New Year’s Eve in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Wow, 2015 has come and gone. And what an incredible year it was, too!
As is customary, last January we resolved to make modest life changes. Then the biggest life change of all took precedence as we became parents in April.
Around the same time this modest blog underwent explosive growth as our story was shared in mainstream media around the globe. In a few surreal moments we’ve even been recognized by readers in the wild.
Without a doubt it has has all been a grand adventure. What do we we plan to do in 2016 to keep things exciting?
Travel
SE Asia
We will be in Chiang Mai, Thailand for another week. Then we fly south to Krabi, Thailand for some beach and ocean fun.
We will stay in Ao Nang for a week and then on Koh Lanta for 3 more, although our accommodations plans are still in the works.
Koh Lanta Sunset (photo credit)
In early February, our Thai visa will expire and we will move on to Malaysia. Langkawi, Penang, & Kuala Lumpur are on the agenda, followed by a few days in Singapore.
We have a few weeks of unplanned time (Bali? Philippines? Vietnam?), but in late March / early April we will return to Taiwan for Winnie and Jr’s birthdays. It is amazing to me that it is already approaching one year.
For the Mandarin speakers out there: If all goes according to plan, Winnie’s book will be published this spring with book signing events in Taiwan in early April. (In the mean time, check out her blog!)
Europe
In mid-April we are flying from Taipei to Lisbon, Portugal. All 3 of us are flying Business Class for a total of ~$200 (Travel hacking, I love you!)
KLM World Business Class (photo from The Points Guy)
In mid August we fly from Reykjavik, Iceland to Minneapolis.
For the 4 months in between, anything is possible. A reverse version of this European highlights itinerary looks interesting, but most likely is too ambitious and we’ll make it only as far as Southern Italy
Due to the nuances of European visas we will only be allowed to spend 90 days in the Schengen Region. For the remaining 4-5 weeks we are looking into exploring Morocco, a bike tour of Ireland, and visiting the Mad Fientist in Scotland.
I’m not yet sure how we get to Iceland, but a sailor friend half agreed to bring us there under the power of wind.
United States
In mid-August my clan is renting a few cabins on a lake in Northern Minnesota. Grandma, both parents, and my 3 siblings will be there, along with their spouses and 9 kids (10 total, including our little beast.)
This was a regular thing when I was growing up, but will be the first such event with we 4 kids as adults. We will while away the days fishing, swimming, boating, and eating Grandma’s awesome home cooking.
(photos courtesy of resort website)
After recovering from the mosquito attacks, we plan to visit friends in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Since Jr loves to dance and already has a fur coat, we may also make an appearance at Burning Man. (Maybe. Unlikely, but maybe.)
Let’s Dance (more Jr pics)
And since this little blog won a Plutus Award this year, we should plan to attend #FinCon16. Plus we’ll be in the neighborhood.
South America
As the weather turns cooler in the US, we intend to head south. Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and more are waiting.
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil seems like a good place to be for New Year’s Eve 2016 .
Blogging
In the early months of this year, expect a revamp of this site. It will be easier on the eyes, mobile friendly, and faster loading.
I also bid out some work for a Go Curry Cracker logo, although I’m not terribly excited about the early results. Any designers out there want to give it a go?
There are also some new and exciting media appearances in the works. We’ve even had a couple proposals from reality TV producers. That would be fun!
And of course there will be loads of new content. I have a list of ideas as long as my arm, many as a result of comments and emails.
I think the growth will continue, which is amazing. It would be wonderful for more young retired families to join us on the road.
Fitness
Last year I started the Slow Carb Diet and did well with it. These past few months in Chiang Mai I’ve been doing Crossfit nearly everyday.
Sled Pull Competition (me on right) (photo by Crossfit CM)
I intend to continue these activities this year. While I don’t always have a kettle bell handy, I find that a baby is an effective substitute.
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I suppose I could have more goals for this year, but hey… I’m retired.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing. Happy New Year!
Jeremy, Winnie, and Julian
All the best to the GCC family in 2016!
And to you, Marcia! Happy New Year!
Awesome goals! I can’t wait for the day when our itinerary is similarly hand-wavey.
I’m surprised we were able to nail down plans with this much definition. But with already purchased flights to Europe and then the US we at least have the framework in place.
Flexibility in travel is my favorite part. We are always meeting people who ask, “Have you been to this awesome place yet?!” We ended up exploring all of Guatemala based solely on random recommendations of people we met and it was fantastic.
