This interview is part of our interview series, where we curate stories of regular people that decided to design a life they love. (click here to learn more).
Ayie and Joe from Mapballadventures.com
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- Can you introduce yourself?
Ayie & Joe (A & J): We are a Thailand-based, mixed nationality family raising our children outside either of our cultures. Joe was born in California and Ayie was born in the Philippines. We met in Bangkok during Ayie’s birthday present to herself: a solo holiday to Thailand. We married in 2015 and have two young boys.
For the last two decades, Joe has had a job in what he considers the best, most fulfilling field in the world: international humanitarian assistance. This has led to an extremely nomadic lifestyle: for over 15 years he didn’t live anywhere (including the US) for more than 1.5 years at a time. It also brought him to some of the wildest and non-touristy parts of the world doing life-saving work: Angola, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Aceh (Indonesia), Sudan, Haiti, Liberia, Bangladesh, to name a few. He has been to 56 countries, speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese pretty well, French, Indonesian, and Thai not so well.
Ayie grew up in Mindanao, Philippines, and has recently become an American citizen. She is a nurse by training, a professional photographer specializing in lifestyle and portrait photography, and a stay-at-home mom to a couple of very cute and very active boys. She has been to 22 countries and speaks English, Ilonggo, Bisaya, and Tagalog plus some Mandarin, Fukien, and Thai.
As far as our approach to life as a family, we try to live simply and prioritize experiences over possessions. We also try to live life with meaning and purpose in mind, hope to impact the world in a positive way, and incorporate giving and service into our lives. While we’re taking inspiration from the FIRE movement, we know we’re not promised tomorrow – we don’t want to be so driven by our financial goals that we don’t enjoy the adventures along the way. Our mid-term master plan: aggressively save enough to be able to take at least a year off to slow travel while worldschooling our kids. Our plan is not dependent on reaching a financial goal, but rather a stage in life: we’ll set sail when the kids are old enough to remember the experience and young enough to still think their parents are cool.
In the meantime, we are enjoying exploring Asia and having Thailand as our base for a time.
- What does a typical day in your life look like for you today? How does it differ from your life before?
A & J: We love being based in Bangkok. We’ve been able to establish a community and are able to host guests passing through town, two things that are difficult when you’re nomadic, yet are very important to us. That said, while more stable than Joe’s life before, we still feel quite nomadic. Joe travels internationally a lot for work and since the kids aren’t in school, we are often able to meet up as a family when the work part of his travel is over.
Young kids thrive on routine, so we try to make our lives as predictable as possible, even though we end up going off-schedule all the time due to travels. A typical day here in Bangkok is Joe going to the office or traveling internationally for work and Ayie doing a fairly normal mommy routine – breakfast, read with the kids, play with the kids, lunch, nap, play, dinner, read, bed. When the kids are down, we relax, exercise, work on our blog, catch up with news, and catch up with each other. That’s more or less the same pattern we try to keep when we’re traveling, just substitute “explore” for “play.” COVID has paused most of our international travels, but we hope for a similar rhythm once life returns to normal.
Before we each left our home countries, met each other in Thailand, and started a family, our lives were fairly predictable but in many ways, single life is much more flexible. We were in school, lived with or near family, hung out with friends, held jobs, and had a bunch of time for hobbies. We traveled once in a while, usually within our own countries, and always dreamed of traveling more. Once we started traveling, our world expanded dramatically as we experienced new places and met people from different backgrounds. Of course, this was also before the ultimate game-changer: kids! But we haven’t slowed down too much: the four-year-old has been to 14 countries, the two-year-old has been to 8 already.
Life design journey
3 – What inflection point led you to decide to change your life trajectory
Ayie – A major turning point in my life was deciding to travel internationally by myself. I had made a few international trips with my family or friends, but it’s a different traveling solo as a woman. Once I had to rely on myself and started exploring and meeting people through travel, it was empowering – and I was hooked. I would look for cheap airline fares and start planning my days off around trips. That led to seeing the world from a more international point of view and fueled my addiction to travel even more. It made me more and more open to living outside of the Philippines.
