She said:

We are a typical and yet non-typical middle-class family. Typical – because we worked long hours, paid taxes and mortgages, went for the short vacations to recover from work, took care of our old parents while they were alive, gave our son  college education, and did all other things that typical American families do.  Non-typical – because all of us are fortunate to realize that money is not everything.

We are vegetarians, and I love to cook.  My creativity is expressed through my cooking, and I hope to share with you my new culinary discoveries during our travels.

As I mentioned in my first post, we came to the USA in 1989 from the former Soviet Union. We choose to retire earlier for many reasons. One of them was health and the cost of healthcare.

Although a lot of people already have done that, we still have decided to share with you our thoughts, feelings, emotions, research & findings, including reviews of the places we’ve visited so far.

We hope that the brave ones will follow us, and the others, at least, will start thinking and assessing their situation.  It is never late to start living!

He said: 

When in your mid-50^th, with mortgages and college tuition paid off, working for maintaining same lifestyle or accumulating more things don’t feel like making much sense anymore and also becomes an increasingly up-hill battle. One day, looking at our attempts to recover from the long work hours, our 26 years old son finally said: “Enough already. Go live a little. Spend all your money; don’t leave anything to me…”

His wise words of selfless encouragement were what started it.