That sounds like an awesome plan for 2016! I’m counting down the days to retirement (1372 :) ) and planning to visit Southeast Asia myself for the first time in March. That and a fair amount of domestic travel to see family is the extent of my plans. It’s going to be a great year. Good luck!
1372 days goes by really fast. Congrats!
Your plan for the year sounds like a blast! Our family of 4 is moving to taiwan in July for a year so maybe we can meet up if you guys ever come back.
On the logo, try fiverr.com. I’ve had amazing results, and its only $5.
Good plan! Living abroad is awesome, especially for kids. I think we’ll be back in Taiwan on an annual basis in the spring.
Thanks for the 5r tip, I’ll check it out.
Your 2016 sounds a lot more exciting than my plans for the year! :) But I’m the only one to blame for that.
Enjoy the time trotting the globe with the little dude.
Maybe a bit too exciting. We’ll see how we hold up, but so far Jr is loving the journey.
Happy New Year!
If you have time before your visa expires, grab one of the boats headed south from Ko Lanta to Ko Muk or, even better, Ko Kradan. Look up paradise lost on Ko Kradan, Wally the somewhat legendary owner passed away this year, but i imagine it’s still an amazing place. Anyway, happy travels.
Thanks for the tips! One of the reasons we haven’t booked a place on Lanta yet is we may decide to work our way through the smaller islands
Wow, that’s some serious traveling! And I thought we were ahead by having our first vacation of 2016 booked! Have you blogged about travel hacking on your site? I’d be interested in hearing about your strategies. Cheers to 2016!
I haven’t written too much on travel hacking, see this and this. My main approach is to cycle through rewards cards.
This was 2 standard 1-way Biz Class mileage tickets on Delta/KLM and a lap infant fare. Cash price was $6k+, so we did well on a $/mile basis and get to use the lounges and flat beds for the 13 hour red-eye from TPE to AMS. We also get the free hop out of the hub to southern Europe.
Nice, just checked them out. Thanks.
If you go to Koh Lanta, find the place called Mook Lanta. Proceed from Mook is a wonderful place to stay (owned by English ex pats). Their neighbors, if you head towards the beach, have an even more budget place. Both places are great and $10-25/night
2016 looks like it will be a fun year. Looking forward to it. Can’t wait to see how you optimized travel with GCCJr. Seriously, how do you have the energy for travel with an infant? The sleepless nights alone are rough and we stay in one place!
Happy New Year!
We take naps :)
Happy New Year!
If you’ve already been there you might want to kill Florence and Venice from your Italian trip and add new destinations.
Italy’s beauty is in the towns most foreigners don’t visit often, check Verona or Trieste not far from Venice, Siena instead of Florence, or the beautiful lakes area (lake Como, Garda, Maggiore).
These places will also likely be cheaper than Florence and Venice for added benefit :)
Thanks for the tips!
I’ve only been to Milan and Winnie has never been, so not sure yet what we will do or where we will go. We do prefer stuff a bit off the beaten track.
Florence and Sienna are both really cool, see them both as they are very close to one another :)
Just keep the content coming, we can’t get enough!
Do you plan on doing the Chataquawa again and will you be in the states for more than 30 days? If so what will be your health care strategy?
The Chautauqua this year was amazing, I loved it! But I also didn’t like being away from Jr for so long, and it was extra hard on Winnie. Still trying to figure this one out…
I will write a post about our health insurance plan. We will be in the US more than 35 days.
Looks like an awesome itinerary! We’ve been to most of your potential European destinations, and of course, we know a thing or two about Amsterdam :) If you need any tips or advice, just give a holler (or check the blog)! Oh, and we’ll be down in Rio for NYE 2017 too- agreed that it will be pretty nice to be on the beach for the celebration, especially with the Real down to 4x to the dollar :)
Sounds like a great itenerary. Looking forward to the “arms length” of content to come. I live in Orange County (south of LA) and wonder if you will do any meet ups while you are here. Let us know if you need a place to stay, we have two extra bedrooms.
Agree on the need for a meetup!
If there’s any way you can get to Bled, Slovenia (not too far from Venice) go there. It’s beautiful and it’s our favorite place in Europe. And I’m curious what the reality show producers actually proposed to you.
Wow – what a packed agenda! Can’t wait to hear about the travels.
Great post! Looks like an exciting year ahead, and I love the variety of locations. I’ll be at FinCon 2016, so look forward to catching up there.
Looks like a great 2016. I especially like the time spent in Minnesota (my wonderful home state and where I still consider to be home). Looking forward to seeing the relaunch and reading more. Woo hoo.
