I like the Transcentalists - I actually bought a copy of Walden with me, I like the dynamic between him and Emerson.
He got it bang on about that trading your life - I'm quite a homely character TBH so buying a house made sense for me, I like to be settled, I ground away about the last 4 years of my teaching career just holding on for the money to stack (the first 12 were OK so it wasn't an issue).
I think it was worth it - 4 years to stack then I was able to escape with a decent buffer which has come in handy.
I think I got the balance about right for me.
East Central portugal is just awesome. You can pick up properties for 20K EU still, very friendly too.
The climate for me is so much easier than the uk - the only problem is the heat in summer, August especially, but you can always go away to escape the worst.
Honestly, there are so many foreigners around here, Brits especially, there must be well over 1000 all doing the off-grid thing in one way or another. just in this region.