In Napoli: Your Housing Payment Now And In Relative Old Age

I can’t accurately describe or prepare you for Naples, Italy.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve been through my share of unkempt, even dirty parts of major American cities. In fact, you might come to where I live now—in central Los Angeles—and walk away disgusted. However, it’s different than Napoli. I’m either saying this because it’s objectively true or because I’m so used to Los Angeles’s filth I don’t think twice.

It’s a probably a mix of both, but mostly the former.

In LA, you walk through a block or two that could be cleaner. You also go through entire districts (such as the main commercial area in my neighborhood) that are pretty much as spotless as they get for a big U.S. city.

In LA, the baseline of cleanliness is basically clean. Relatively neat and tidy.

In Naples, the baseline is dirty. And it only gets worse from there.

We’re staying in the Spanish Quarter, which is pretty hardcore. As you venture into Naples’ historic center, you feel like you’re in a typical city—something closer to Rome—but it’s still different. Again, there’s that baseline of unacceptable dirtiness. There’s also sensory overload.

In most cities, there’s an organized chaos. In Naples, take away the organized part.

But that’s not really the part that troubles me. I love the energy and quirks. There’s so much happening all at once. And that’s exciting.

The troubling part is the neglect. Beautiful buildings are not taken care of. And it trickles down to the trash on the street. You see this here and there in LA. You see it everywhere in Naples. Sadly, it—at least for me—ends up defining the place.

I’ll have more to say—and hopefully better organized thoughts at some point—but first…

For a review of what we’re doing here and what we’ve done—

1. Assessment of your situation

2. Acknowledgement of your situation

3. Acceptance of your situation

4. Theorizing your situation

5. Strategizing your situation

6. Work Less Now So You Can Work Less Longer

7. Living Evenly Across The Lifespan

8. Organize Money And Work Around Life, Not The Other Way Around

9. Pots Of Money For Spending And Cash Security

10. Finding The Floor On Your Cost Of Living

11. How To Backwards Budget

12. How To Afford Travel

This is post #13 of 20 for the month of February.

In a minute, we’ll update some food and drink spending on the trip, comparing it to what it cost—roughly—in the United States, alongside more images from the trip.

But first, today’s Never Retire checklist item—your housing payment now and in relative old age—ahead of a full treatment of the subject in March, when I’ll write 20 posts in 31 days, meticulously detailing each of the 20 checklist items.

As we’ll discuss in a later checklist item, small expenses don’t always add up. And they almost never add up the way your biggest expenses add up, particularly housing. If you strive for—and maintain—a low or no housing payment now and for the duration, you put yourself in the position to have to work less and save and spend more freely.

In post #13 in March, we pull together our many discussions on housing to construct a comprehensive set of thoughts, ideas, and strategies to manage this major expense without sacrificing quality of life.

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Trattoria da Nennella. This is a well-known place in the Spanish Quarter, where you’ll wait more than an hour to sit down. It’s lively, and the wait staff regularly cranks up the music and dances with guests, hoisting a few up in the air while (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life from Dirty Dancing is playing in the background. It’s fun and the food good. You’ll pay 14 euros for a water alongside a first and second course.

The mozzarella here is amazing. So fresh. So milky. So salty. It simply doesn’t exist like this in the US.

There’s a good chance we just don’t know where to go, but food and drink—Nennella notwithstanding—feels a bit more expensive here than in Rome as well as Spain.

For example—

The area’s most famous pastry—sfogliatella. They tend to run about 3 euros each in my limited experience. This makes them at least a euro more costly than, say, a maritozzi in most places in Rome.

Anyhow, we’ll have more updates from Naples this week as we explore a bit more deeply.

While this is a nice picture, even the Galleria Umberto feels like it’s not being looked after.