This Nurse is “CoastFi”- Ep. 17
Vicki is a wife and mom of two boys. Flying back to the Bay Area for work approximately every 2 months Vicki was able to live out her dreams of exploring the world with her family. Vicki is “CoastFi,” meaning they’ve reached a point where they have saved up enough that, as long as they don't touch their nest egg, it will grow enough to provide them with enough income to retire at a normal age. If they didn't save another dollar, they would still be able to retire just based on compound interest.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy (06:44): Hi Vicki. Welcome to the Nurses on Fire podcast. I'm super excited to get you on the podcast because when I decided to create this podcast, you were top of mind. So welcome Vicki. Tell all the people a little bit about yourself and we'll talk about your unique journey on the path to financial independence.
Vicki Van Essen (07:09): So hey, Naseema. I guess for the purposes of this podcast, I'm a nurse. I work as a psychiatric nurse and then I'm also a women's health nurse practitioner and a certified nurse midwife. Let's see, like how far back do you want me to go?
Naseema McElroy (07:24): Let's talk about why you got into nursing. Like let's talk about your nursing path a little bit and then we can talk about what kind of got you started in wanting to pursue financial independence.
Vicki Van Essen (07:37): Yeah, so the nursing path, that all began when I was in, well, so when I was in college I took a lot of anthropology classes and they were anthropology of health and illness, anthropology of reproduction, things like that that looked more at culture and how culture affects and defines health, health and illness. And as a result of that, as I did a lot of research abroad. So I spent some time in Morocco doing research while I was studying abroad. And then again I had a federal grant to do more public health research in Morocco after I graduated. And having done, you know, public health research as like it really helps to also have some sort of clinical background. I knew I was really interested in women's health and that's what my research had been on. Always like
obstetric-related women's health research and looked at my options there and realized that nurse midwifery was really the focus that I was most interested in and that the sort of final degree that I wanted in terms of clinical skills.
Vicki Van Essen (08:43): And so moving back from there, I was like, okay, so in the United States, in order to be a nurse midwife, you have to be an a registered nurse first. And I already had a bachelor's degree. So I looked at a lot of these different programs that are available for folks who already have a bachelor's degree to get their RN in a year and then go ahead and move on into their master's training. So like you, I ended up at UCSF and did my one year RN training and then went back to become a nurse midwife and a women's health NP.
Naseema McElroy (09:16): Yes. The University of California at San Francisco is where we both ended up attending nursing school around the same time. Right? I think that's super cool that your desire to pursue nursing, all these kind of answers right now, I can't say the word anthropological. Breathe in because oh my God, just like, I think what people forget is that nursing or not forget, but what's lost in practice a lot is the holistic focus on nursing and how just as you know, our nursing practice is set up. It's to incorporate the whole person, the whole being in our care delivery and really having a good understanding of the people's backgrounds and how we're all different but the same.
Vicki Van Essen (10:12): Right. And how your culture really affect the way you understand your body and what we consider health or illness.
Naseema McElroy (10:20): Especially around childbirth because there's so many beliefs and practices and just ways that people approach and come into the situation that cultural competence is key. But what's lost in the ways that we try to oversimplify healthcare to in the sake of trying to provide quote unquote quality care has kind of watered down a lot of the ways that we're able to treat people in practice. So I think that that's fantastic that that's your background and that's how you came into it. But with also very interesting Vicki, is that you actually aren't even practicing as a midwife right now. Kind of similar to me. We did pursue those terminal degrees. We did get our master's and thing, but we're actually both still practicing as floor nurses. Can you talk a little bit about that decision?
Vicki Van Essen (11:13): Yeah. So one of the opportunities I had after my one year RN training was to go ahead and take a year off to work as a registered nurse. And I ended up taking a job as a psychiatric nurse because I actually really enjoyed my psychiatric rotation as well. And I figured I would just do that for the year. And then probably like part-time during my master's training. But it turned out that I ended up keeping that job and working per diem sort of on and off just since then. So since 2007, I've had that job and worked more or less as my schedule allowed because it's a per diem position. But in between a year after I graduated from the master's program, I did get a job as a nurse midwife. So I did work for about five years in the Central Valley as a nurse midwife and really, really loved my work as a midwife. But the truth is that being a registered nurse and working under that license allows a lot more flexibility. And in particular, the job that I have as a per diem nurse just allows me to really set my own schedule, work more or less as much or as little as I'd like. And for my purposes right now that just makes more sense.
Naseema McElroy (12:29): Yes. And also don't forget to mention that you work in the San Francisco Bay area like I do. And the salary difference between what a staff nurse would make in a hospital versus what midwife would make in the Central Valley is drastically different. So in your goals to pursue financial independence, it makes more sense for you to be able to maximize your income and have a lot of work flexibility. So let's talk and let's transition into talking about your path to financial independence. What made you interested in financial independence? Have you always been like a frugal kind of person? Have you always just been good with money or what happened to kind of shift your focus on this path of retiring early and then ultimately making your work flexible so that you're able to travel the world with your family?
