I couldn’t afford to take a gap year in college. So at 53, I retired early and did exactly that.

• After retiring early at 53, Kelly Benthall and her husband spent a year slow-traveling.
• She’s been calling it her “gap year abroad,” a do-over decades after the one she never had.
• What began as a midlife escape made her realize she feels more at home abroad.

I was born on the East Coast, and my family moved around a lot. By the time I graduated from high school in Texas, I was the new girl again, surrounded by people who’d known each other since childhood. Everyone seemed to “belong” somewhere, but I was still trying to figure out who “everyone” was.

I went to Texas A&M University. It’s a big school in a small-town bubble, where friendliness and tradition rule. I built a good life in Texas. I married a local boy, raised kids, built a career, and did everything the cultural syllabus told me to do.

But deep down, I always felt a little out of place, like the transfer student who arrived halfway through the semester. I was the sarcastic one who rolled her eyes at Greek life, the girl who asked the kind of questions that made classrooms uncomfortable. But I wanted approval, so I learned how to blend in.

Looking back, maybe a gap year would’ve helped. But we didn’t have the money for that. I worked three jobs to pay for college, even delivered the Sunday paper at 3 a.m., when others were still asleep or just getting home from the bars.

At 53, I gave myself a do-over.

My gap year abroad came 35 years later. My husband, Nigel, and I had just retired early after long careers in oil and gas. We realized we didn’t need a big house or a permanent address — just a plan that let us follow the sun and our curiosity.

So we began traveling full-time, living one month at a time in long-stay Airbnbs, shoulder season to shoulder season.

We started in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where we learned how to be alone together. Then came Lecce, Italy, where we lived above a café and timed our mornings to the smell of warm focaccia. In Seville, Spain, we stayed as long as planned but wanted more — still drinking too much and staying out too late, chasing the kind of joy that doesn’t need to be sensible.

Mauritius followed: saltwater, stillness, and the rare luxury of doing nothing without guilt. The UK tested our limits — eight cities in six weeks — until Ireland healed us with rain, music, and kindness.

Each place revealed a different version of me: solitude in Dubrovnik, indulgence in Lecce, joy in Seville, and grace in Ireland. Travel doesn’t erase who you are; it hands you a mirror from another angle. Maybe that’s why I keep going — to see who I’ll find when I walk through the next door.

And funny enough, the late ’80s and early ’90s fashion and music are everywhere — like a time warp that reminds me where I came from, and how far I’ve actually gone.

Abroad, who you are matters more than what you do.

The conversations didn’t start with “What do you do for a living?” Instead, I would receive questions like “Who are you?” or “What are you doing here?” People take a beat before becoming your friend, but once they do, it’s real.

I learned to ask more than I answered and to stop explaining myself so much, a habit born from decades of trying to fit in.

Authenticity made everything easier. When I stopped worrying about being liked, people seemed to like me more. Maybe that’s why I feel more comfortable abroad than I ever did in the American South. When you’re clearly not from somewhere, it’s OK to be different.

Back home, differences sometimes made people squint. Abroad, it made them curious. And for the first time, I didn’t have to shrink to fit — I could stretch and still belong.

We spent that first year traveling, but what we really did was build a portable version of home — one made of strangers’ furniture, shared meals, and moments that reminded me who I was before I learned to care what people thought.

I finally got my gap year, and the lesson was worth the wait: You don’t need permission to start over.

Do you have a story about retiring abroad that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: [email protected].

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post I couldn’t afford to take a gap year in college. So at 53, I retired early and did exactly that. appeared first on Business Insider.