Joe – I vividly remember going out the front door to return to work after paternity leave. I remember thinking “Why am I leaving people I love to hang out with people I like?” That was a big turning point. I think we had a good sense very early on of how fast our kids will grow up and how little time we’ll have together. We began trying to figure out how I could spend more time with family and how we could prioritize this relatively small window of time where we have the full attention of and maximum influence on our kids. Ayie decided to become a stay at home mom. I started reading up on how to speed up the FI journey.
Somewhere in those sleep-deprived days, we came up with the idea to take our kids out of school to slow-travel and world school for at least a year. By slow-travel, we mean no more than four countries (maybe each family member will get to pick one!) so at least 3 months in each location per year. For timing, we worked backward: based on what we know about memory and child development, we believe we have a very small window where our kids’ will (a) remember the experience and (b) still be paying close attention to their parents and think traveling around the world with their parents is cool. For us, whether or not we feel we’ve saved enough to be FI, this window is roughly when our boys are between 6 and 11 years old. This idea started as a crazy thought, then a conversation, then we started telling other people, and then we started a blog designed to share our journey. These steps have helped make our plan more “real” and we’re hoping that being more open will give us the courage to make the leap when the day finally comes to set the plan into motion.
4 – What were some of the limiting beliefs that hold you back initially?
A & J: With so much time outside of our home countries, living abroad is very normal at this point. For our planned world school year, we’re still in the planning phase and working out what it will look like. The big challenge for us is that we haven’t met any other families that have done something like this. While there are some examples online, we still feel we have a lot to learn. Lately, we’ve been thinking about the challenges for the kids to maintain their friendships when it’s time to go. One of the reasons we started sharing our story is that we hope to make connections with like-minded people so we can better prepare.
Another issue we’re learning to navigate: a big temptation in Joe’s field (international humanitarian assistance) is to elevate work or “The Mission” above family. The way we see the world, job/mission, no matter how rewarding, should be less important than family. Part of our inspiration to world school is to be able to demonstrate to our kids (and ourselves) this reality.
5 – What did you do to prepare the transition to this new destination and how did you do it?
A & J: Although we’re already abroad, we’re relatively stable, so in many ways we’re in the preparation and research stage now. We’ve become much more aware of our saving and spending and started to calculate our annual save/gave rate a few years ago. Then we started tracking monthly expenses. This regular “step on the scale” exercise has really helped motivate us and keep us on track.
We are naturally frugal and simple, don’t own tons of stuff, and value experiences over possessions. A strategy we’ve used to try to prevent collecting too much “junk”: stay in as small of a home as possible. This has really forced us to consider what we buy – and often means we have to sell or donate items to make room for something new. When it’s time to go on the worldschool adventure, we’ll get rid of most of our household items.
We have decided not to be so focused on our goals that we forget to live life now, so we truly don’t feel like we’re sacrificing at all. Last year, for example, we went on 8 trips to 6 different countries. And since we live in one of the best foodie cities on earth, our food budget is probably much too high!
Some other ways we’re preparing: Ayie has pretty much taught herself to cook, in an effort to save money and to be able to bring our favorite dishes with us wherever we go. We also are practicing what we like to call “palate confusion” with our kids – constantly introducing different foods to them so they’ll be able to eat anything, anywhere, which should come in handy during our worldschool year (or that’s the theory anyway!).
6 – Once on the journey, what were some of the biggest wins you realized? What were the challenges you had to face along the way?
A & J: We’ve both lived abroad so long, it’s hard to remember what life was like before! We don’t feel a big pull to return to either of our home countries, at least not at this point. At this stage of the journey, living abroad with our two young boys seems very normal. We love exploring this part of the world, love eating our way through Thailand, and have made some good community connections. That community aspect is often our biggest challenge – even though we have a home base, we travel so much and Bangkok is such a transient city that establishing and maintaining close friendships can be hard. We’ve noticed a big difference since we had kids and they’ve been a huge help: kids tend to bring grown-ups closer together.
7 – How long did/will it take to reach the destination? Any advice to make the journey as enjoyable as possible?
A & J: I guess we’re more “the journey is the destination” kind of people. We’re not sure if we’ll ever feel we’ve arrived at a destination or stage in life that we feel we can’t leave. We suppose it’s possible and we’re open to it and there are definitely good things about having a home-base. Right now, our next goal is a year+ worldschool year, which we plan to take in about four years.
In terms of advice for the journey: focus on meaning and purpose along the way. It’s often assumed in the Financial Independence community that a meaningful life is only possible after FI. The stereotypical strategy is to toil in a soul-crushing (but high paying) job while living like a hermit in pursuit of the ultimate goal of reaching FI so one day it’s possible to live a meaningful/generous/adventurous life. This is a false choice: these goals, these dreams, the things folks plan to do eventually, can be done along the way leading to a lifetime of meaning and purpose…and still, lead to FI.
And we find it helpful to try to put financial goals in their proper place. Tomorrow isn’t promised and life goes by quickly: finances are only one part of the puzzle as you’re figuring what you want your life to look like and what kind of person or family you want to be. Do you want to be an adventurous person? Plan to go on adventures! Do you want to be a generous person? Factor giving into your life. Is purpose and meaning important to you? Pursue a life of meaning.
8 – What did the people around you (friends/family/colleagues…) think of your plan to take on this new life?
A & J: All our friends and family are supportive of our decision to live abroad. As for the worldschool year, not many people know about it yet 🙂 The people we do tell seem interested though!
Cost of living
9 – How much yearly expense did you have before and after this change in lifestyle?
A & J: Before our first son was born we didn’t pay much attention to our annual savings rate. Once we came up with the worldschool plan, we tried to decrease our spending in order to accelerate our savings.
| Category | Description | Cost per person and per month |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation | Anything you pay toward keeping a roof over your head (ie. rent, internet, water, utilities…) | $30/month for the family |
| Alcohol | Anything related to alcohol you purchase | $30/month total |
| Groceries | Anything related to the groceries you get to cook at home | $600/month for the family |
| Dining out / Take-out | Anything related to what you spend when dining outside of your home. | $200/month for the family |
| Activities / Entertainment | Anything you pay related to ‘fun money’ (ie. park fees, outdoor activity, AirBnB experience…) | $20/month for the family |
| Health Care | Any cost related to treatment you are receiving on a given location. | $20/month for the family |
| International Health / Travel Insurance | This is health.travel insurance that your purchase to get you covered outside of your home country | $150/month for the family |
| Local Transportation | Anything related to transportation within the boundary of the location you are staying at. | $70/month for the family |
| International Transportation | Anything related to transportation to go from one location to another. | $200/month for the family |
| Visa | Any cost related to a visa to stay within a given country. | $10/month for family |
| Living expenses | Anything else that you are spending money on to live in a specific location that can’t fit anywhere else (Expenses for the kids: diapers, books, childcare. Plus giving to charity) | $1000/month for the family |
| Monthly total | $2,330 | |
| Yearly total | $27,960 |
Notes about this breakdown:
- About accommodation: Our only expense is internet, all other expenses are covered by Joe’s employer.
- About alcohol: We’re not big drinkers and alcohol is fairly cheap in Thailand.
- About groceries: Our biggest monthly expense. Contrary to popular belief, if you want a variety of healthy, fresh, international food, groceries are a bit expensive in Thailand. You could eat, much, much cheaper if you wanted to, but we want to keep a close eye on our food – and that costs.
- About International Transportation: Estimated average per month on a non-COVID year!