Vicki Van Essen (13:25): So I do think that just the way I was raised, my family was always pretty frugal and that sort of instilled that mindset in me. The focus on saving and learning more about managing money, all of that. It's not something I learned as a child from my family, but they planted that seed of wanting to be financially responsible and understand how all of that worked. So I think I was always pretty frugal and always a saver, but I didn't really understand the ins and outs of like investing and investing on the level that most people in the financial independence community are doing. But after I had my second child, I was at a point where I was like, I can't be working as hard as I'm working right now. At that point, I was working my full time job as a midwife and then I was also spending one or two weekends a month working as a psychiatric nurse and I was just working all the time.
Vicki Van Essen (14:21): And as you know like the pay is good and the money is nice, but at some point you have to realize that there has to be more of a plan. There has to be like a bigger picture. It's not just about like saving lots of money. And my hope had been that I would have that second baby and suddenly I'd have some sort of epiphany about what I wanted to do and that everything would change. And you know, I'd have some like make some moves in my life, but the truth is I had the baby and then my maternity leave ended and I went back to work and it was just the same. But during that time, that sort of forced me to start thinking about what I really wanted to do. And that's about the time that I really started deep diving into a lot of these financial independence and just like personal finance podcasts. That's also roughly the time when like ChooseFI started recording. And so that's when I was really introduced to the concept of financial independence and retiring early because prior to that I just, you know, most of what was available was just sort of looking at retirement way out, you know, when you're 65 and I knew that I couldn't possibly work as hard as I was working until now.
Naseema McElroy (15:27): You know what's funny is that like you think that you have this time when you're pregnant. You think like you're going to come out of it like this different person. You're like, you know, at least with my maternity leave, like I'll have some time to think and then like hit you and you don't do anything. There's like these months that go by and you're like, Oh guess what? Like I was like actually like living life and then like I didn't have time to meet all these demanding girl.
Vicki Van Essen (15:55): I can like thank my son for like all those walks that I took with him. Like I'd been plugged into my podcast. So I have so many memories of like walking around the neighborhood, listening to all these financial podcasts and being like making, you know, my wheels started turning and the same thing actually goes for like all the weekends that I was driving back from Fresno to San Francisco to work. My wheels were turning 'cause I was listening, you know, for three to four hours at a time to all these podcasts. And it was like, ah, like trying to apply them to my life and that's I think really what inspired me. But then I also, while I was on my maternity leave, had the opportunity to go to Germany for a month where I have family there and you know, when you're working your regular full time job, you don't get more than maybe two or three weeks of vacation.
Vicki Van Essen (16:43): So I never really had the option to go off, you know, to go travel abroad for an extended period of time. So during the maternity leave I was like, I'm taking up this opportunity to go and spend like a whole month there. And while we were there. So with my older son and my husband and I and our baby, we were all there together and we just realized we really enjoyed sort of better European pace of life. A little more of a focus on family, was a beautiful location. And so that actually was part of the inspiration. So we were like, well, we'd really love to come back to Europe, but we'd really like to live abroad. And that kind of happened at the same time that I started like reading and listening to more of these podcasts and so together kind of created this turn from it.
Naseema McElroy (17:30): Wow, that is so cool. I just see that, that freedom and I'm just like, Oh my God, I want that. And I understand that. Like just being able to travel the world and explore and have that time with your family a lot of times, you know, it's funny actually, it just ties into something like I was in Uber yesterday and the Uber driver said he was from Peru, his wife is from the Philippines. And I was just talking about how I wanted to travel the world with my kids. And he was just like, well, how many weeks off does your job give you? And I just started laughing. At first, I used to be like a consideration, but I'm just like, my world doesn't work like that. Like if I wanted to take off, I'll just like take a per diem or you know, take a leave of absence, like I'll just leave.
Naseema McElroy (18:21): But you know, and I had to laugh because I was like, you know what, that's a total mindset shift because a lot of Americans are living their life like, you know, only have two weeks of vacation a year, you know? And most people don't even maximize that. But I'm just, listen, my vacation is limitless. I just have to make sure I'm setting myself up in a financial place so that I can leave. But it's totally possible. And so I think that that's the power of just being part of the movement of financial independence. Even if you're not in a position of retiring early, you now know what levers you can pull in order to take those. So quote unquote mini-retirements or to just make shift your life so that it's by design and so we're not stuck in this like rat race that you know, can, especially for nurses, especially psych nurses, Oh my God, can cause some major burnout. So fast forward now Vicki, your family is actually living in Portugal and you work still in San Francisco. Can you walk us through that having that second baby and learning and then what steps you took to be able to now live abroad with your family but being able to maximize on your Bay Area salary?
Vicki Van Essen (19:42): Yeah, so I like ending, you know, starting back at where I was kinda learning about being able to travel and financial independence and all of that. That's where I was introduced to the World Schoolers. And that's like there are tons of families that consider themselves World Schoolers. They're traveling the world and educating their children on the road. Their children are learning from their experiences in other countries and this whole group of people are, you know they have books, they have websites, but a lot of these folks are interacting on Facebook groups. So there is a Facebook group for World Schoolers, there's a Facebook group called We Are World Schoolers and there was a lot of family travel Facebook groups as well. And then diving into some of those groups that have, you know, up to 50,000 members really gave me an opportunity to see that there were a lot of people doing this traveling thing with their families.
Vicki Van Essen (20:36): Even though people will often tell you now that you have a child, you can't travel anymore. Now that your children are in school, you know you can't take long vacations anymore or whatever. Like those things, that's not actually true. Right? Again, it's like give yourself permission to think a little bit outside the box and if that's really what you want to do, there are ways to do that. So World Schoolers, back to World Schoolers. This really gave me, reading through all of these posts, helped me see how it was possible to make that happen, whether it was, you know, regarding health insurance or homeschooling or how to make money. All of these things are discussed endlessly. And so that was a super inspiration for me. We realized that we, initially we thought we just wanted to go ahead and like live in Germany, but we realized that that would be a little bit restrictive in terms of traveling.
Vicki Van Essen (21:29): So we decided we would spend at least a year traveling and my son would have been in first grade back in the States. So I decided to homeschool him for first grade and intermittently. So about every six weeks or so I was flying back to the Bay Area for work because of the way policies and procedures around scheduling my shifts. I had to be back about every six weeks to work a certain number of shifts. And that actually worked out pretty well because San Francisco has a huge airport and it's easy to fly in from, you know, major cities in Europe. So I just try to kind of schedule our travel to coincide with like being in a major city so that I could fly back for work.
Naseema McElroy (22:18): What kind of things did you do to financially prepare to take that leap?
Vicki Van Essen (22:23): Yeah, this is not something that I just did from one day to the next. We basically spent probably like about two years scheming, planning, dreaming, like trying to kind of work it all out because there were so many, so many aspects to this that I was like, I don't know how taxes work and how would healthcare work and how would all of it. It's just all of it required so much research and planning and a lot of it was pretty overwhelming and a little bit scary. But again, it's just like one thing at a time. I just kinda like did all of my research and over the course of those two years just figured out solutions to all the potential, you know, problems that come up. But what was your question?
Naseema McElroy (23:02): Kind of like what did you do to bring the boat closer to the dock? Like what's your finances? Did you build emergency funds?
Vicki Van Essen (23:08): Right. In terms of my finances? Yeah. So I definitely wanted like I wanted a full year emergency funds, so I made a point of saving that, you know, in sort of like liquid bank accounts. And then in addition I, so about two years, so I spent all of that time just stocking away cash and just putting a lot of money into our retirement accounts and things like that because I wanted to have enough saved in all of my retirement accounts that I wouldn't feel like I still needed to contribute to them once we left because I didn't know exactly how my income would be as I was like, if I don't even contribute another dollar, I want this to be like enough that I could retire at a normal retirement age. And it turned out that now that we've been traveling, I've still been able to contribute to my retirement accounts, but that sort of took the pressure off.
Naseema McElroy (23:59): Dang. That's like really, really good that you're still able to do that. Because I think like a lot of, you know, you think OK, like you're going to transition into this mode. Well now, you're just living off of savings and it may delay your overall retirement goal, but you know, you're still living life and so it's worth it. I love it. So where exactly are you at right now on your path to financial independence?
Vicki Van Essen (24:23): Oh, I guess we're, I don't even know what it would be called, but we're like beyond, I don't know, maybe like three quarters of the way there. So not like I'm definitely not financially independent but enough that I feel like pretty solid ground. And especially knowing that I am still earning income. I'm not, I'm actually not living off of my savings and I am still contributing to my accounts, you know? So I feel like it's like a pretty safe place to be. And now that the truth of the matter is that the entire time that we were traveling, our expenses were actually pretty low. They were actually lower than I thought they would be. And they were definitely way lower than living in California. So that's, I think that's part of why I can continue to save is that my cost of living is so low.
Naseema McElroy (25:10): I think that that's great because I think we often get caught up on trying to achieve this number and then forget that it's more about the journey that we're on and it seems like Vicki, to me it sounds like you're living your best life right now and like as long as you're still on the path, even if you were kind of like at a place where you couldn't contribute and you were just letting your investments grow on the back end while living off of your savings and your salary, you would be in a good place, but you're still in a place of growth, which I think is phenomenal. And how long do you think you're going to continue working in the Bay Area while exploring the world with your family?
Vicki Van Essen (25:52): I mean, right now I don't have any plans to stop, so I don't know how long I'll be doing that. I mean I'm always looking at other things, like a lot of remote type of jobs that you can do nowadays. There's a lot of options, especially for nurse practitioners to work online in various capacities, stuff like that. So I'm always looking at other things too. But the truth is like this has worked well for me for the last more than a year. So I don't mind going back. I actually really enjoy going back and seeing my friends and my community in the Bay Area. So for the time being, it's fine and we'll see you again.
Naseema McElroy (26:29): So let's transition into talking about, there are people out there just like me that are so jelly about what you get to do and they get so fantastic. How can a nurse transition into living abroad and make that work, whether it's living abroad and working abroad or living abroad and working domestically? Can you talk us through some steps that we can take if that's what we aspire to do?
