The Uncorked Path: Our Journey to a Life Less Ordinary

Blending a passion for strategic consulting, travel, and wine, we’re trading the daily grind for a global adventure—and bringing you along.

Introduction

We’ve always been wanderers at heart. For years, we hoped for that corporate assignment that would send us and our family to live abroad, to truly immerse ourselves in anew country and its culture. But eventually, we realized if we wanted to make this happen, we had to be our own expat assignment-givers. During Covid, when my consulting business slowed down, I invested in getting some wine certifications to fuel my love of learning (and wine) and explore starting anew business that might help us be able to travel the world and not wait for full retirement. Our travels are designed to be a bit of a working adventure. I will still support a few of my strategic consulting clients and will help companies with planning and facilitation of strategic retreats, while we’ll also build the website to be a resource and planning tool for others who want a life of slow travel.

Our Journey

It was less of a sprint and more of a… well, a meandering hike with a few detours. We initially set a goal of retiring at 55. Then we adjusted it to 60, but relooked at our feasibility every year. It turns out, we were accidentally part of the FIRE(Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement, long before we even knew what it was! Once we stumbled upon the online communities, we really dove in, soaking up every piece of knowledge we could.

And now, here we are. After years of planning and a final decision to put our travel life plan into action at 57 (for Tom) and 58 (for me), our journey officially began with a flight to Paris on August 27^th, 2025. This first blog post is about the fun, crazy, and sometimes tedious planning that got us here.

One big question is the decision on keeping or selling our primary home. After much research on the selling and rental market, risks to upkeep with a pool and strict HOA, we ultimately sold our home in Holly Springs, North Carolina. We bought some land closer to the ocean outside of Wilmington, where we'll eventually build our forever home. This should allow us to be more flexible and truly embrace a life of "slow travel."

In order to prepare we had two areas it was important to understand better: budget and living arrangements. We spent years taking working vacations, learning about what we liked (and didn't like!) in different-sized cities, apartments, activities and hobbies, and finding out what it was like to live out of a suitcase for weeks on end.

Planning and Logistics

• Our Visa Strategy & The Big Picture: When we first started planning, we considered pursuing a residence visa, or Digital Nomad visa, in one country. It would offer stability and a straightforward legal path for a long-term stay. But as we looked at the map, we realized that one country wasn't enough! Our goal is to see the world over the next 5-7 years, and a single residence visa would offer some great benefits of having a home base,  but it would also lock us down. So, we made the conscious decision to travel on tourist visas. For the Schengen Area in Europe, this means we can stay for up to 90 days within any 180-day period. It's a bit like a game of musical chairs, but instead of chairs, it's continents! This visa strategy is what allows us the freedom to plan trips not only across Europe but also to places like Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.
• Timing and Pacing: Our first major decision was when to go. We set a firm departure date of September 4^th, 2025. This was ultimately adjusted to August 27th, 2025, where we booked a flight to Paris and added  Metz France to our itinerary. This was the culmination of years of financial planning and some very practical decisions, like winding down most of my consulting contracts and Tom's engineering career. We’re embracing the  idea of "slow travel," which means we won't be rushing through a  new city every three days. Our previous three-week trips gave us the  confidence to know this pace would work for us and our budget. A huge part of our planning is about "chasing the sun"—we try to follow good weather to make our travels more enjoyable and to keep our packing list simple (one suitcase!). This is a major factor in our routing.
• Our Hub Location: This was a critical piece of our planning puzzle.     We’ve learned that day trips are great, but finding the right hub city is     the most important part of "slow travel." Our previous trips     taught us that we needed a place that would make us happy for a minimum of 30 days. We spent a lot of time defining our criteria:
   
  • What size city makes us both  happy (I love the energy of big cities, Tom prefers smaller places)?
   
  • What do we want to be able to do from our home base (golf, hike, visit historical sites)?
   
  • What are our non-negotiables, and what are we willing to compromise on?
   
  • For example, we knew we needed a space that would accommodate our individual preferences—Tom wakes up early and wants to eat right away, while I prefer to ease into the day and eat later. I love to read, and Tom likes      to watch TV, so we needed a setup that allowed us to have our own space to do our own things. Having these conversations and a clear understanding of what we both needed was absolutely critical to picking our hub city.
 
• Logistics & Transportation: The beauty of "slow travel" is that we have the time to explore and move at a relaxed pace. This means we prefer trains and buses for day trips and getting from one hub to the next. Renting a car and hitting a million spots in a few days just isn't our style, however we do find visiting our preferred wine producers often involves renting a car ourselves or hiring a car service.  A critical factor in my planning is finding hub locations that are close     to our next destination, minimizing expensive and time-consuming transfers. For example, our plan is to spend 40 days in Morocco in March and early April, which sets us up perfectly to take a quick ferry to Southern Spain and Southern Portugal, where we'll find fantastic sunshine and golf.
• Bucket List Events: Our itinerary is also built around some major bucket list items. I planned a year in advance to ensure we could be at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh—a must-see for me. I’m also planning ahead for our trip to Scotland so Tom can golf around St. Andrews. For me, a major priority is to be in Burgundy, France, during the fall harvest to immerse ourselves in the wine culture of one of the world's most famous regions. This strategic planning ensures we hit our personal goals and make the most of our time.
• Accommodation: The right apartment size wasn't just about budget; it was about what would make us happy and fit our lifestyle. We know from our practice runs that having a space that accommodates our individual needs is key to our sanity (and happiness!). We'll share more about how we choose our specific neighborhoods and our research on walkability and safety in future posts.

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Costs

We are committed to tracking our budget and sharing what we learn, including how our spending deviates from our plan. We learned early on that tracking every single expense, even on vacation, is a crucial data point for a successful early retirement. Itwas critical to our knowing when we could enter this next chapter of our lives. We also know one of the biggest fears is running out of money in retirement! This is arguably one of the most important activities related to pulling the trigger for early retirement. We'll provide a high-level breakdown of our costs in future posts once we have a good feel for what's what.

Before You Go

Tom is the master of practical planning, diving into everything from luggage choices to medical insurance and finding the right e-sim provider for our phones. Our early trips gave us a lot of confidence in our ability to plan and budget accurately. We’ll be sure to detail our pre-trip checklist in future posts for those who are interested.

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Recap

Our first blog post isn't about the breathtaking views or the incredible food—we'll get to all that, we promise! This one is about the decade of planning, saving, and soul-searching that led us to this moment. We learned that the perfect retirement date is a moving target, that sometimes you have to sell a house to make a dream happen, and that having a plan is great, but remaining fluid is even better. This new chapter is about truly immersing ourselves in a local culture, and for us, that means delving into the history, the local life, and, of course, the fantastic food and wine scene. We can't wait to share more of this adventure with you.