Backtracking 2004-2007; working abroad and traveling the world

My first full-time job was abroad on a tax-exempt status. At that time I had a clear financial goal; traveling the world for a year after the two year contract had finished! I decided to simply not spend the roughly 1/3 of my income that would have otherwise gone to the tax office but rather put that money into a savings account. After 2 years this allowed me to take a year of and, as I spend roughly the same amount of money during my travels as I did during my working life, I came back from this life changing experience without any money left.

The aftermath 

My perspective on several things had changed dramatically. I had only possessed 12 kg of stuff in a backpack for a year and not missed anything materialistic. Although with my income I consider myself among the fortunate within the Netherlands, on a worldwide scale this is even more true. Hence, I saw absolutely no reason why I would not be able to save a substantial amount of my income from now on. This nicely matched with my ambition not to spend the rest of my life working as a year is not nearly enough to see the world! 

On my trip I had traded all my money for all the time in the world to only do what I like; a saving account is not a very sustainable strategy as I spend all the money I could save in 2 years in just 1 year. Disregarding social securities, this implies that to enjoy life for 25 years I would have to work for 50 years, e.g work from 20-70 and enjoy from 70-95 years old… At this point in time I was 33 so this did not seem a feasible route to take, I needed an investment strategy with higher returns that would work for me when I was not anymore.