Vicki Van Essen (26:57): Sure. So as a nurse, I actually know quite a few nurses in the Bay Area and in the rest of the country who create these schedules that allow them to fly in from elsewhere, whether that's from within the United States. There's a lot of nurses that actually fly into the Bay Area to work from within the States. But then there's also, I know I know folks who are flying in from the Philippines, from Tanzania, from like all over the world because they maybe want to give their family the opportunity to live in another country or they just like the idea of having another home in a less expensive place. But as long as you have a flexible job that allows you to, you know, set your own schedule. These kinds of things are possible and the nurses that I know that are doing this are either working per diem or you know, if you're a nurse practitioner or midwife, maybe you can get a locum position where you can just kind of fly in for a set amount of time and then leave again.
Vicki Van Essen (27:55): In terms of working abroad, I don't know any American nurses working abroad. I'm sure there are nurses working abroad. I know there are certain countries like maybe the UK, Australia where it's possible I think to work on an American license or relatively easy to somehow transfer that. But again, as you mentioned, the wages in the Bay Area are probably some of the highest in the world. So under many conditions, that actually makes more sense to fly back and work than it does to work in other countries. Of the other option that you do have as an American nurse if you want to work abroad is through USA gov. I think USAjobs.gov I think that's the federal jobs. And so you can work as a nurse on various international like bases. So in Germany, there's a couple of bases that'll hire RNs or NPS and then I'm sure there's some in like maybe Japan, Italy, things like that.
Naseema McElroy (29:01): I am going to talk to some people that work for the state department that are going to go into detail about nursing jobs abroad specifically in the state department. But other opportunities for nurses to work abroad. And hopefully on a future podcast episodes, I will bring on a nurse that actually does work abroad. So that's not something we have to spend a lot of time on on this episode. But you did take something that can be really scary to some people. And we have these goals in handcuffs as nurses, you know, our benefits, our benefits can be really good, especially like health insurance and all that kind of stuff. And you talked about being per diem. Let's talk a little about bit about how you navigate that part of not having the security of those good old nurses while your family is living abroad.
Vicki Van Essen (29:50): Yeah, so I actually never really had those benefits as I know the nurses, especially for city and County in San Francisco, they have very nice benefits and I hear about them a lot, but I've always worked per diem. So I actually never had access to any of those benefits. And truthfully, I'm the type of person that actually prefers having freedom of schedule over any of those benefits. And so I just kind of like purchase what I need as I go. Especially with regards to health insurance. So for instance, while we were traveling, I purchased insurance on the market. Like in California, it's called the Covered California, you can purchase insurance there just so that I had something covering me whenever I was coming back to the States to work just in case I needed it. But also because while we were abroad we did have travel insurance that covered emergencies and that was pretty affordable compared to US insurance.
Vicki Van Essen (30:46): But one of the requirements when you have travel insurance is that you have insurance in your home country so that you know, God forbid something happens, they fly you back home, you need to be able to continue your care there. So we all had insurance back in the States while we were traveling in addition to our travel insurance.
Naseema McElroy (31:04): So you have to have travel insurance plus some kind of like minimum health insurance here or is that part of your travel insurance?
Vicki Van Essen (31:10): Nope. The travel insurance like assumes that you're a normal person who has like a home back in the country where you came from that you would like want to return to if you had a like health crisis, you know? Whereas we were, we didn't really, we had like dissolved everything. We had sold our house, sold our cars, sold all of our stuff, and we didn't technically have a home in California.
Vicki Van Essen (31:32): So I had a really good friend whose address I was using and I was basically like, hey, is it okay? Like if something really bad happened, we'd probably be coming back to your house. And she was like, that's, so let's hope that doesn't happen. But I guess that would be okay. You know? So we just based our insurance off of her address because her address was our permanent address in the US.
Naseema McElroy (31:53): So that's cool. But that sounds like really cost prohibitive. Can you talk about the cost of having dual insurance?
Vicki Van Essen (32:01): Well, so in the U S I just used the sort of the Bronze Plan Kaiser Insurance in California and it's, you know, it's a little pricey but it was not terrible. And then the kids, because our income was low enough in California, I think they would have actually qualified for Medi-Cal. So I was like, well God forbid we had to come back, you know, Medi-Cal, you can apply any time during the year. So I was like, we can always just apply if we really needed to when we came back and we didn't fortunately have to do that. So really we were just buying insurance from my husband and myself. And then travel insurance. There's a lot of different types of plans out there. I feel like we probably paid somewhere between maybe two or three, two to $,3000 for the year. Which again, by American standards for the whole family. That was not that much to average it out. Yeah, it's super cheap and it's like, it just, 'cause in my mind I was like, okay, I just want this in case like, you know, I have two little boys like broken bones, things like that. We only had one case where we actually had to use it when my three year old had to get stitches in Spain. But that's exactly sort of what I had it for was that, I mean honestly I could have just paid for the stitches myself, but sort of like accidents, you know, sudden illnesses, things like that.
Naseema McElroy (33:25): Yeah. So let's just talk logistics of you being able to travel back and forth. So you just typically come out here on your own and your family stays wherever you are staying in the world. So your husband takes care of them. Right? So, does your husband also work?
Vicki Van Essen (33:43): Yeah, he does some sort of, he works remotely on the computer doing, he's done a couple of different things. He's taught Arabic online and then he does a lot of like building websites for small businesses, updating their websites, things like that, which really allows him to sort of work more or less as time allows. So when I'm around, he tends to take on more jobs and then if I'm gone, he usually tries to make sure he's not working because you know, being the single parent with two young kids is like a full time job for sure. Yeah. So he's, you know, I'm definitely the primary breadwinner and then he's doing some of that on the side. Now that we have our older child in school and probably our younger ones going to be going to preschool soon. We'll both have more time on our hands. So that might be expanding soon. But especially while we were traveling, he was just kind of, you know, it was more flexible.
Naseema McElroy (34:37): Yeah. I love that you guys both have income sources so that they work around your lifestyle instead of the other way around. Like so many people do. The other thing that can be kind of cost prohibitive is you're traveling from like right now you're traveling from Portugal to San Francisco to work, how can you afford to do that?
Vicki Van Essen (34:57): So the amazing thing is honestly the entire last year flights have not been that expensive. And obviously that can change, but flights from Europe to San Francisco and back for me have ranged somewhere between like $250 round trip to like a thousand dollars round trip. So overall not terribly, not terribly expensive. And then I've gotten into as part of the like financial independence, retire early community. There's definitely a focus on travel hacking and using credit card points and miles and things like that to defray the cost of travel. And in those two years when we were kind of planning to do this travel thing, we were also building up a lot of these points. So I had enough points to actually cover all of my flights for the first year and I continue to, you know, build up a certain number of points. So I continued to have this sort of, you know, bank of points that I can pull from. So I don't usually purchase most. Most of my flights I don't purchase myself. I use those points, especially flights like I'm flying back around Christmas time or if I fly in the summer when they're expensive, those flights I'll just use points for. But then sometimes they'll be super cheap flights. Like in February my flight was less than $300 so I just buy those myself.
Naseema McElroy (36:21): That is super cool. But for people who are new to the term travel hacking, can you just spend just a little bit of time explaining how that works?
Vicki Van Essen (36:29): It's actually like you could do a full like master's degree on travel hacking 'cause it just seems like it can get very complicated. But the bottom line is that especially a lot of credit cards will have points and or miles that you can earn either by opening credit cards and then spending a minimum amount on that card or then by using that card to make purchases. So what a lot of people end up doing is opening a credit card. Maybe every two months, every three months, spending up to that minimum amount and then getting a certain number of like a large number, maybe 50,000, 100,000 points or whatever that they can then use for travel. So certain types of points like Chase has these points called ultimate reward points. They're very, very flexible.
Vicki Van Essen (37:18): You can use them on, Chase has a portal where you can purchase travel stuff, but it's really Expedia, so it's like you can buy hotel rooms or flights or rent cars and you can do all of that just using their points. You could also transfer those points to other airlines like United or you know, I don't know. They have a bunch of different partners you can transfer to hotels such as Hyatt and then when you transfer those points then you can book with those airlines or those hotels directly. And then there's all these strategies about using the points to maximize how many flights or how many hotel rooms you can get. There's a lot of people that are really into flying first class all around the world with points. But since I fly so much, I just try to maximize the amount of flights I can get with my points. I just fly economy and I've gotten pretty good at sleeping, sleeping in the bunk.
Naseema McElroy (38:15): But also, you do have cards that have lounge benefits, which is really nice, too.
Vicki Van Essen (38:21): Oh yeah. So for sure. For someone like me who travels a lot, that Chase Sapphire Reserve is an awesome card and that's one of the ones that gives you the lounge, the priority pass. So with the priority pass allows you to visit all kinds of lounges throughout the world. Different airports will have, you know, usually they have a bunch of different lounges in priority pass, they'll maybe give you access to two or three of them. And that's been amazing because it means that, you know, when you go to these lounges it's a comfortable place to rest. They usually have drinks and they have food. And like the one I went to in Barcelona recently has a shower too. And I'd had like, I basically actually went to the airport after working a shift, so I didn't even get to shower before my flight. So by the time I arrived I was like, I really want to shower.
Vicki Van Essen (39:05): And that was an awesome thing to be able to do in that lounge. And then in addition to the priority pass, they actually also will pay for your global entry, which is programmed by the federal government where you can, they basically check you out ahead of time to make sure that there's nothing about you that they should be worried about. And then it allows you to bypass immigration when you re-entered the country. So you don't have to get in that really long passport line to try to like get back into the United States instead. You're able to like fast track through this really short line to get back into the country. So for me, that's great. Like I can usually get, you know, land in San Francisco and get through those lines in like 20 minutes maybe and be at the door.