I am originally from Malaysia but live in Chicagoland right now. I will be visiting my family in Feb-Mar, if you need info about traveling in Malaysia or interested to visit Malacca (my hometown), you can email me.
I do a lot of travel hacking and manufactured spending. I use miles for my annual trip back to Malaysia in business/first. Last year, was able to use miles to pay for my parents to visit us, their trip to Japan, all in business/first.
Awesome! We’ll be leaving Europe in May (and over in Eastern Europe in April), so we’ll miss you there, but we plan to be in South America June – Dec, so hopefully our paths will cross there. Or, the MadFIentist being a generous guy, he gave us the same invitation, maybe we’ll just overwhelm his house. ;)
We are coming for you Mad Fientist!
Hello GCC Family,
Some awesome travel plans for 2016 (man are we jealous!), we wish you lots of fun! When you are lost in the Netherlands, please feel free to drop us a message, would be an honour to meet up!
Cheers, Team CF
That’s an awesome 2016 plan! I am jealous :P In the mean time, I am looking forward to your blogs in the new year, this is like a sneak preview of all the upcoming blog posts. Inspired by your story and blog, I registered mine last year too. Wish you and your family all the best!
Happy New Year to the Curry Crackers. ?
Happy New Year!
Hi, we spent two weeks in Iceland this summer (our second trip there) and it was our best trip in 30 years of travel. We’ll go back for (at least) a month next time – the scenery is just spectacular. Let me know if you want a copy of the itinerary. For Italy, we loved Volpaia and we’re planning on a week in Bevagna next trip (never been but looks perfectly located and low key).
That’s interesting, all of the Iceland trips seem to be 5-7 days, never heard of someone spoendong so much to!me there…we are thinking of hoping but I was concerned we might run out of things to do after 5 days based on the average trip lengths.
You might find this hard to believe, but some people spend a whole lifetime in Iceland without running out of things to do ;)
Touché….but I bet all those people have jobs to keep them busy (j/k)… And wow, my tablet does not display the site well, nor type well apparently. Not sure how you even deciphered my response.
Love it. You might want to check out Cinque Terre in Italy. That place is awesome.
Great idea! Cinque Terre has been on my short list for awhile.
Sounds like an Awesome 2016! It’s cool that you’ll be reliving a Family trip in MN. Sort of had the chance to do that on a 3 generation 2 week trip to the Southeast US in 2015. It was well worth it.
Congrats on the baby, the blog success, and your 2015 fitness achievements.
Quite an exciting 2016 plan! This doesn’t sound like very “slow travel” though. What brought on this pace? Just the way things lined up? Looking forward to seeing what you’ve got in store for the blog (the better mobile support). I’m having crazy ideas of this reality show…MTV’s GCC Real World….Ireland and Scotland were very cool, a bike tour of Ireland sounds a little sketchy based on where you go, in the country they had some of the narrowest roads I’ve ever seen. Absolutely beautiful though. Highly recommend the Isle of Skye and Edinburgh in Scotland, Dingle in Ireland was awesome too.
I’m not sure the proper definition of slow travel, but still feels pretty slow. We are basically following the seasons.
Haha, well according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica it is spending at least 2 weeks to a month or more in each location :) Just seemed like you were planning to visit a lot of countries especially in Asia and Europe over relatively short times. What are you planning on doing for accomodations, as I assume hotels and even airbnb would be a lot more expensive that your longterm apt rent?
That sounds about right. We’ll be ~2 weeks in each place, more if we love a particular location.
Short term rentals will definitely cost more than our current rental in Chiang Mai, but probably not too much more than our longer term rentals in Seattle or Taipei. We’ll also be using our Starwood Points in the more expensive cities (London, Paris, Rome, etc…)
I wonder if the Encyclopedia Britannica approves of our definition of retirement.
I live in Minneapolis, any chance of doing a reader meet-up while you’re in MN?
Sounds like a great idea. I’ll post something as the time approaches.
I’m in Minneapolis too and would eagerly attend! Happy to provide recommendations on location (or offer my deck and backyard). Thanks, GCC!
Hello GCC,
Thanks for all of the great info! I have been reading through your blog all day and I have learned so much, but right now I am lost. I was wondering if you had an article that explained what proportion of my savings should go into tax deferred accounts and what proportion should go into a regular taxable brokerage account. As a single, I know that once I achieve FI, I can withdraw ~$36,900 of qualified dividends or long term capital gains, but all over the blog I see how it’s important to contribute a lot to the tax deferred accounts to achieve FI faster. So how much should I contribute to tax deferred and how much should I contribute to a regular brokerage? I think that I can max out multiple tax deferred accounts if I wanted to, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t make sense since I would only be able to withdraw ~10k after FI tax free after a Roth Conversion (which I don’t think I can live off of). Can you point me to an article that might explain this?
