How To Winter in Hawaii – With Kids, Without Money

Our two munchkins last winter in Hawaii

Yes, we’re doing it again. 3 months this time!

I posted to Facebook that we were spending the winter in Hawaii again, and got this comment:

I love the minimalist approach. But how does one deal with the high cost of travel to Hawaii? Honolulu is also very expensive, right? how do you deal with that when you have kids? Can you please share this? It will be useful for people like me who would love to do this!

Here’s my reply – the top 10 tips for how we spend the winter in Hawaii, with kids, without breaking the bank:

1. Be frugal. We live well below budget while we’re in California, so we save up money for the flights. It takes discipline, but the freedom is worth it.

2. Pay one rent. We rent a small apartment (1 br) on both sides, giving up the lease when we move so we’re never paying double rent – and rent in Honolulu is about the same as in Silicon Valley, so our living expenses are actually about the same.

3. Find cost tradeoffs. The one thing that’s much more expensive in Hawaii is food, but that’s compensated for by the fact that life is so much simpler there – here we pay for kids’ activities, entertainment, transportation etc, while there you just walk to the beach every day for free fun that never gets boring for the kids (or the adults).

4. Hang loose. When we’re in Hawaii, we don’t pay for all the over-priced touristy stuff, but instead live more like locals.

5. Find work that’s portable. We focus on building up work/revenue while we’re in California that is compatible with extended time away – things that we can work on remotely for now, with the goal of moving towards increasingly passive income.

6. Pounce on sales. We keep an eye on flight prices, scooping up deep discount sales that are often available months in advance of when we leave.

7. Self-store your stuff. We store our California belongings in a small self-storage place while we’re gone (we don’t own anything that doesn’t fit in our car, so moving costs are negligible), and we rent a furnished place in Hawaii. Also, each time we put our stuff in storage, it’s a great excuse to give away the inevitable accumulation of things that happens over 9 months, so we stay super lean.

8. Use your feet. We choose places to live on both sides where you can walk almost anywhere, and bus/train if you need to, so while we’re in Hawaii we don’t have a car (and we’re thinking of giving up our car in California too, actually)

9. Be curious. We expect hiccups on either side, but it’s all part of the adventure – we also homeschool our kids, so there aren’t any ties to school schedules, and they get to experience with us how a person goes about finding shelter, food, and community in a new place. Important life skills!

10. It’s ok to be different. I say if you want to do something, just do it, and the world around you will move to accommodate you. People feel sorry for us that we live in a 1 br apartment with 2 kids, but we feel like it’s the greatest thing in the world – we’re all so connected, and we get to live wherever we want!

I hope that answers the question and inspires whoever is reading this to live life your way.

vagabonding

Favorite quotes from Rolf Potts‘ Vagabonding book: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel:

Out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need, we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts.

The freedom to go vagabonding has never been determined by income level; it’s found through simplicity – the conscious decision of how to use what income you have.

Vagabonding is not like bulk shopping: The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home – and the slow, nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.

“Seeing” as you travel is somewhat of a spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being continually interested in whatever surrounds you.

Plus three of my all-time favorites from Henry David Thoreau:

One spends the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Thanks, Rolf and Henry, for your example and inspiration!

top 5 books to help you live happier with less stuff

Here are the 5 books that inspired Daniel and I to live with radically less and be happier!

1. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Living in the woods gave him amazing insights on a simple life.

2. Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
Spend where you get value and only where you get value.

3. Fight Club (OK, this one’s a movie)
The stuff you own ends up owning you.

4. Adbusters (magazine)
Inspired us with Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week

5. The Happy Minimalist by Peter Lawrence
A detailed account of how to live with almost no stuff.

BONUS for keeners: Chuang-Tzu translated by Burton Watson
Taoist tales and philosophy.

What books inspire you?