Naseema McElroy (39:50): That's awesome. It's like you figured everything out, but I love it. You figured it out. The next thing you have to do, figure it out. Right? So let's talk about you actually, you and your family actually living abroad. And let's talk about like how you pick where you're going to live and then you have two young boys. Like how do you navigate their education while you're abroad?
Vicki Van Essen (40:17): Yeah. So part of the reason we wanted to go abroad in the first place was, as I mentioned, I have family in Germany and I actually speak German with my children. So, and then in addition to that, my husband has family in Morocco and he speaks Arabic with the children. So we have sort of a trilingual family going on here. And being in California, that was a hard thing to keep up because English is so dominant and it's hard to have any input from any German speakers or definitely no Moroccan Arabic speakers around in Fresno. So we were like, okay, we really would like to go back to Germany and Morocco more often, not only to see family and then also to immerse the kids in these languages that they've been learning from us. So that was like one of our major priorities.
Vicki Van Essen (41:07): So when we first left, we went ahead and spent three months in Germany and Austria and then followed that up with three months in Morocco. The other benefit for us that that had was that my husband has an American passport while the kids and I have American and EU passports because we have German citizenship as well. So the kids and I could have stayed in Europe indefinitely, but my husband as a tourist would have to leave after 90 days and then stay out of Europe for 90 days. That's a rule in the, that region is called the Schengen region within Europe and you're only allowed to be in for 90 days and then you have to leave for 90 before you can reenter again. So when we were in Germany, in Austria, that was 90 days. And then we went to Morocco for 90 days so that we were out for 90 days and then we re entered to a Portugal, Portugal and Spain.
Vicki Van Essen (42:04): And so we spent 90 days in Portugal and Spain. And so like I said, the Germany part was because we wanted to see family and practice and German. And then we went to Morocco to see Youness' family and to have the kids immersed in Arabic. And then we were just curious about Portugal because we'd heard so many great things about it. That's why we came to Portugal initially and then spent two more months in Spain because we had friends there that we wanted to visit. So that was the thinking behind the first sort of nine months of our trip. And then after that we ended up going to Croatia. We spent three months in Croatia because again, that's outside of the Schengen zone because we'd spent 90 days in Spain and Portugal and that's part of the Schengen European area. So we left that, went to Croatia for 90 days and then actually ended up traveling South from there through Montenegro and Albania, which ended up being a really beautiful country as well. We really loved Albania. And then we spent about a month there.
Naseema McElroy (43:04): Yeah, man, this is so cool. As you're talking, I'm just imagining all of these places in my head. 'Cause Of course I've seen your pictures, but I'm just like, this has been my dream. Actually when I decided to become a nurse, well I'm a little bit of background about me. I was first in healthcare administration and I found it very restrictive and I did not like the bureaucracy of working for healthcare administration, in the healthcare administrative structure. That hierarchy kind of was not a good fit for me. And then I was just like, I looked at these nurses and I saw them coming in and out, you know, these are nurses that I used to manage and I was just like, man, I want that life. And so when I decided to go back to nursing school after I already had a master's in healthcare administration, my goal was really to be able to travel the world as a nurse.
Naseema McElroy (43:54): And that was kind of my ticket to see the world. But of course I went to UCSF and then, you know, got my nursing job just like you had a nursing school and was making a really good income. And then kinda like got caught up with me and then I never really got to enjoy the benefit traveling the world as a nurse. And then I had kids and then I was like, okay, well you know, I need to get a little set. And then I got my, you know, financial independence kind of journey. And that had me working, you know, kind of stuck here in this job, making sure I secure my high income while I was paying off my massive debt. But I always dreamed, especially after having my first daughter of being able to educate my kids and expose my kids to the world and different cultures.
Naseema McElroy (44:42): And so just hearing what your kids are able, first of all, it's amazing that your kids are trilingual, I mean like in California. But to be able to practice those languages and see those cultures like firsthand is phenomenal. I feel like you open your child's mind up to so much by exposing them to the world. You can never teach in any kind of school here. And just that experience is something that I've always coveted and something that I wanted for my family. And so, Oh my God, it just brings chills to hear how much your kids have been exposed to and how blessed they are to have two such phenomenal parents.
Vicki Van Essen (45:25): And you know, yeah, they have no idea for them. It's just normal. They're just like, where are we going today? Are we taking a bus or a train? Like it's really just like they have no idea. I'm like, someday you'll look back and you'll be like, wow, you did some crazy stuff. Like nobody does that, you know? But right now it's just for them, home is wherever we are, you know, wherever we are together, that is our home. And like I think, you know, they know that they can rely on us and so they have that sense of stability. And even though we're always moving around, I don't think they're feeling like, you know, like they're, you know, they still feel anchored to us, to the family.
Naseema McElroy (46:06): And that's so cool. And I just hope to normalize that for my kids as well. So that's goals for me to normalize world-class travel, education and just knowing the opportunities that's available to them across the world. And of course they're too young to realize it, but what you're setting them up for is just a phenomenal life. And so I love it.