There are multiple possible answers, depending on your current tax rate and target spending level in retirement.
This answer assumes you are earning more than $50k/year and are thus at the 25% marginal rate.
A common answer is that you need at least 5 years worth of spending in taxable accounts and Roth contributions, since this allows you to cover the 5 year seasoning period of a Roth IRA conversion ladder. As you say, if you planned to spend more than $10k/year you wouldn’t pay zero tax on conversions. But you could spend ~$20k/year with only a $1,000 tax bill. A 5% tax rate is better than the 25% you would be paying now. For this reason, standard advice is maximize current tax savings by contributing as much as possible into tax-deferred accounts.
If you have 5 years of spending in taxable accounts, per the 4% rule it is implied that you have 20 years worth in tax-deferred vehicles. That is a difficult milestone to achieve if you aren’t contributing the max amount to all available tax-deferred accounts.
Any additional savings would be added to the brokerage account, which could then have tax free gains and dividends.
That is one HELL of a plan for 2016! :) I especially love the the SE Asia and European trip itineraries. I hope you’ll love Paris, Amsterdam, Prague and Venice as much as we did. Make sure to eat lots of macarons, herring, Old Prague ham, and pasta for us.
P.S I’m freaking out over that picture of Junior in his adorable, little fur coat! Why is he so cute? WHY? (Also…how the heck did you managed to find a baby-sized fur coat in SE Asia?)
I think we can blame the cuteness on his mother.
That fur coat was an incredible find at a super hipster baby store in Taipei. Shockingly, there isn’t much demand for this kind of stuff… the store has since gone out of business.
What beautiful plans you have for 2016! Can’t wait to read about them as they happen. Do you take the baby to burning man, or does the baby take you? ^_-
Hey GCC, reading this article I can’t help but feel a little jealous. But all in all I wish you guys safe travels and may you achieve all the goal and ambitions you have set for 2016. I can’t wait to retire and travel and see the world like you. Please keep us update on your new experiences you come across in your travels.It’s going to be a great year. Good luck!
When you’re in the US, how do you plan to get around from place to place? I ask because we have a similar situation this fall when we’ll be in the US for 2-4 months visiting friends and family, and also traveling with our infant son. Since we don’t have a car now, renting one presents the question of needing supplemental liability insurance, which can raise the cost of car rentals substantially. We love not owning a car, but getting around much of the US w/o one can be challenging. You optimize so well, how do you plan to move around the US when you’re back later this year?
When we visit family, we’ll be mostly in one place or being chauffeured around by my siblings. Otherwise it will be planes, trains, and Ubers. I don’t even have a driver’s license anymore, so renting a car isn’t an option.
Back in the day, for a time I did pay for a liability only policy even when I had no car, because I was using Zipcar and the occasional borrowed car and hadn’t taken the time to figure out the best option. I think it was something small like a couple hundred dollars per year through Geico.
Looking forward to your write up on Lisbon, thinking of visiting in June. Some interesting tax incentives there with their NHR scheme.
Jeremy, thank you so much for sharing all this incredible knowledge in such a beautifully detailed manner. It’s so GOOD…. I really REALLY appreciate it. I have learned so much and its because of how you walk us through everything. I feel that I get a piece of what you’re thinking.
So, I have a bit a advice for you. Fitness advice. I hear crossfit is great and it’s probably very social too. So that’s good, but if you can’t make it to crossfit, I say do the 7 minute workout instead. I started with 1 round, 7min, then eventually 2, and then added 2 15 lbs dumbbells and sometimes a 20kg kettle bell into the mix. I can tell you that I’m so much stronger now. And it’s because I do it almost every day. Plus it’s only 20 minutes tops in the morning (with all the rest periods) but 14 minutes of actual work. There are a ton of apps out there, but here’s the original article out of the NY-Times.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout/?_r=0
I think its a really good option. all you need is a floor, a chair and probably an app to cue you on transitions.
The 7 minute workout looks great. I also like the Something About Mary reference.
Another workout that is a lot of fun is to do burpee intervals. 200 burpees total.
It takes 40 minutes if you do 5/minute, but only 20 minutes if you can do 10.