Having concluded our Asian sojourn we returned to our hometown – Melbourne, in mid-February. Our return was to honour a commitment we’d made a few years earlier to a dear friend that had asked us to pet sit her two little doggies. As chance would have it our niece was getting married in mid-April so we decided to spend two months in Australia.
Even though Melbourne is our hometown we needed to treat it like any other country. We had no accommodation as we had sold everything except our house (which was rented out) back in 2017. We didn’t want to impose on family or friends so we arranged a number of house sits.
Before our arrival we had posted online that we were available for house sits. Fortuitously, a number of our friends were in need of sitters during March so it all worked out perfectly. To top it off all of the house sits were in the general vicinity of our previous life – close to family and friends.
Catching up with family and friends
The majority of the month was spent catching up and re-connecting with friends and family as we’d been away for over 10 months. Whilst back we took advantage of our time here to also attend to some necessary admin and paperwork like replacing expiring, or soon to be expiring, credit cards, licences, etc. We also caught up on various medical checks with our own heathcare professionals.
Catching up with old high school friends 
A trip to the Melbourne Cricket Ground to see my beloved Tigers play in the Australian Football League 
Beer and Pizza with Jeff and Michelle 
One of our house sits with Marlee and Annie 
Long time friends Noeline and Paddy at a local pub 
Playing with Mindy 
Attending a festival with dear friends Jan and Glenn 
Lilly and Mindy
Seeing our family and friends again was great as was going to our favourite restaurants and places – but something was missing. One of the huge benefits of our roving retiree lifestyle is that we are generally being exposed to new places and experiences on a constant basis. One of the interesting things that we noticed whilst being home was that we weren’t having these new experiences. We were back doing the same things that we used to be doing before changing our lifestyle. We discussed this and determined that if we had been house sitting in other parts of Melbourne, or Australia, then things may have been different.
Don’t get me wrong – we loved seeing our family and friends – but we have been spoiled by our continual travels. We crave seeing, and living in, new places.
So, let’s take a look at our expenses for March. You’ll see by the graph below that it was a pretty affordable month.
MARCH expenses
Total costs – $1678 Australian dollars
March was our second least expensive month for the year. House sitting for the entire month slashed our total costs. However, our socialising costs were higher than usual as we spent time with family and friends.
Other information
We did an article back in August 2018 that covered our first full year of travelling for the period April 2017 to April 2018. If you’re interested in reading that then click here – Travel the World full time for less than $100 per day
If you’re retired (or not) there is a way to have an exciting life with the world as your oyster. We’re proof that it can be done.
If you want to learn more about how we achieve this feel free to contact us or take a look at our Introduction to House Sitting page.
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Feel free to share this post too so more people can be aware that there are alternative ways to spend your retirement. Glenn & Jacqueline
Lambies Travels 
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