Vicki Van Essen (46:29): We should probably expand a little bit on the education part of it too. So that's the other part that's obviously you have to think about if you have kids, if you're gonna travel like they, and if they're of a certain age, they're probably going to require something in the form of education or keeping them up to speed. But the beauty of this day and age is that everything is online. So there is a lot of resources that are available, including like, I mean you could just buy a curriculum and carry it with you. You can buy books and carry them with you. But honestly when you're traveling, you don't want to carry a bunch of books. So there's a ton of stuff that's just available online. There's full curricular that you can follow online. You can even, so there's, for instance, there's one called Time for Learning.
Vicki Van Essen (47:14): It's just a curriculum basically. I think it's, you know, it's, you can kind of take some tests when you first start and see where your kid is supposed to be at or you can just start at the grade level that they're supposed to be in. Or if you know that they're ahead of grade level or whatever, you can just jump them ahead and it just allows you to kind of like move along at their speed but also know where they're supposed to be roughly like if they were in that grade back in the States. So for me, that was like really reassuring because I'm not a teacher and I don't have any background in education. And I honestly never even thought of homeschooling my kids. It was just kind of a conclusion that I came to knowing that this is what we wanted to do as a family and that this is how we were going to have to educate my older son while we were on the road.
Vicki Van Essen (48:00): But doing so and again through a lot of these internet Facebook groups and whatnot, there's so many resources available to help your kids just learn and also to take advantage of all the things that you're seeing as you travel. So for instance, we take like a to like a Roman Coliseum or to like some, you know, go to the beach and look at all the animals and the plants and whatnot that are around and then go and read about them when you're back home or do like, you know, read about the Romans, read about, you know, how they used to fight the gladiators and whatnot in the Coliseum, stuff like that. You know, I feel like it made it interesting for our child, but it also was an opportunity for him to learn history and biology and whatnot.
Naseema McElroy (48:45): I love it. All the different forms of learning, like you actually get to teach about the Roman empire by, you know, walking through Rome and it's just, God, it's awesome. But it just stimulates kids on so many different levels where it's not just dawingy and you're learning out of a history book. It's not just drawing. You're learning about these concepts, but you are actually exploring them with your children. And so the way that they learn is totally impacted by that. And Oh, it's so great. I love it all. But did you mention that to your oldest son was actually in school right now?
Vicki Van Essen (49:23): Yeah. So now we decided to stay in Portugal for awhile. So we've enrolled him in school here and so now he's learning Portuguese.
Naseema McElroy (49:31): Wow, that's cool. How long do you plan on staying in Portugal?
Vicki Van Essen (49:37): I don't know. I think right now we actually really like it. So I don't know if we're in like the honeymoon phase, I'm just, you know, but for the time being, we really like it and I mean we're just, we're kind of settling in and seeing what life is like here. And if we like it, maybe we'll stay longer.
Naseema McElroy (49:53): And so there's not those kind of visa rules that, so your husband is a Moroccan citizen?
Vicki Van Essen (49:57): He was, but then he came to the US and we got married and so now he's an American citizen.
Naseema McElroy (50:03): Okay, but you were saying that he like those little zones that he can't.
Vicki Van Essen (50:08): So if you decide that you want to reside somewhere, then you can like apply for residency and then so as a spouse of an EU citizen, you can reside with your family in the EU, it's just more paperwork. It's paperwork, bureaucracy that you kind of have to deal with.
Naseema McElroy (50:27): But, you don't have those, that kind of bureaucracy and Portugal, right?
Vicki Van Essen (50:31): We do. I mean you do, but it's like a lot better than if you were say just coming on in American. So if you're an American and you want to come and live here, you have to apply for a visa and advance, you know, through your consulate in the U S and you have to have that visa in your passport when you come and you have to get all this, you have to show all this proof and stuff that you could support yourself and whatnot. But if your family member of somebody from the EU, then you can really just show up and then you just register that you're here. It is some paperwork and some bureaucracy but a lot less than you'd have if you weren't coming as an American citizen without family connection.
Naseema McElroy (51:05): Can you just talk about a little bit about navigating living internationally when your husband, it has a little bit of a different background than you? I'm talking about, like any things that you've experienced like as far as traveling abroad when your husband is Moroccan. Race wise.
Vicki Van Essen (51:33): Yeah. That's always something that you want to take into consideration. Just making sure that your entire family is comfortable wherever you're going and I think some countries are definitely more pleasant to be in if you're a person of color than others, but for the most part we didn't go anywhere. If I knew that there was somewhere that any of us would be really uncomfortable then like that place was not on our list. So everywhere we went was we knew we would probably be comfortable and safe, but at the same time, there are definitely places where we would get like a lot of stares where people were obviously staring at us to the point that even our kids were like, wow, those people are, why are they staring at you? And that didn't happen so much in the US so that was something new for our kids.
Vicki Van Essen (52:17): But because basically we're mixed race. So in some places that's very... A mixed race couple. So in some places that's very unusual and in some places like Albania for instance, their, you know, borders have only recently opened to the outside. So for the last maybe 30 years. So prior to that, I don't know if they had any Moroccans ever show up or anybody have darker skin tone. And so you could definitely tell that people, especially older people who you know, lived most of their life before the wall came down and were just, you know, openly surprised to see us walking down the street speaking English.
