Why and How We’re Taking a Year to Travel

We have been getting a lot of questions since sharing our plans of taking a year off to go travel. To share how we are making this trip happen, what our planning process has been, how we’re making it work with kids, what we’re packing, and so on. Some people have been asking us to share “our story” with them. And lots of people have been asking how to keep up to date with our travels. So we’ve put together this blog to share our trip as it unfolds and to offer thoughts along the way about the different questions we’ve been getting.

This trip has been a long time in the making. Since we met over 10 years ago, we have been traveling as often as possible. During our university years, we always traveled during our breaks. We backpacked through South East Asia, volunteered in Tanzania, and spent a month camping in the National Parks out West. After finishing graduate school, we took a month to travel around Peru before Joe started a yearlong clerkship in Santa Barbara. After that, we traveled for 3 months through South East Asia, France, Spain, and Portugal, after which we moved to San Francisco for Joe to start his job as a lawyer.

After moving to San Francisco, we told ourselves that we would pay our student loans, save some money, and maybe go travel for an extended period of time. Initially, the plan was to try to accomplish those goals in about 3-4 years. Well, fast forward seven years and add two young kids, and now we are finally making it work!

Money is often one of the main topics on people’s minds when we share our plans. During our time in San Francisco, we have tried to be financially responsible. We have a budget and we balance it almost every week. Among other things, we tried to avoid spending money on restaurants or unnecessary items so that we could pay off loans and then start to save. We have fallen off the budget wagon (usually when taking trips!), but we have always tried to keep our focus and have gotten back on track. For this trip, we also have a budget that we plan on tracking on a daily basis. For example, we chose our locations based on how expensive/inexpensive they are. We are using Airbnb for lodging and our goal is to not pay more than $50 a night (you can get amazing places for well under $50 in countries like Montenegro or Macedonia!). We are also planning on doing most of our cooking at “home,” which will save lots of money.

The financial logistics are important to make a trip like this happen, but the main driving force behind our trip is that we have continued to be inspired to do it. Our desire to see the world has never taken a back seat for us. We’ve drawn a lot of our inspiration from our own trips (nothing keeps the travel bug alive like traveling—not just international trips, but day trips and local adventures as well!). We’ve also been inspired by stories of people and families who have decided to go travel the world or just relocate somewhere totally different because they wanted something new or a slower pace of life. Surrounding ourselves with inspiring stories has helped us believe that anything is possible. Inspiration is a strong driving force! Even following other traveling families on Instagram can make a big difference. Yes, there are some families who have a juicy bank account and nothing to worry about, but there are also lots of other families like us who are just making it work.

Why are we doing it now? That’s a good question. We were originally planning on doing this sometime in the future. This year we were planning on going to Bali for our ten-year wedding anniversary but, at some point a few months ago, we had a change of heart and thought “why don’t we just get on that plane to Singapore and keep going from there?” After we made that decision, everything seemed to start falling into place. All the signs were telling us we were making the right decision, or at least it felt like it. We believe that you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the following week, or the following year. If you can do it now, it’s better to not wait until everything is as perfect as you’d like. Life is short and it’s better to take advantage of your strength and health while you can because you don’t know what might happen later in life. (It may feel like an extreme way of thinking but, from someone who lost her father at age 14, death and dying are quite real to me.)

Our kids are 1.5 and 4.5 now. The oldest can’t start Kindergarten for another year so that’s also why this is a great time to take off. We have seen our kids flourish during vacation and we can’t wait to see the impact this year will have on them (and us!).

So, that’s our story. We are just a family who is in love with travel. We feel incredibly blessed to be able to do this and we are so excited to finally make it happen!

We leave on May 17 and our first stop will be Georgetown, Malaysia!

We’ll be sharing our packing list soon so people can have a better idea of how we are fitting a year of clothes, toys and accessories (including scooters and helmets!) into two large backpacks, two daypacks, and one kids rollie suitcase!

“And, when you want something with all your heart, the universe conspires in helping you achieve it” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist