What the @#&$% are you doing?
How long are you going for?
Where are you going?
How did you decide where to go?
How can you afford to do this?
What about your jobs?
What about your house?
What about your cat?
How do you pack for a trip like this?
Can I meet up with you?
Whose idea was this? Were you both on board? (OK that is 2 questions...)
How did you prep for something like this?
What are you going to do once you get back?
What the @#&$% are you doing?
We are ditching our cubicles and discovering the word for the next 6 months (and hopefully longer depending on $$$). It's a big world out there and very hard to explore it on 2 weeks of vacay a year. So we've decided to quit our jobs and see the world before further settling down. Instead of looking at pictures of exotic places taped to our cube walls, we are going to see them for ourselves!
How long are you going for?
We've saved up enough for 6 months and hopefully we'll be able to stretch our money to go longer. But no longer than a year. Where are you going?
Starting on January 6 2010 , we hop on a plane for San Jose, Costa Rica. (Hopefully that plane actually gets there since it's Frontier Airlines and they've since declared bankruptcy!) We're there for 17 days and then we head to Guatemala. And seriously that is as far as we've planned flight-wise. Tentatively we are planning on going to Cuba for a few days, and then to Chile. From there - Patagonia, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, and Peru and then to Southeast Asia. We're trying to be flexible and go where the wind takes us. For anyone who has traveled with me you know how hard that is for me! I live and breath by an itinerary. But flying by the seat of my pants (hopefully figuratively and NOT literally) is one of the things I want to get out of this trip.
How did you decide where to go?
Several factors came into play - places that are cheap, frugal, and inexpensive. Seriously, we looked at places we could AFFORD to go to on our budget as well as places where we might not be up for traipsing around when we are older. So that led us to South America and Southeast Asia. Doing additional research and talking to our friends who have done similar trips helped us to further identify where to go within those areas.
How can you afford to do this?
As a Saturday Night Live sketch simply pointed out a brilliant way to stay out of debt "Don't spend money you don't have!" In our case, we just spent LESS money than we made. It's called savings folks. Luckily for us, our crucial savings time coincided with the meltdown in the economy. Being frugal was in! Also, a trip like this actually costs less than you might think. Most places are cheaper to live in than America. We're going to stay in hostels and take public transportation to save money. I have to admit it's actually been a great learning experience for us to 1) create a budget and 2) hold ourselves accountable to that budget. We're going to apply this on the road as well.
What about your jobs?
Although we both like our jobs, neither of our companies would approve a leave of absence for this amount of time so we both had to quit our jobs. It was a tough decision, but a risk we're willing to risk to see the world. Now who has a marketing position opening up in about 6 months?
What about your house?
We are trying to rent it out. We'll keep you posted on whether or not we are successful. We have budgeted for a worst case scenario of not being able to rent it out, but hopefully that doesn't happen. If you know anyone who is interested in a temporary sublet in San Francisco, please let us know!
What about your cat?
This so far has been on the hardest things to deal with. We killed him.
Just kidding, I had you there for a minute huh? We took him to Tom's parents house in Salt Lake City. The poor cat had no idea he was in for the ride of his life when we took him to the airport. After one serious scare of him missing (we later found him after 30 minutes of looking hiding behind the books on a bookshelf), he has adjusted and I know he's in good hands with Jean and John (thank you again Jean and John!). We think this is how he will keep in touch... too bad he's not on skype.
How do you pack for a trip like this?
Very carefully (more to come on this!)
Can I meet up with you?
6 months of just us together?! Although we get along great when we travel, we know how much we are going to miss our friends and family, so we'd love to meet up with folks while we are traveling! Our schedules will actually be more flexible than yours probably. If you are interested in joining us, take a look at our itinerary and let us know when and where and we'll figure it out
Whose idea was this? Were you both on board? (OK that is 2 questions...)
Several years ago, I was really struggling with my role at work and was wanting to do something MORE. What that was I didn't know. I researched the Peace Corps but a 2 year commitment was too long. Then as I thought about how much I wanted to travel before settling down further. And after hearing my friends horror studies about traveling with small children, I thought we should do this now before having kids. Basically I was bitten by the travel bug! So I began my campaign to convince Tom. After some persuasion (i.e. browbeating, nagging, ultimatums, etc) Tom was convinced! I am so excited I have an awesome husband who is willing to take a risk like this with me.
How did you prep for something like this?
I got one of those Christmas ornaments that you can put a little wish in several years ago. Christmas 2008 I opened up the ball and written plainly on the paper was "GO ON THE BIG TRIP". So we've been talking about this for years and saving up money for years. However, we've just buckled down and gotten serious about this the last 6 months or so. Being good project managers we created an excel sheet with tasks, time lines, and owners (me or Tom). We've slowly chipped away at it. While it can still be daunting what we have to do before we go, having the list and doing things one step at a time helps. We're also taking some time off for family visits, holidays, and trip prep before we go which will help.
What are you going to do once you get back?
Right now our plans are to move back to our house, get jobs, and make some money. We've set aside part of our budget to float us upon return until we get jobs. But one of the exciting (and scary!) parts of this trip is who knows how it will impact us - we may change our minds later but this is our plan for now.
