A Walking Retirement Almost Anyone Can Afford

 

I confess. I chose to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela because I am lazy. I also like comfort.

Sounds weird, right? Walking hundreds of miles across northern Spain doesn’t sound lazy. But, in a nice way, it is sublimely lazy and comfortable.

Let me explain.

I first thought about walking the Appalachian Trail. It’s a 2,200-mile hiking trail between Georgia and Maine. Think “Last of the Mohicans.”

Then I thought about the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile trek from Mexico to Canada. Worse.

Both are camping hikes. That means carrying all the required gear and food.

Yuck.

Not to mention setting up tents.

Double yuck.

And don’t forget rigging the bear box to keep food beyond the reach of bears.

Sorry, I had my last burned hot dog decades ago. I prefer indoor plumbing. And call me a snob but a good served meal is a real pleasure for me.

The Camino is different. It is a well-marked trail through rural Spain. It offers hundreds of albergues. Pilgrims enjoy dormitory beds, bathing and laundry facilities. They cost about 12 euros ($13.10) a night outside of cities. Most also offer a three-course Pilgrim dinner, including bread, wine and water, for another 12 euros.

Breakfast is easy. A nearby bar/café will provide a great latte and croissant for 3.5 euros ($3.82). It will put both the price and taste of any Starbucks to shame.

Ditto lunch. It might be 5 euros ($5.46) in another bar/café, or as something you put together from a local hole-in-the-wall food market.
Add those costs up and you’re at 32.5 euros. That’s $35.48 a day at recent exchange rates.

That’s not much to pay for a simple life, far removed from our everyday distractions. You walk, eat and sleep. Then repeat.

It’s not surprising that many of the people I met were from eastern European countries. The Camino is an affordable vacation.

But let’s look in our own backyard. That $35.48 a day comes to $1,099.88 in a 31-day month, or $1,064.40 in a 30-day month. The current monthly payment from the Supplementary Security Income program is $943. Most states provide more benefits.

So even the poorest Americans can almost afford to walk the Camino.

Workers with a slightly better work record, but still in the bottom 25 percent, would have a small monthly surplus.

If you have the median Social Security benefit of about $1,800 a month, well, you’re pretty much in Fat City. You can live on the Camino and have an extra $600 a month or so.

What will that extra $600 a month buy? It’s enough for a round-trip ticket from Dallas to Madrid on American Airlines. Every month. Nonstop both ways. In fact, you wouldn’t need to fly to the States more than four times a year. So you’d have an extra $4,800 a year, at least. That would cover having a low-cost European cellphone and a lot of other stuff.

Last year I examined where a person could afford to live on Social Security in Texas. Longview was the least expensive city. This year, it would cost $34,847 for a single person.

That’s far more than it would cost to live while walking the Camino.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting we all go to Spain and walk the Camino forever. I’m saying that it’s an interesting option. In the last few years there have been dozens of articles about retiring on a cruise ship. The stories usually ignore the $80,000 a year (and up) cost of doing so. Retire on the Camino and you’d need far less money.

And you’d never worry about getting seasick.

All our lives, gurus tell us to “think outside the box.” No one ever says, “Explore the box in which you live.” But if we do that, we discover that we are living inside a set of unexamined assumptions about how and where to live. We also live inside assumptions about the money we need to fulfill the how and where. The final irony: The industry that gorges on the money we save tells us exactly how to achieve those goals.

Walking the Camino is outside the box.

Many of the people I met on the Camino were doing the walk as a reset. They wanted to examine how they had been living and think about what to do next.

— David, a Boston-based finance consultant turned 30, was looking for his next life-path. Omar, in his early 40s and based in San Francisco, was doing the same.

— At the Orisson pilgrim dinner, a teacher from Spring Branch, Texas, told the group she had divorced. Her children were grown. She had savings. And no mortgage. She was looking for what to do in the next part of her life.

— A biology teacher from Maui told me about a Danish military retiree who lived on the Camino. Could he be a real “Zen-Reacher”?

— I met five special education teachers. All women. All teaching autistic children. From five different countries: Spain, England, Ireland, the U.S. and New Zealand. I don’t know how this happened, what it means for them or what it might mean for every human on the planet.

— I spent part of two days walking with a Canadian in his early 70s who had devoted his life to serving the poor. His education had been in theology and philosophy. We talked about Danish existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Only as we parted did I learn that his Camino walk was to grieve the recent death of his wife.

— Irina, an amazing Romanian woman, traveled with her two daughters, age 10 and 12, and her son, age 15. On the first day her 10-year-old became frustrated at the difficulty of the walk to Orisson. She flailed at nearby weeds with her walking stick. Three weeks later all three children were proud walkers. They had learned that their limits were a matter of intention and will. Nothing else.

— Sarah, a cheerful 30-year-old Australian, was taking a year off to see what she could do with music. She extended her stay by volunteering at a “donativo.” That’s an albergue that seeks donations rather than selling specific goods. As an albergue it was far-out. It had a Gaia/Celtic theme. No indoor plumbing. And a labyrinth built of huge quartz crystal rocks.

All these pilgrims shared one thing. They were remarkably open and benign. Immersed in the amazing generosity of nature, you can’t help wishing it could become a way of life.

