We sold everything to live nomadically

We’ve been thinking about what retirement looks like for us for at least 10 years. We’ve gone back and forth between several ideas. We’ve read magazines and books about different retirement lifestyles. We’ve even made spreadsheets to evaluate the pros and cons of different models.

The winning plan was… basically no plan at all.

We love to travel and would love to see more of the world. We’ve always felt cheated by 1-2 week vacations and have wanted to experience living in places for months at a time. This became the central concept to our plan. We also wanted to minimize or eliminate exposure to winter; neither of us are fans of the cold.

We debated whether to keep the condo as a permanent home base (which would grow in value) or become renters to free up cash. We quickly realized that we had fewer and fewer ties to downtown Toronto, and realized that becoming renters would give us the flexibility to move around more. Keeping the condo seemed wasteful if we started travelling extensively. We just didn’t see ourselves coming back to Toronto with so much of the world still to explore.

We started imagining a sort of nomadic lifestyle where we’d live somewhere for as long as we find it interesting, then pack up and move elsewhere. We wouldn’t plan the next step until we felt like we needed a next step. Our plan was to have no fixed plan. Just a model.

We’d stick to furnished rentals so that we could pare down our belongings to just personal items. This would make moving around much easier.

Timing

This plan was cooked up years ago, but when to pull the trigger was still a big question mark. The earlier we started, the younger we’d be. But the longer we waited, the more money we’d have saved. We realized once again there was no need for a firm plan. We’d let the universe send us a signal.

We slowly started selling off and donating stuff we didn’t need. Kitchen equipment we used infrequently. Clothing we didn’t wear much. Furniture that wasn’t absolutely necessary. We channelled Marie Kondo and got rid of anything that didn’t spark joy.

When we decided to sell our condo in 2024, the selling and donating sprang into high gear. The condo was fully staged for selling, so we had the flexibility to sell anything we didn’t want to keep or move.

The offer we accepted on the condo had a nearly 3 month closing period, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing given that we’d need to figure out what to do next.

It turned out that the universe had its own plan for us, and we’d live with family for 8 months. Everything we owned fit comfortably in our van (which we would also eventually sell). We still had belongings that we’d work on selling off over the coming months.

We’re now at the point where everything we own can be packed into 2 large pieces of checkable luggage each, one carry-on bag each, and one personal item each. We definitely made some major sacrifices to gain space, and we have likely kept some items that we’ll find we don’t need. There will definitely be some finessing as we move around and start living out of these suitcases.