Hull Financial Planning

I’ve had good dentists and I’ve had bad dentists in the United States. I guess I should not be surprised that my worst recent dental experience was with our high deductible dental insurance plan, which sent me to a dentistry chain where the hygienist had me do all sorts of treatments, despite previous dentists telling me all was well and normal with my choppers.

As a result, having been inspired by Ali’s experience with dentists internationally, I decided to try going the route of dental tourist in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. That experience went so well that, when we … Read the article

How Accurate are the Cost Estimates of Numbeo and Expatistan?

Whenever we look at places to stay for long-term destinations, one of the items we look at is cost. While we’d love to be the high-rolling ballers who rock up to Saint Tropez in our yachts, that’s not really how we roll. We’re fans of geographic arbitrage, where we can get the same or a better quality of living than we can when we’re back home in Texas (for example, as I’m writing this, the high in our hometown today will be 104 degrees, whereas it’s going to be 73 … Read the article

After landing in Rome, Italy from our transatlantic cruise from New York to Rome on Norwegian Cruise Lines, we flew from Rome to Split, Croatia, where we spent four weeks living on the outskirts of a fourth century Roman emperor’s palace.

Getting to Split was not quite as easy as we thought it would be, or should have been.

Upon disembarking from our ship in the port of Civitavecchia, we took a train to the Termini station in Rome. Since our flight wasn’t for another eight hours, we decided that we would store our bags at the train … Read the article

Since arriving from our cruise from New York to Rome, we’ve been staying in Split, Croatia.

However, when a friend of ours reached out and said that he’d be in Munich and wanted to meet us somewhere in the middle between Split and Munich, we jumped at the opportunity to see Vienna, Austria. Even though I was stationed in Germany, I’d never really been to Austria. I drove over the border one time after a training exercise just to say that I’d been in Austria, but that was the extent of my time – maybe 5 minutes.

Admittedly, we … Read the article

I was tested positive for COVID on day 11 of our 17 day trans-Atlantic cruise. It started with a scratchy throat, which immediately alarmed me because I knew that was a symptom of Omicron. But, the ship was fully vaccinated and boosted AND all passengers had to test negative twice before the cruise began — 1 PCR test required for Bermuda within 2 days of embarkation and 1 antigen test the day before embarkation. The scratchy throat started the day after only our second port of call: Ponta Delgada in the Azores.  We’d sailed from New York, had one sea … Read the article