A Retirement Experiment: Sell House, Pack Passport, Keep Moving.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-19/a-retirement-experiment-sell-house-pack-passport-keep-moving.html

When they retired, Tim and Lynne Martin had close friends, family nearby, a community they liked and financial security. Then they yanked the safety net.

Lynne, 73, and Tim, 68, sold their home and most of its contents in 2011 with no plans to buy a new one. Instead, they decided to travel the world, living at least a month at a time in short-term rental apartments from Mexico to Turkey, England to Argentina. The experience is the subject of a new book by Lynne, “Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World.”

Q. How can a person afford to live this lifestyle? Isn’t it expensive?

Lynne: We're living on the same amount of money we lived on before we left. Our monthly stipend is $6,000 per month, plus our Social Security. For us, the ticket was to get rid of the house. I don't want someone calling me when I'm in Turkey to tell me the water heater blew up. Also, you can translate that overhead into travel expenses. There are more and more ways people are doing this -- trading houses, house sitting, couch surfing. They rent their houses out and go. It's all part of a home-free movement among older people.

Q. Americans accumulate a lot of stuff. How were you able to get rid of a lifetime of possessions?

Lynne: The day we made this decision to do this, we looked at each other and said: "I'm really tired of that sofa.” Furniture’s just furniture, and the pieces that were dear to us we gave to our children. We also saved our children from having to go through all the accumulated mess of our lives.

Tim: We went from a 2,500-square-foot home to a 10-by-15-foot storage space.

Lynne and Tim Martin in Berlin in 2013.