Financial independence and travel: Can you have both?
By Jonathan Chevreau on April 24, 2026 Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Financial independence and travel: Can you have both?
By Jonathan Chevreau on April 24, 2026 Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Experts explore whether financial independence is compatible with long-term travel, highlighting remote work, geoarbitrage, and cost-efficient “bleisure” lifestyles.
In February and early March, as is increasingly our custom, my wife Ruth and I spent five weeks in a sunny clime in order to avoid the tail end of Canada’s winter. On our return from Malta, regular guest blogger Devin Partida contributed a relevant article titled “Can you pursue financial independence without giving up Travel?” It ran on my own site in mid-March.
Devin’s article intrigued me enough to reach out to Featured.com and LinkedIn to see what various financial experts and business owners think about this question. Devin herself concluded that “maintaining financial independence while traveling is entirely possible with a proper strategy.”
Certainly, my own experience is that regular travel is quite consistent wiloth at least semi-retirement. In fact, you will note that Devin’s blog includes a couple of photos of Ruth and I that were taken in Malta and Italy, which attempt to portray the idea of combining business with pleasure.
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Few would dispute that full traditional retirement is entirely compatible with extensive travel; that seems to be the dream of those still employed full time in the work force. But increasingly, the FIRE [Financial Independence Retire Early] movement and/or semi-retirement or early retirement may also be compatible with working at least part-time, often some of it on the road.
Hence the term “digital nomads,” for those whose encore careers may allow for travelling and working wherever a laptop and internet connection are available. Certainly, running a financial web site like I do, and writing an occasional column like the one you are reading, can be done from just about anywhere.
Our family’s routine of spending six weeks every winter abroad (usually some place different each time) was honed after a similar trip in late 2022 to Malaga, Spain. We replicated that experience last year in the Bahamas and this year, as stated, in Malta. In all cases, we commit........
