During our travels, when we meet people and talk to them for any length of time, they will inevitably ask, “So, what do you do for a living that allows you to travel like this?” Friends and aquaintenences back in the states will ask, “What is the secret to your travels?” or just flat out ask, “How can you afford to travel so much and for so long?”
I think most people have the misconception that we are wealthy. We are not. Wildly irresponsible, perhaps, but we are not rich. When we relocated to North Carolina in 2023, we made the decision to save as much money as we could during our time there, with the plan of traveling for a long period once we left. We worked and saved for three years and those are the funds we now use for our travels. We don’t have large investments or secret, passive income streams. We are living on our savings.
Our cost of living in North Carolina was relatively low, especially in comparison to where we lived in Los Angeles County, California. Our first year and a half in North Carolina, we lived in an apartment that was kind of a dump. It was in a great location and the rent was incredibly cheap, though we had to paint the apartment ourselves and seal the windows with duct tape to prevent mosquitos from getting in. Hey, you get what you pay for, right? We were also able to get by on sharing one car as Phil worked from home.
Phil and I are college educated professionals with many years of experience in our respective fields, so were able to secure jobs with good salaries, especially for the area we were living in. We were not C-suite executives for Fortune 500 companies, nor did we make a mint in crypto or options trading. We simply worked jobs that paid us fairly for our talent, good money, but not “we can retire” money.
Phil and I follow a pretty firm budget while traveling. Though we make exceptions when it’s worth it. We (mostly Phil) plan accomodations and flights well in advance (usually with the ability to cancel if something comes up), which often offers a lower rate. We’re not fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants travelers, just arriving in a city and figuring out where to stay. Phil and I want a bit of predictability during our adventure, and don’t want to spend time each place finding somewhere to stay. We are also currently visiting parts of the world where our savings stretch a lot further than they would in the U.S.
The number one thing that allowed us to save and travel for a long-term is that we do not have children. Kids are expensive. They need (and want) stuff, like food, shelter, braces, good schools, etc. The average cost per year of raising a child in the U.S. is around $20k, and that’s only one kid.
The number two thing that contributes to our ability to travel long-term is the ability to make difficult choices. We don’t have a home (therefore no monthly mortgage or rent payment). All of our belongings are in a 10×10 storage unit in California. Not having a home base or an anchor would make a lot of people anxious. Parring down a lifetime of stuff collecting, as we humans are wont to do, into a shared 10×10 space would be difficult for most. Luckily we had three moves before this one to gradually de stuff-ify (though I still feel we have too much stuff).
Alternatively, with the money we were able to save, we could have put a down payment on a nice home. We could have put it into our 401(k)’s or some other retirement fund. Instead, we chose to travel. Some would say that is wildly irresponsible, though it depends on who you ask.
In my line of work, working with older adults, I have seen many instances of couples who saved for a future they never got: a week after buying the RV for their cross-country travel dreams, one of them has a stroke and can no longer care for themselves, or the couple who went on a European tour but had to cut it short because one of them had dementia and was wandering away from the group.
Phil and I are alive and healthy. Now. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. That’s not to say that saving for an eventual future is foolish, but we are lucky enough to be in a position to take a little slice of retirement now, so why not?
This kind of decision takes a leap of faith. There are no guarantees in life. In 2016, we decided to sell our house in St.Louis and move to California, which seemed like a crazy idea, and we wound up falling in love with the west coast. We decided to leave the west coast in 2021 to live in Spain, and we ended up having the most amazing 500 days of our lives (so far, anyway). When we returned to the U.S. from our time in Europe, we had very little left in our bank account, but had family to stay with for a couple months while we got on our feet. In three years time, we had enough to quit our jobs and set off for Asia.
Having a supportive family has been quite important to our journey. They have offered us places to stay, use of a vehicles, and meals both when we returned from Spain and before we left for Asia, and we have been able to help and spend time together with them. While they (and we) have had their own tough times, losing loved ones, battling cancer and other debilitating illnesses, taking time away from work allowed us to be with them while they went through hard times as well.
I was so thankful that we were not working when my father unexpectedly fell ill and passed away in January. We were able to push back our departure date so we could spend his last days with him, mourn with family, and help my mom. We were also able to spend some extra time with my father-in-law before we left as he began cancer treatments. If we had been working at the time, we simply would not have had those extra days and weeks with our loved ones.
Even still, quitting a job, having no income, and watching your savings dwindle isn’t easy. Like all of us, we crave stability. We want to be comfortable. We fear the unknown.
We have decided that when we bet on ourselves, we always win. While we can never know the outcome of any kind of life-changing choice, we enter it with optimism that it will work out. Maybe not the way we planned, or the exact way we wanted, but always in the way it should be.