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Practical topics:

Hundreds of people have walked many Caminos. They offer their advice on every aspect of the walk on YouTube. If you’re thinking about walking any of the many Camino paths in Spain, what’s already available is a rich resource. The first thing to know is that whatever you do, it will be your Camino. You can do whatever works for you. Here are a few of my lessons from walking one Camino.

Some things worked, some didn’t

Columbia convertible pants and shirts worked well and finished strong. They withstood repeated washings and heavy-duty dirt and mud.

I tried several Osprey and REI backpacks. But I chose the Mystery Ranch 30 pack. I liked its size, fitting mechanism and unique zipper arrangement. The pack made it easy to keep the contents in order using packing cubes.

The French Hoka trail runners that I bought were a disappointment. They are readily available in Spain. They gave out long before reaching Santiago. The steep and treacherous hike down from the Cruz de Ferro to Ponferrada was their undoing. Their lateral support was inadequate. I ended the day limping, nursing a blister on my heel. If I do another Camino, I’ll be looking for a shoe that provides more lateral support.

This doesn’t mean Hokas are faulty shoes. They are great as most people use them. I’m talking about paved roads and well-tended dirt trails.

Foot care is important on the Camino. It’s particularly important for people like me with hammertoes that are prone to chafe and blisters. But a combination of “body glide” anti-chafe balm and five-toed socks kept my weird toes happy for the entire walk.

Medications

Medications in separate bottles can add significant bulk and confusion. For a future walk I will investigate having my three prescriptions compounded. That way I could carry a single bottle and a seven-day prescription dispenser for good dosing control.

Personal security

Wearing a money belt is a common suggestion. I brought one and ended up throwing it away for two reasons. First, it was awkward and time consuming to access. I also felt that a display of distrust was an insult. Thousands of Spanish people make walking the Camino an easy pleasure. They deserve respect. I found a better way.

Maintaining order

It should be dirt simple to maintain order when everything you have is in a backpack or in pants and shirt pockets. But it isn’t. Carrying limited things only concentrates your anxiety about loss. This happens most often when you are looking for things on the floor of an albergue dormitory.

My security cure had two parts. I kept order in my pack by having packing cubes. That means separate containers. One for electronics. One for meds. Another for toiletries and first aid. Others for socks and clothing.

I kept the most important things in the same pockets during the day and in the evening. My wallet with cash, credit cards, medical ID and coins were always in a zippered pants pocket. I kept my passport and pilgrim credential in my cargo pants pocket. My phone was immediately at hand in my Velcro closed shirt pocket. I could check all three in an instant. I did daily transactions with no delay.

The Camino has two distinct parts

If you do the walk during the summer months, you need to think of the Camino as having two parts. One is whatever place you start from to Sarria. That’s the Camino of wide-open spaces. It’s beautiful countryside. And great mixtures of walking in groups and walking in solitude.

But in summer, kids are out of school. So the 60-mile section from Sarria to Santiago becomes a kind of Coney Island. Huge groups of teenagers stop at every possible place to get their pilgrim certificate stamped. They fill cafes. They make lines for café bathrooms. They often sit down on the path you are walking with their legs or walking stick stretched across the path.

Some of this is charming. I liked watching entire families or a mother or father walking with kids of different ages. It’s also useful to remember having been an oblivious teenager. But five or six days of it is wearing.

What can you do about it? Simple. A San Antonio friend will be walking from Sarria to Santiago. But he will be doing it in September. He’ll also be going as part of a tour group. They will stay in nice hotels rather than albergue dormitories.

Daylight time vs. fitness watch time

When pilgrims first started walking the Camino there was only daytime and nighttime. Watches of any kind, let alone fitness watches with GPS and cellular service, did not exist. It’s useful to remember this while walking. The mere existence of a fitness device has a way of turning everything into an athletic event. Once that happens, we lose some, or all, of our ability to be present in the here and now.

The ideal Camino

My Camino walk took six weeks. That’s more time than most people have. That’s why most people do only the last 60 miles. It’s also why many people walk the Camino in sections. They take a week to walk part of the Camino in one year, returning the next to walk another section. Eventually, they walk every part of the Camino. Do your own Camino.

In another life we would walk the Camino as the early pilgrims did. They rose in the morning and walked until tired or out of daylight. A few people still do that. But the rest of us need to find a way to leave our daily life behind and be present in the world as is, where is.

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Related columns:

Scott Burns, “How Valuable Is a Social Security Check?” December 17, 2023: https://scottburns.com/how-valuable-is-a-social-security-check/

Scott Burns, “Living on Social Security in Texas,” March 13, 2023: https://scottburns.com/living-on-social-security-in-texas/

Scott Burns, “The Zen Reacher,” January 28, 2023: https://scottburns.com/the-zen-reacher/

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Sources and References:

Last of the Mohicans scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD82Psv64Uw

Office of the Peregrino, Statistics:    https://oficinadelperegrino.com/en/

Google results for “retire on a cruise ship,” https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=retire+on+a+cruise+ship&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Currency converter website: https://www.calculator.net/currency-calculator.html?eamount=32.5&efrom=EUR&eto=USD&ccmajorccsettingbox=1&type=1&x=Calculate

Social Security Supplementary Security Income: https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-benefits-ussi.htm

Average monthly Social Security benefit of a retired worker: https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-01903

MIT Living Wage Calculator: https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/30980

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This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.

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Photo: Scott Burns, 2024

(c) Scott Burns, 2024