Naseema McElroy (52:54): Yeah. And not just bring that up because you know, just as a person of color, I feel like it's a disservice if you just say like, you know what, I just want to like travel the world and not have to take into consideration that there are some places that are more accepting than other places and that could be a consideration and where you decide to reside. And from what I understand, Portugal is just a super diverse and welcoming place in general. And so I don't think that that's by coincidence that you guys ended up there and feel so comfortable there and decided that that was a place that you are currently residing for a longer term.
Vicki Van Essen (53:32): Oh definitely. So Portugal definitely is like, I mean I'm sure as you've heard and as so many people have said, very open to foreigners, very just like a, we're a much more open and accepting society and a place where we just feel very comfortable here. Nobody ever stares at us. It's actually really common to see people of all skin tones on the street and my kids fit right in. Like we're just very comfortable here. And that's definitely part of the reason why we decided to stay here longer.
Naseema McElroy (54:01): I love it. I love it. So I think this is a great place to wrap things up, but I want you to be able to share a lot of the resources that have helped you on your journey on both independence, on travel hacking and your world schooling, and just your, your resources that you use to while traveling abroad.
Vicki Van Essen (54:20): Let's see. So like I mentioned, there's a ton of different Facebook groups that can be super helpful, whether it's the World Schoolers group, we are a World Schoolers, the family travel groups, our tribe travels all of these different groups. There's also various ex-pat groups. So if you're specifically interested in a country like Spain, Portugal, any country is going to have groups specifically for foreigners that are living there. Usually like ex-pats of Portugal or American experts in Portugal or in Spain or in Croatia, wherever you want to go. There's groups like this and those are great groups to join to sort of get a feel of what it's like to live there. That's where people will talk about like finding housing or where to get your electricity hooked up or you know how to deal with taxes and things like that.
Vicki Van Essen (55:07): So if you're really thinking of spending more time somewhere, those are great sources of information. And then in terms of homeschooling or while you're traveling, there's a ton of different resources online. Again, Facebook groups specific to homeschooling and the World Schooler ones. Very useful. Different curriculums that you can see. Just a couple to throw out. There are Time for Learning. There's one called MobyMax that's very popular and then there is a ton of other resources like brainpop.com or getepic.com where you can access books while you're traveling or just have like short, just media on different topics for your kids to watch and learn about.
Naseema McElroy (55:49): Some travel hacking groups. Also, there's the ChooseFI expat group, too.
Vicki Van Essen (55:53): Yes, the ChooseFI expat group is great, if you're in the financial independence, retire early community. That's definitely a great group. And then travel hacking, I mean there's a, there's like travel miles 101 I think it's called is another Facebook group. That's where, and they have a course that teaches you sort of the basics of travel hacking. It's free. It's a great place to start and then take it from there. Some people become experts at this. You don't really have to be like a super expert to be able to benefit a lot. So yeah, don't get overwhelmed.
Naseema McElroy (56:23): And also disclaimer, for travel hacking you should be in a place where you're more financially stable to do that kind of thing because if you're not...
Vicki Van Essen (56:32): Definitely yeah, you should be able to pay your credit cards off every month. Like don't keep a balance if you've got debt on your credit cards, like the whole getting points thing doesn't make any sense because it's going to be negated by all the interest that you're paying.
Naseema McElroy (56:48): And then Vicki, if people want to stay in contact with you, how can they find you?
Vicki Van Essen (56:53): So we have a kind of a baby website that we're still building called www.onewayticketfamily.com. And then I'm also on Instagram under the same handles, under onewayticketfamily. If you want to follow some of our pictures from our travels.
Naseema McElroy (57:10): I love following your pictures. Especially all the parks. Oh my God. The parks across the world. I'm just so jelly. You know what our parks look like in Oakland? You know what [inaudible] they're the struggles.
Vicki Van Essen (57:28): I do only post the, I mean honestly to keep it real. I should probably post some of the other parks that you go to and you'd be like, Oh yeah, there's some crappy parks in the world, too.
Naseema McElroy (57:35): Just like anything else. So is there anything else you want to share, Vicki, to encourage nurses on the path to financial independence or people who want to travel the world? Any like last words of wisdom?
Vicki Van Essen (57:54): I would just say go for it. Just you know, brainstorm like think outside the box, see if there's any way that your job can make it happen. Whether it's working per diem, whether it's working part time, or even taking a leave of absence. You know, some jobs will allow you to take a leave of absence for, you know, a couple of months, even six months, and that's a perfect amount of time. You don't need to travel indefinitely. If you want to really get out there just going away even for a month or two or three, whatever amount of time you have.
Naseema McElroy (58:25): I love it, Vicki. Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this conversation for so long and it did not disappoint. I am looking forward to seeing your family grow abroad and see all your pictures in your travels, but most of all, I just want to thank you for taking the time to share with me and to share with the Nurses on Fire community. So thank you so much.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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