A Mini-Retirement In Colombia

For the next 6-ish weeks I'll be living in Medellín, Colombia.

I'm flying in from Austin, Texas, where I was attending Consensus 2022, a big crypto festival, along with the rest of my team at Compound. When I told my co-workers about my plans, two questions immediately jumped to their minds: "Why 6 weeks?" and "Why Medellín?"

Here's why.

Why 6 weeks?

I graduated college a few weeks ago. It would've been quite natural to take a week-long vacation to Europe or a longer road trip across the US. That's what many of my friends are doing.

What I had in mind couldn't be fit into a week or two, though, because I wasn't planning on taking a "vacation".

In its conventional sense, a vacation is supposed to be a break from the daily structure of life. People dip into their savings to splurge on a getaway to an exotic island in the Caribbean and – most importantly – forget about their 40-hour job for a whole week.

My trip was designed to be a bit different. The closest term I've found for it is a "mini-retirement". It's a term that I borrowed from The Four Hour Workweek, the book that inspired this entire trip.

A mini-retirement is a brief period of life where I'm not yielding my time to structured institutions like colleges and companies. I'm not taking a 'break from life' as vacations necessitate; rather, I'm taking a break from how most people live life.

It's perfect for the phase of life I'm in right now: a summer-long interlude between graduating college and starting full-time work.

It's also long enough to develop a different lifestyle and meet some of my personal goals (more on that below...)

Why Medellín, Colombia?

Medellín, in many ways, is a perfect choice for my mini-retirement.

It's known as the "city of eternal spring" because the weather is pleasant all year round. That also makes it easy to travel light: I only packed a few polos, t-shirts, and shorts with me.

Living standards here are also extremely cheap. I can take advantage of "geographic arbitrage" to get better housing and food for the same price as I would've paid in, say, New York City.

But affordances aren't just limited to food and housing. I plan on taking daily Spanish and Salsa dance lessons here, and they're both quite affordable. What would've been a $50/hr dance or language lesson in the US is only $5/hr in Medellín.

The lessons deserve a bit more emphasis because I'm structuring my mini-retirement around them. To keep boredom away, I wanted to fill my days with an activity that engages my mind and another that engages my body. Spanish and Salsa were perfect candidates for both. They allow me to jump into a new culture through its native language and dance form and meet new people.

Language learning, in general, is a must for any mini-retirement. It's a great way to add purpose to a trip. ("I'm going to Germany to learn German" is much more purposeful than "I'm going to Germany for sightseeing".) It also wards off loneliness because you have to talk to people to improve your speaking skills.

I'm also excited about Salsa. I took a few lessons in Puerto Rico last year and have since been hungry to learn more.

I do have other goals for this trip, but they're Medellín-agnostic. I want to read books on Economics and Psychology, improve my writing, and follow the Slow Carb diet. Being in a new, distraction-free environment is a great way to meet these goals.

And that's the gist of why I'm going to Colombia! I'm excited to see how the retirement days go.

Written by Aryan Bhasin