Hi. My name is Partho, the founder of this site.
I retired in my 50s from a career on Wall Street in New York City. During this First Act I was a Derivatives Trader, Investment Banker and Risk Management specialist. My Second Act is as a Full-Time Slow Traveler, Writer, and Private Investor.
During our careers my wife and I built up a passive cash-flow portfolio, consisting of financial instruments, which funds our travels. When I say passive, I mean really passive. The Zero Hour Work Week. Suits my lazy nature just fine.
What does that mean? It means cash hitting our bank account every month regardless of market conditions or the state of the economy. No work. No real estate. No shady get-rich-quick schemes. Just hard cash. Every month.
Note that this is not about being a digital nomad (an overused phrase if there ever was one). They need side hustles to pay their bills. In our model you don't. Call it the Art of Leisure.
What is "cash-flow" and how is it different from simply "cash"? According to Economic theory, the ONLY source of economic worth is the ability of an asset to generate cash-flow. Selling a real estate investment gives you cash. But the sale does not give you a stream of cash. Think of cash as a water drop; while keeping the taps on is the cash-flow. One is a picture. The other a movie.
What does perpetual mean? It means cash-flow which will outlive us to fund our legacy. In our case, it is an Endowment (Biswas Ghosh Foundation) which pays for mid-day meals targeting rural children in West Bengal (India) so they can attend school rather than stay on the farm.
Once our monthly “perpetual cash-flow” reached our NUMBER - the inflation hedged monthly amount necessary to fund our Full-Time Slow Travel (at a standard we choose) - the next step was a minimalistic lifestyle.
This meant selling 90% of what we owned, paying off all our debts (including mortgages), and then consolidated everything we owned into a small apartment in New York City and Calcutta (India), along with a 10 x 15 storage unit.
Every 3-12 months we move to locations all over the world (Luong Prabang (Laos) and Bali being amongst our favorites). In between these locations, the NYC and Calcutta apartments are used as bases for the travel.
During our travels I write and invest my private portfolio. Fortunately, my writing requires reading books I was too busy to read during my Wall Street career. My professors were wrong. College is not the last time we can read the great minds before we get too busy to do so in our career. One can also do that with early retirement from Part I.
In this blog the primary lens through which travel is looked at is Economics, Politics and Philosophy. That is how this site differs from the typical travel blog.
Ok, occasionally I mention a restaurant or hotel…but surely, I digress.
This is the site you go to before other travel sites. Our site is designed to provide you with the zeitgeist of the destination; the typical travel blog provides more tangible information.
In addition to this site, I have 6 other blogs. Some of them are complimentary to this one. For example, one of them discusses how to create “perpetual cash-flow” to fund Full-Time Slow Travel.
My other sites cover a broad swath of areas. These include applying Options Theory to making better decisions, translating the Vedanta into rules for living, renewable energy, libertarian philosophy and even how to protect income through risk management. Call me eclectic if you will.