Hi, I'm Grant Sabatier, the creator of Millennial Money and the author of
Financial Freedom.
And today I'm going to watch this video, "How we retired early with $2.2
million to travel the world."
I've never seen it before, and I'm going to give my reaction.
Make sure you like this video and subscribe to watch more of these
reaction videos. Ready to rock and roll?
All right, let's do it.
Pumped for this.
Since we've been retired, I have been able to take a lot of time to
do the things that I wanted to do.
And that's the reason we started in our low cost of living country, because they
gave us a very good insight of where our money is going to get us.
Are they in Portugal?
We felt that we could adjust properly and be able to live, retired that way.
Things just fell into place and we're able to do more things instead of being
caught up in the whole rat race.
Nice job.
The lifestyle...
Moved to Portugal. Yeah, I was right.
I'm Dianne and I'm Guillermo.
And I was 47 when we achieved FIRE
And I was 44 when I achieved FIRE.
We had saved up $2.2 million and decided to travel the world in search of our
forever home.
Portugal's like cheating when it comes to FIRE because I think the cost of
living is probably like 25% to 30% what it is in the U.S.
So if they've saved $2.2 million, that effectively means they have
$6 million or $7 million in U.S.
dollars. Dianne and Guillermo have a lot of money saved up for for their
journey.
I was a real estate agent and I had developed a small real estate team in
the United States, Northern Virginia, D.C.
metro area.
I was in the telecom industry for over 20 years
Did 4 years in the military in the Marines.
So I grew up in Northern Virginia.
It's one of the fastest growing real estate markets in the country.
I'm guessing that in addition to getting nice big commissions on her sales, she
also invested in a couple investment properties.
I'm excited to see if that's the case.
In 2018, our net worth was $2.2 million USD and currently today in
2022, our net worth is $2.6 million USD.
There you go.
That's an important point.
They retired in 2018 and they've been able to participate in the
end of what was really one of the best bull markets in history.
And I started investing in 2010 and just the growth of my investments from 2018
to 2022 has actually outpaced theirs.
But they've been able to take advantage of that rare opportunity.
Whereas if you retire at the right time and then your portfolio grows at 20% or
30% right after you retire, you have a lot more options.
My stepmother actually was diagnosed with cancer and my
mother ended up having to take care of them along with myself.
And the week that he passed away, my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
I spent more than a year taking care of her.
And I realized even though I'd always wanted to retire before 50, I just
didn't even want to wait any longer.
I started really taking a look at our numbers.
I started talking with a financial advisor.
I found the FIRE community and I came up with a plan and presented it to
Guillermo.
So it sounds like Dianne's really leading the charge here, and it's
usually going to be one person in a couple that takes the lead.
And in fact, my wife could care less about money or FIRE or financial
independence, but she was excited about the opportunity to have more freedom.
It's important to note that it's a lot easier to reach financial independence
if you have your partner on board.
Our plan was to stay two years in each country to explore and see if we can
find our forever home in each country.
So we did 3 years in Mexico because of the pandemic.
There was one extra year that would stay.
After that, we wanted to explore more of Europe.
We have our money mostly in a real estate market and in Roth IRAs.
We don't actually have a financial advisor, and we also have money in
brokerage accounts and in high investment savings accounts.
I hope they get into their specifics of their real estate investments.
That's the first thing that they listed.
And then the second was Roth IRAs, and then the last was brokerage.
My guess is that they have a couple of rental properties and they're making
some money that way.
In addition to the money that we saved up for retirement, we kept three rental
properties.
Yes. in Virginia as part of our investment portfolio.
So we actually sold a property in Alexandria, Virginia, that we were
living in. I made over $120,000 on that property.
We bought one in Gainesville that we lived in for a number of years, and
that's one that we converted into one of the three rentals.
Here's one of the mistakes they made.
If any mistake, it's selling that property in Alexandria, Virginia, for
only $100,000 to $150,000 profit.
It's one of the fastest appreciating markets in the country, super close to
National Airport in DC, right across the Potomac River from D.C.
And Alexandria property is something, at least in their case, I'd recommend they
hold on to as a rental for as long as possible.
It's so much more valuable hanging on to it as a rental for the next 20, 30 years
than it was selling for $100,000 to $150,000 in profit.
So our typical expenses in the US before we retired was about
$7,000 USD a month.
And in Mexico our expenses were about $2,700 a month.
We have only been in Portugal about 6 months now.
So they're still living in a high, expensive area for less than $100,000 a
year, but certainly cutting their expenses considerably.
My guess is they could have FIRE'd maybe 3, 4 or 5 years earlier.
And I wonder why they actually decided to be more conservative.
I spent some time in Lisbon myself, and it was hard to spend money there.
Especially when you can eat those fresh sardines for like €1 per bushel and get
a bottle of wine for €2 or less.
So I'm actually curious how they're spending so much money unless they have
a really baller house, which it doesn't look like from this video they have.
But who knows, maybe they've got some secret splurges and they're really into
scuba diving or something.
I've been getting into crypto, so I may be learning about that more or
going out and taking different lessons whether it's languages or scuba diving
or yoga.
Oh, look at that.
Scuba diving. He called it.
Something that's going on that we work into our daily routines.
Right now, we're not considering moving back to the US.
But one thing we've learned in life is never say never.
So we're really looking more at Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, possibly South
America. And we'll continue our journeys until we find our little piece
of paradise.
Yeah, they're feeling really bullish right now because their investment
portfolio has grown over $400,000 since they reached FIRE and retired early in
2018.
They have a YouTube channel that's probably making some money.
And so they're expressing this extremely bullish reaction.
After having that growth, their portfolios probably dropped about 20%
this year, which is even more than would have appreciated.
So I'd be curious to see if they're still ultimately feeling this way, but
overall, they're in a really great position.
The biggest thing is keep exploring, keep an open mind.
You don't have to pick your forever home.
And in fact, maybe you should throw that idea out the window.
They have immense flexibility and freedom.
They spend their time doing the things that they love.
They like learning new things.
You can really do that anywhere in the world.
With 1 being terrible, 10 being amazing.
I'm going to clock Dianne and Guillermo at a solid 8.75.
So I think they've done pretty much everything right.
And in fact, maybe too much right.
And I would encourage them not to be too beholden to their spreadsheets and maybe
take a little bit more risks in their life.
Maybe spend a little bit more money, if they can, to see how it makes them feel.
All right. Well, that's about it.
Thanks for watching this reaction video.
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