Country Article / Postcards

How to Retire at 35 and Live Happily Ever After

Date: 07/11/2005

This month, we continue our New Life in 2005 series with Paul and Vicki Terhorst’s story. They retired young (they were in their 30’s) and have traveled the world ever since. As Vicki puts it "the world is our home." You, too, can do something extraordinary in 2005. All you need to do is make a decision to make the change. Worldwide opportunities abound…and you’ll find the inspirationbelow. Enjoy.

My husband Paul and I walked the two miles from our Buenos Aires apartment to the newly gentrified neighborhood of Palermo Viejo. We peeked into trendy new restaurants in refurbished colonial buildings. When we arrived at our destination, a restaurant called Bodega 52, friends were waiting at a reserved table. We had a delicious dinner as we sat back and enjoyed an Argentine blues singer--who sang mostly in English.

Welcome to our lives in Buenos Aires, 2005.

It wasn’t always like this. Paul and I started out with a conventional life together in San Francisco, where we married in 1973. Paul worked his way up to partner of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., now KPMG. I gave piano lessons and taught music in a private school. We were in our 20s and enjoying every moment. In 1975 we were transferred to New York; in 1977 we returned to San Francisco; and in 1981 we were transferred to Buenos Aires. We moved, we changed, and we grew.

Each move helped us realize that we were making, and wanted to continue to make, conscious choices about our lifestyle. We wanted to keep our lives dynamic and evolving and we wanted to live in the present, making choices that made sense to us emotionally and financially.

During our first years together, we stayed within a comfort zone--within the contained and structured framework of Paul’s career. But by 1984 we were ready for a mega-change, a paradigm shift: Paul retired early. He was only 35.

We chose to start our early retirement by stuffing our belongings into a small one-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires. We took advantage of low airfares to travel in Europe, Asia, South America, and the U.S., and we traveled six to nine months a year. Argentina was cheap in the mid-1980s…our small apartment was worth little and cost next to nothing to maintain.

Many people ask us how we could afford to retire so young….

Vicki Terhorst
For International Living

Subscribers to the print edition can read the rest of this article in the July 2005 issue.