If you read our Why We’re Traveling for a Year post we shared why we want to travel for such a long time and some background on how this decision came to be. In this post we go through why we quit our 9-5 jobs to travel for a year and dive a little more into why we think now is the time to do this.
Making the decision to quit our jobs without any next job prospect is a huge decision. It changes things for so many reasons. We were both leaving really good jobs with people we knew and steady paychecks coming in. Quitting indefinitely meant (to some) that we were putting our careers on hold or even throwing away our careers. In the US your career is such a large part of how we define ourselves and how others think of us.
Taking this crazy idea of “hey, let’s just go travel for a long time” into an actual plan meant many conversations about why we wanted this and why we shouldn’t keep pushing it off.
1. We Stopped Saying It Wasn’t the “Right Time”
For a few years now we’ve been having the conversation of traveling. We wanted so badly to travel for more than 10 days once a year on an expensive summer vacation. But between a school-year schedule and the usual limit of 15 vacation days there was no way we could travel the way we really wanted to. So for about 3 years we made excuses and stuck with planning vacations, having a great time, coming back, and immediately planning the next place we wanted to go to 49 weeks in the future.
For every stage of life, there is an excuse for why it wasn’t the right time to do it. We didn’t have enough money or it wasn’t the time to leave a job or it just seemed like such a big decision that was so daunting. But every time we convinced ourselves not to take this risk, the thoughts would creep back in stronger than before. Slowly we realized if it was something we wanted to do we had to commit and figure the rest out.
For a lot of reasons now IS the right time. We don’t have kids or pets, we don’t have a mortgage or other regular responsibilities. After working for a few years we have money saved and are happy to use it for travel.
So why not now then? For a lot of people, and us for a while, the answer to that question was because it’s not the norm. However here we are selling all of our belongings, trading in our city apartment for storage at our parents house, spending a ton of money to go traveling, and we could not be more excited!
We had to become okay that our life was going to look different. Because if we don’t do it now, we both know we would regret not doing it in 50 years.
2. We Decided Not to Be Afraid
There are plenty of things that we are still afraid of but what we mean is that we became okay with not knowing. Maybe that sounds young and naïve but a lot of big decisions in life are a gamble. You’re never quite sure how things are going to play out. Even when you think you do, life gets in your way and throws a wrench in your plans. Even the most stable of situations can turn upside down with no warning.
We became okay with walking away from both our jobs and maybe putting our careers on hold. We became okay that when we came back, if we wanted to go back into the same industries, that we may face some challenges explaining our time away. But we also thought that maybe this experience would lead us to something else. Maybe it will show us something else that we love to do that we had no idea about.
- We don’t mean like we said “F*** it lets wing it” and see what happens. We spent so, so much time planning our travels, budgeting everything, planning ways to make money and options we could have when we came back. But we decided it was okay to not have all the answers before any of this experience even really started.
3. We Logistically Started Figuring Out What We Had To Do
After making this decision, actually planning a year of travel is logistically a lot. There are so many details that are not even the traveling. Things like cancelling your lease, selling all your stuff, cancelling bills and other commitments, getting insurance, visas, vaccines, etc. that it can be very overwhelming. Planning the travel was fun but the stuff before that has to be done so everything is in order to leave.
We spent one whole day sitting on the floor of our apartment making a giant world map of where we wanted to go. We have no idea if it will actually look like that but that was the fun part. Thinking of all the places we had always said we wanted to go and making it a reality was exciting. But don’t overlook the not so glamorous stuff and don’t wait until the last minute! This is the stuff that will save you money and allow you to come back a little easier.
We made a million different Google Docs with various to-do lists. We made one list of all the things we had to cancel. Then we made another list of all the things where we had to change our address. It might not work for everyone but that’s how we stayed organized with everything that had to be done.
4. We Worked Really Hard for a Long Time to Make it Happen
Both of us have always been pretty diligent with our money but once we decided that we were definitely going to do this we went into full planning/preparation mode to make it happen. We stopped going out to dinner and spending money on anything that was not 100% necessary. Instead we saved that money for the trip. We gave ourselves a budget and worked really hard to stick to it.
We also started selling our stuff to make some extra money and clean out our apartment. So every single week Dave went to the post office at least once or twice. We sold everything in our apartment mostly on Ebay and LetGo. Don’t get us wrong it was hard. Listing everything, packing packages and dropping them off and coordinating pick up times with people all took a lot of time. Honestly after a couple of months it definitely got annoying to deal with. But the money we got from all of that completely paid for our Sony A7III Camera, new lenses, other trip gear, vaccinations, and visa fees.
5. We (Politely) Ignored People Who Didn’t Agree
We don’t mean to sound like we were ignorant and wrote off what other people said to us. But the more people we told about our plans the more we saw that some people didn’t quite understand this choice we were making. Slowly we became more and more okay with everyone not completely agreeing with our decision. We understand its not what everyone would do nor it is important to everyone. We gradually started to realize that not everyone’s path is the same and that that’s okay.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t listen to your friends and family. We listened to their concerns, and they definitely gave us some ideas and things to consider. But its important to remember that the path you’re choosing is not for everyone. Quitting our jobs and traveling is NOT everyone’s dream and that’s okay. However it is one of our dreams and we are so excited to see it through!
