10 Years of FIRE!

That’s a full decade, wowza! I really did make it this far!!

This past year, has been somewhat…different to the other nine and right now it feels that I’m ready for the next chapter but the next chapter isn’t quite ready to reveal itself to me yet.

Also, I am still grieving the life that was and at the same time it feels strange to grieve something you are actively choosing to let go of…So, where were we? Ah, yes…

Hello there, reporting back for my yearly anniversary post.

10 years ago, I walked away from my corporate job and have been living a life of nomadic leisure covered in cat hair ever since.

Let’s see, where did I leave off last year?

We were in Newfoundland Canada, at one of my favorite boondocking spots of all times and had just decided to not return to Mesa that Winter. After leaving Newfoundland, we spent some time in Nova Scotia Canada and started to get ready to put our truck and Airstream on a boat to Antwerp, Belgium from Halifax, Canada. That was at the beginning of October 2025. Now, it feels like this might as well have been ages ago.

It was a weird feeling handing over your car, your house and everything in it, along with the keys in exchange for a barely readable pink piece of paper, the third copy of a form filled in by hand, wondering if you’ll ever see your stuff again on the other side.

We left Fibby and Yoda at the port of Halifax and took a taxi to the hotel, where we waited with the cats for our flight to Frankfurt the next day.

We had spent the previous days getting the trailer ready for the trip. Emptying out the Fridge, getting rid of food, propane bottles, cleaning, storing things away etc. We also had vet and CFIA appointments to get the paperwork for the cats ready, so they could travel.

Luckily there’s a direct Halifax to Frankfurt flight, that only takes 6 hours and 30 minutes. A luxury compared to my usual flight Odysseys from Arizona. Still, I was concerned if the cats would be OK, there were quite a bit older than last time we had to do this in 2019. And back then I thought they would not have to board a plane ever gain….famous last words…

Thankfully they did travel like champs and everything went well, because by now they are total pros at this.

We arrived in Frankfurt, got their papers checked, picked up our luggage and rental car and headed to my Mum’s place.

There we waited for the truck and Airstream to arrive on the other side as well. The boat had been delayed and although the voyage itself was only supposed to take 14 days, it took almost a month until we got our house back.

Once we had everything back at the beginning of November, we tried to get travel ready asap, as it was getting cold in Germany already. We started heading south soon after, practically running from the cold. They had freezing temps at my Mum’s the night after we left and every single place we stopped at on the way was hit by frost the night after we moved on.

It took us several days of driving to get to the South of France, where we finally stayed a couple of nights to relax.

Finally we could breathe and finally it started to sink in what we had done…normally by this time we’d be in Mesa. Now we were in Cap Leucate, France

I love France, it’s a great country and I love spending time there. I was super excited to be near the area where I worked at a campground for an entire summer many many moons ago and I also really really wanted to be in Arizona, where many of my friends are.

From the Languedoc coast we headed further South to Spain, hoping for warmer Winter temperatures and maybe a new beginning somewhere.

New Winter quarters

We checked out several places in Spain over the Winter. We asked other campers for recommendations of places that were smaller and felt more like communities. We made some new friends and introduced lots of people to Mexican Train Dominoes. We even spent some time in the Tabernas desert, that looks a lot like Arizona and has been used as a backdrop for various Western movies like „A fistful Dollars“ or „Once upon a time in the West“.

TDA said jokingly „we spent all this money to ship our stuff over here, only for it to look just like Arizona“. And that made me even more homesick.

Spain is lovely. The people are super friendly, despite the hoards of campers that flood their country in order to escape the cold up north. I dusted off my rusty Spanish and tried to learn some more.

Got involved in animal rescue efforts and tried to find community. Spoke to locals and went for walks and tried really hard to arrive. Even managed to meet up with other FIRE nomads for Tapas once.

It was an unusual cold and wet winter, according to the locals, so winter wasn’t quite as comfortable as we had hoped. Still a lot better than it would have been in Germany or the South of France. We stayed a little longer than planned, but we hadn’t really found a place that ticked all the boxes yet.

In the Spring we slowly made our way back to Germany, through France and met up with our friend C. from Arizona, who was undergoing medical treatment in Southern Germany at the time.

We then went back to my Mum’s, who had long time family friends from Canada visiting. We celebrated her 85th birthday and spent time with our Canadian friends, all whilst working on the usual todo list while at her place.

