, and we’ve already had plenty of conversations about gutting it out to 20.

Our daughter has finished her Navy service obligation and will have her hands full with the very busy daughter who we’ve warned her about. (Karma has delivered a wicked generational backlash, but it’s all good– and we grandparents can get plenty of naps now!) She’ll also have her hands full with the usual transfer chores of shipping personal property, vehicles, unpacking, and turning a house into a home. The best part is that they’ll be right up the street from us (a 15-minute toddler walk) with plenty of quality grandparenting help on call.

Our granddaughter turns four years old in January. She’ll have another 18 months of preschool before starting kindergarten in 2025… at her mother’s old school. (Remember all those childhood threats from our teachers about our “permanent record”?) It’ll be fun to watch her grow up. She’s a little young for surfing but we’ll take it all at her pace. When she finishes high school (in the Class of ‘38) I’ll be nearly 78 years old, and I plan to enjoy the family celebrations.

Once everyone settles in, our younger adults want to get involved with managing our rental property. (Personally, “I am ready to be relieved!”) They’ve heard all of our cool stories about the glamorous landlording life, (that’s the house featured in the post) and we’re eyeballing a significant repair list during the next tenant turnover. I’m eagerly anticipating what could be my last round of rental-property plumbing, electrical, and carpentry. Our daughter already knows how to handle the rental’s deductions and the income-tax returns, too.

We’ll do another round of estate planning, but our family’s asset management is sustainable and we’re simply tinkering on the margins. The plan has held up well over the last four years, and this is a good opportunity for more family conversations about the next decade.

For those of you in the military personal-finance business, my daughter and I are attending MilMoneyCon in Denver (25-27 April).  She’s part of a panel discussion and I’ll enjoy talking with people I haven’t seen in person for a year. Andrew Cohen will return for his third year with an update on his team running SECDEF’s Financial Readiness programs, and this is our chance to speak truth to power. (He’s retired Army. He already understands the issues.) We’ll all enjoy our usual financial nerdery.

I have my Pro Pass for FinCon24 (23-26 October, Atlanta) and I’m happy to spend a few more hours at the Authors Booth. We’ll work around those dates with our plans for the southern hemisphere summer in New Zealand.

You don’t have to buy a pass for those conferences.  If you happen to be in Denver or Atlanta during those dates, let me know if you’d like to meet up in the hotel lobby.  Meeting people is the reason why I attend these events!

“Call To Action”…?

I’m sharing these details as one example of Life After Financial Independence. No matter where you are on your FI journey, you’ll start an entirely different journey after you reach the FI milestone.

More importantly, you have to make a plan before life imposes its plans on you.

That’s why the featured image for this phase of my life is a sunrise, not a sunset.  Shortly after the dawn in that photo, I headed out for dawn patrol.

Regular readers of this site have plenty of financial literacy and know all about managing the 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate. As you approach your FI, it’s time to absorb the wisdom in Doc G’s “Taking Stock” and that impressive engineering textbook “Designing Your Life.”  Buy those books if you want (there are no affiliate links on this site) but feel free to try them at your local public library first.

And ask me questions.

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