10 – What strategies have you used to reduce your expenses? And what strategies have you used to fund your lifestyle?
A & J: The practice that’s helped us the most is simply recording our net worth and expenses per category monthly. This makes saving almost a game where we’re constantly trying to improve. We don’t own a car and public transport is quite cheap in Thailand. Although eating is still our main expense, meal planning has helped with savings. There’s also a local app in Thailand called Eatigo that offers discounts when dining out and other promotions that are always popping up. Or we simply wait to make a purchase: Lazada, similar to a Thai version of Amazon, has predictable monthly sales on “lucky” days of the month. We try to buy second hand as often as possible, usually through local Facebook groups, and re-sell items when we can. We avoid paying full retail price, especially when we purchase items online: we’ll go through Ebates/Rakuten to get a bit of cashback. We’ve recently started taking advantage of travel rewards credit cards, which have decreased our costs for hotels and flights. The main money-saving “hack” has really been working abroad. Within Joe’s line of work, costs associated with housing, food, health insurance, travel, and transport are often paid for in full or in part by the organization. And planning ahead, we’ve started a family blog we hope will make additional income in the future. We’re playing an extremely long game, hoping to build it slowly over the next four years. Our goal is that when we’re ready to take our worldschool year we’re making enough through the blog to be able to pay for our food for the year.
Lessons, tips & advices
11 – If you had to do it again, what would you do differently?
A & J: In terms of pursuing meaningful lives, I think we’re both very satisfied. Ayie’s work as a nurse was often very demanding but she was able to help people in their hour of need (ask her about the time she delivered a baby in a car!) And Joe considers himself extremely fortunate for the opportunity to work alongside those who have been struck by disasters. In terms of our financial path, we both have been embarrassed by ridiculous purchases or investments and wish we would have learned the basic concepts earlier.
12 – What advice do you have for others who are considering going through a life design exercise?
A & J: Rather than focusing on the quickest path to financial independence, we would encourage others to look into meaningful, service oriented opportunities, especially abroad. Foreign Service, The Peace Corps, and teaching abroad are a few possibilities, but Joe’s most familiar with the international humanitarian assistance path. People obviously shouldn’t go into this line of work to become financially independent! But with the amount of costs covered, it’s almost an inevitability if you’re practicing the basic FI principles. Bottom line: FI and meaningful work are not mutually exclusive.
13 – What is one resource (blog, podcast, book beside your own) you recommend for those that want to design their own life?
A & J: For personal finance education, we recommend the ChooseFI podcast. For a simple family living Minimalism for Families by Zoe Kim. For worldschooling, we’re currently working through a stack of books and taking notes: The World is Our Classroom by Cindy Ross, At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider, and How to Be a Family by Dan Kois.
Looking ahead
14 – What is next for you?
A & J: We are planning on being here in Thailand for about four more years until our boys enter the worldschool window. In the meantime, we’re hoping the world gets back to normal soon so we can continue exploring it! We are looking forward to the day we’re able to welcome visitors again, so please plan to come and visit us in Thailand!
A & J: If it hasn’t come out yet, we’re making this world school thing up as we go. We only use the term “world school” because we found it on the internet 🙂 One of the reasons we’re starting to share our story is that we’re hoping to make connections as learn as we go along.