I got to spend time with my recently FIREd friend S. from Arizona, who had added a couple days near my hometown to her Europe travels, so we could catch up.

New Summer adventures

In June we attended two European Aistream Rallies, one in Germany, one in France, something we had never done in the US. We met some great people and are planning to attend more of these gatherings in the future. We were the only full timers at those meetings though.

After the rallies we spent some time in France and after another quick stop at my Mum’s, started to head North, because most of Europe was experiencing a scorching heat wave. We visited family and friends on the way and finally made our way to Denmark, where it has been lot cooler.

Considering the current state of affairs, I was a little concerned traveling around Denmark, with US plates, but so far people have been nothing but friendly. Curious, yes. We often get asked if we REALLY drove here from the US, LOL. The Airstream and US plates have proven to be a good conversation starter. Unfortunately most times the conversation does not go beyond the initial curiosity of the first couple questions.

We are currently checking out several places in Denmark, in hopes of finding a place to spend the summer in the future without having to move around all the time. So far, we are really enjoying it.

RV living in Europe is very different from North America. Boondocking is often frowned upon or not allowed. In those places, where it’s possible, it often isn’t feasible with comparatively a big setup like ours. Camper infrastructure is mostly geared to smaller drivable campers and not so much travel trailers. Logistics have proven to be a real challenge compared to what we are used to.

So far we have been able to manage just fine, but it takes a lot more planning and research than the US and Canada.

We have even been turned away at a couple of places because travel trailers, or caravans as they are called here, were not permitted.

So much for the life update. Let’s talk numbers. After all this is a FIRE post, right?

Numbers

10 years is an important milestone indeed, as the first 10 years are widely considered the most important for SORR (sequence of return risk). If your portfolio survives these 10 years in good health, your risk of running out of money decreases significantly.

This is super important for me, as I started out on a LeanFire journey and was hoping that at some point, if I had to, I could recast my withdrawal rate,to a more regular FIRE level.

Despite a couple of high expense years, such as our pivot after the break-in in 2021 and our transatlantic „move“ in 2025, my portfolio sits quite a bit higher than when we started out in 2016. Thanks to both a strong market and careful spending deliberately kept below that often-cited 4% withdrawal rate mark.

Given the current state of the world, it doesn’t feel quite as reassuring as I expected it to feel when I first set out. However, knowing that I could recast my WR now to allow for a slightly higher spending level is still a great feeling.

Plans for the future

We really don’t know yet what is in store for us. We have watched many Nomad friends come off the road in the past years and after 10 years of travel, I sense that we might be looking at some changes ourselves as well.

We are not sure yet, how that will look like. But now that we lost our „AZ community anchor spot“ that we returned to each winter and our „enduring nomadic neighborhood of friends“, the MMC, I am longing to find a new place to create community and a landing pad from our travels.

We originally thought, we’d find a long term winter stay and a long term summer stay somewhere, traveling between them in the camper while checking on my Mum on the way. However in recent discussions both TDA and I have expressed a wish for something more permanent. A rental maybe, or possibly using a small portion of the money to purchase a place….not sure yet.

Purchasing a home will have major implications: money will be taken from the stash (which will lower the WR and the option to recast if needed) and establishing residency somewhere will complicate my already multi-country tax situation even further.

We don’t know yet how this is going to look like, but we both are longing for some sort of familiarity, permanence, a way to grow into a community, put down *gasp* roots etc….To be honest, I’m not even sure how to put it into words yet. What we do know though, is that we don’t want to rush it and it will need to feel right.

For the time being whatever “this” is going to be, it will not be in the US at the current time. We often get asked if we are going to go back. And the answer is, not in the foreseeable future. This is hard for me to write, but this is the one thing that has crystallized over the last few months.

I won’t go into all the details, but a whole host of reasons brought us here, and some of them were completely out of our control.

But I’m rambling again, as I tend to do.

It’s quite ironic, I know. I don’t write all year and then my anniversary posts get ridiculously long, LOL.

Conclusions

Pretty much what I said at the beginning: Right now it feels that I’m ready for the next chapter but the next chapter isn’t ready to reveal itself to me yet.

And what I always say at this point: I am grateful that FIRE has put me in a position to explore many options before we start this next chapter, whatever it may end up looking like.

And of course: Spend time with those you love, nothing is ever guaranteed.