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In 1991 Billy and Akaisha Kaderli retired at the age of 38. Now, into their 4th decade of this financially independent lifestyle, they invite you to take advantage of their wisdom and experience.

We’re Still Here! An Evolutionary Tale

Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

We did not have our retirement life scripted to purchase a house in a community, buy the last car we’d ever possess, and settle down. We let our retirement lifestyle unfold, blossom and develop into what it is now. Our style of over 30 years of financial independence was never planned. It evolved on its own. After quitting the rat race, our first stop was a 36-square mile island in the Caribbean West Indies named Nevis. Our number one project on our no-plan agenda was to slow down.

Every day we’d take the public combi van and ride on the one circular road around this volcanic island, go to immaculate beaches, soak up the rays and eat a lobster salad sandwich or a cheeseburger in paradise.

We became captivated by characters

Since our time in the sun-baked islands, we have gotten more skilled at traveling on less and with greater joy. The nomadic lifestyle became addictive because of the captivating cultures, the ceaseless opportunities to volunteer, all the unique destinations, and the numerous colorful characters.

 

 

 

 

Professional gamblers, handsome ramblers, ladies of the night, Buddhist monks, travelers with trunks, wagon masters, ruby miners, Reggae musicians, accomplished magicians, ex-MI-5 agents, famous chefs, stuttering geniuses, AIDs victims, recovering rock stars, and wealthy wannabes are just a few on a long list of eccentrics we have met.

Our continuous adventure is like stepping into the River of Life with its currents pulling us here, moving us there, and no two days are the same. What luxury to be able to live this way! You can do this, too, if you are so inclined, or not.

The beauty of financial independence is that you get to choose. We give you the map, but you determine your path. The last couple of decades have been filled with opportunities that, had we continued working behind our desk, we could never have experienced.

Only the beginning

The pristine island of Nevis, where we ate our weight in fresh lobster was only the beginning. We danced to the Reggae beat in the tiny Caribbean-colored shack bars, went skinny dipping in the sea and watched the full moon rise over the volcano.

Eventually, we made our way to Cumana, Venezuela the oldest city in the Americas, lost our luggage on a dark and rainy night and ate giant black ants, a local delicacy.

A few years of traveling the western US in an RV, we decided international travel was what we wanted, so our skeleton plan was to travel to Chapala, Mexico and stay two months. Those two months turned into a surprisingly rich four years.

A badge of honor

Every season or so there in Chapala we’d tell each other that we’d leave and hit the road again, but the town and its people captured both our hearts and imaginations. We jumped in with various self-started volunteer projects to improve the community, including building two new tennis courts on Federal land in a city park.

During our retirement years, we applied for and were denied from joining the Peace Corps three separate times. Undaunted, we continued to pursue our own style of volunteer work and today, with all of the activities and projects that we initiated, we wear that Peace Corps denial as a badge of honor.

Thousands of miles on the road

Meanwhile we increased our Spanish language skills, which are still only par but they easily get us through all of Mexico, Central and South America. Far different than Latin America in custom, food, history and religion, discovering the world of Asia brought a completely different dimension to our journeys. We began traveling the high roads, low roads and back roads of Thailand. We both now know basic Thai cooking and enough Thai language to order food, obtain lodging, purchase tickets for our transport needs and to dicker at markets.

We have bodysurfed the famous international surfing beach of Kata in Phuket, Thailand and Akaisha was trained by a private tutor in the art of Thai massage. We meandered though Laos, North and South Viet Nam, distant places in China, a few islands of the Philippines and bargained for rubies, sapphires and diamonds in Burma. We blew through Bali, Magic Bussed though the Land of Oz, New Zealand and hung out on the beach in Manly, Australia.

Time marched on and we provided End-of-Life care for Akaisha’s ageing mom and dad and my own father as well.

After all of this emotional and physical intensity, we headed to Ecuador. Here we met the Quechua indigenous peoples, stayed in their homes, sought out volcanic hot springs in the Andes Mountains, and lodged in the ancient Sacred Valley of Vilcabamba.

Public demand

Upon returning to the States, our website was born out of demand from followers and we wrote our first book, The Adventurer's Guide to Early Retirement, A Common Sense Approach, Your Simple Path to FIRE - Now in it's 4th Edition.

Neither of us had written a book before and had no connections to established media or to publishing houses. Being the independent types we are, we wrote our retirement story anyway and included hundreds of photos. It sold in over forty countries, and our tale attracted the attention of media around the world.

On the road again we continued with a steady cocktail of traveling to both Asia and Mexico, where Akaisha trained Mexicans in Thai Massage, and then we headed further into Central America, retracing foot prints from a previous life of four decades past.

The Maya are mystical and we lived a year among them in Panajachel, at the volcanic crater lake called Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. Learning of their beginning-of-the-world story and their end-of-the-world predictions, we drank the finest mountain grown coffee, ate handmade Maya chocolate and locally harvested macadamia nuts by the pound!

Sharing our perspectives and skills, we continue to write books such as Your Retirement Dream IS Possible, illustrating alternative retirement options, destinations, and our love of travel.

We’re just getting started

We have spent Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Loi Kratong, Buddhist and Chinese New Year and every other holiday in various countries around the world, with a special mention of the famous Nyepi day experienced on Bali. Talk about a contrast! But we relished in them all.

And after thirty years of travel we are just getting started!

Receiving emails from friends in faraway places still stirs our wanderlust and we yearn to visit. Watching travel shows and seeing interesting foods that are unknown to us makes us want to taste as much of the world as we can.

There are so many places, peoples and cultures to see that when we look at a map, it is like a candy store to us. We are approaching 70 now, and the clock keeps ticking; we want to make the most of it.

 

 

 

 

So, after all of these accomplishments, travels and experiences, if you think we are ready to sit on the porch, forgetaboutit! We didn’t always receive encouragement for following our dream, and our choice mystified some people, but it was our dream. Sometimes you just have to look into the eyes of the doubters and then look back into your own hearts and minds and follow what you believe. And because we didn’t abandon our path, we are blessed with friends all over the world and have memories of colorful characters straight out of a novel.

We are grateful for every bit of it.

Life is an adventure.

Follow your dreams.

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About the Authors

Billy and Akaisha Kaderli are recognized retirement experts and internationally published authors on topics of finance, medical tourism and world travel. With the wealth of information they share on their award winning website RetireEarlyLifestyle.com, they have been helping people achieve their own retirement dreams since 1991. They wrote the popular books, The Adventurer’s Guide to Early Retirement and Your Retirement Dream IS Possible available on their website bookstore or on Amazon.com.

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