Rapid-fire questions
We like ending every interview by asking some fun rapid-fire questions to our guests
| What is your superpower & why? | As a family, we’re going to say our superpower is hosting. We love welcoming people, helping them explore this beautiful country, and feeding them delicious Thai food. |
| What is your favorite travel destination & why? | Impossible question! But one of our favorite recent travels was road tripping in Western Australia with our toddler. We all piled into a “tent car” for a few weeks and absolutely loved it. Beautiful part of the world, lots to explore, great wildlife, and starry skies. |
| What’s something you can never live without? | Joe – Dark Chocolate Ayie – My DSLR camera |
| What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received? | We don’t remember where we picked this up, but someone along the way suggested monthly resolutions. While 80% of New Year’s Resolutions fail, we’ve found that these more bite-sized monthly resolutions have helped us tremendously. In addition to one-off tasks (“complete taxes” or “write x blog posts”) we’ve found them useful in helping us add good habits or fight bad ones. For example, years ago we did a “Screen-Free Sunday” monthly resolution that has stuck to this day. And the best part: if you fail this month, you can always try again next month. |
Thank you so much Ayie and Joe for sharing your life design journey with us. It is quite inspiring to see that you’ve been nomadic for so long and learn a lot and are still learning along the way. Not only that but you decided to raise your kids in such a non-traditional fashion and we love your approach! As for now, we wish you all the best in your worldschooling journey and we hope this story will help you connect with people that are on a similar path or might already have done it! It is quite refreshing to see people that aren’t worried about taking their kids out of the beaten path and provide them what is very likely being a much more experience-rich childhood that most kids tend to get! Way to roll 🙂
If you want to know more about Joe and Ayie, you can find them on the following platforms:
- Blog: Mapball Adventures
- Facebook: Mapball Adventures on Facebook
- Twitter Mapball Adventures on Twitter
- Instagram: Mapball Adventures on Instagram
- Pinterest: Mapball Adventures on Pinterest
- Reddit: Mapball Adventures on Reddit
- Email: contact@mapballadventures.com
Interview resources
Don’t forget to check these additional resources that are related to this interview:
- Defining humanitarian assistance.
- About memory in child development: Birth Of Memory: Why Kids Forget What Happened Before Age 7
- Ayie professional photographer page on Facebook.
- ChooseFI put together a great free Financial Independence 101 course.
Our Bottom Line
Here are the main lessons we took away from this interview with Ayie & Joe:
- Lesson 1 – “Focus on meaning and purpose along the way. […] Tomorrow isn’t promised and life goes by quickly: finances are only one part of the puzzle as you’re figuring what you want your life to look like and what kind of person or family you want to be” – We love this quote from Ayie & Joe! Our time is the most precious resource we have, yet many people spend countless hours working towards a “career” they usually don’t love because society told them to do so. By focusing on meaning and purpose along the way you usually (re)design your life towards something you will love and cherish every single day!
- Lesson 2 – “We are naturally frugal and simple, don’t own tons of stuff, and value experiences over possessions” – Ayie and Joe are not the first couples we interviewed (check all our interviews) that feel that they get more value from experience than possessions and it is not surprising that we are minimalist as well! What about you? Do you prefer possessions or experiences?
- Lesson 3 – “We believe we have a very small window where our kids’ will (a) remember the experience and (b) still be paying close attention to their parents and think traveling around the world with their parents is cool.” – This is such a great take for parents! This actually reminded me about the quite popular statistic from Tim Urban’s very famous piece “The Tail End” who said that from the time we graduate from high school we already have used most of our time with our parents and the last 30+ years we have while they are still alive only represents the last 5% of the time we have with them!
Sometimes we need to hear about others making unconventional decisions before we can have the confidence to make our own. If you have (or are on a path to) an unconventional journey to improve your life that has a nomadic component to it and is interested to share it, please reach out to us as we would love to consider your story for our blog.
2 Comments
Phil · October 11, 2020 at 7:56 pm
Thanks for sharing your perspective with us Ayie & Joe! It’s refreshing to hear about a family building their ideal life from the ground up based on their principals rather than making do within the constraints of a more traditional, prescribed lifestyle.
Joe @Mapball Adventures · October 12, 2020 at 3:07 pm
Hi Phil! Thanks so much for the kind comment, appreciate the encouragement! It’s a constant challenge aligning what we *say* is important with how we actually order our lives. We don’t always get this right and need to be reminded constantly. We think the real test of our principals vs. “real life” will be when it’s time to make the leap for our worldschool year!