The BIG NEWS, A big international trip.

I want to travel.

Not jump on a plane, gone for a week living in a hotel travel. I want sell-all-your-stuff don’t know when I’ll be back, kind of travel. Reading about nomadic families seeing the world makes my heart burst.  Mouth water, tingly all over.

But lets face it. Or I guess I should say not “lets” but  “I”.  I need to face it… Mr. and I just have different temperaments. Along with different upbringings. Non-stop travel is a super hard sell. For more reasons then you can even imagine.

But I am soooo excited to say that we might just be heading in that direction. Our family won’t be packing it up to go  on an indefinite trip around the world. Even a year of travel is asking to much.

3- 4 months of wandering. That is much more possible. I’ll take it .

We are going to partake in what Paula Pant calls a Mini Retirement. Or you can call it a sabbatical but that just sound boring.

I’ve been talking about it at home for a few months. I didn’t know how to share it here. But after attending FinCon and telling everyone about it, I figured it was time all of you knew. So there, I finally said it. We are planning a long trip.  A trip that includes spending 2 months abroad.

Taking a big trip like this has been on my list for a long time but something always seemed to get in the way.

However, now everything seems to be falling into place.

Why now?

Well this is a bit hard to explain without it’s own post but here are a few things

• I told myself that by 2017 I was going to make it out to the Chautauqua that Jim Collins and MMM participate in yearly. (Held in Ecuador)
• Relocating. We planned to leave California, turns out we are moving to Michigan
• I’ve been meaning to go visit my family in Ecuador and El Salvador. We recently reconnected.
• We’ve saved a lot of money and have lower spending

Now to make a long story short. Taking a long trip like this would mean Mr. Roamer would need to someway or another negotiate an extended leave of absence. However, he wants to move back to Michigan. Well when you move to a new state you usually quit your job and look for a new one anyway. So I had the brilliant idea, why don’t we squeeze in a trip between those 2 jobs.

The time frame was decided based on the fact that I wanted to attend the Chautauqua. But there was also the plus that it would be summer in South America during that time anyways.

Top level view of the upcoming adventure.

The plan is to take a nice month long road trip back to Michigan starting in October 2017. Then we will fly to Ecuador for a month in November to visit my family, and take part in the 2017 Chautauqua ( if they have one). Then fly to El Salvador for a month in December to visit the other side of my family. Then back to Michigan. Starting off 2018 in our new home state.  Since we will be jobless and won’t know exactly where we will land I am also planning a month of nomadic living in Michigan while we figure stuff out.

To be completely honest the length of the trip is still up in the air but this is what I am planning for.  If cuts need to be made like in our California road trip then we will make the cuts.

So what do you think ? Do you want to hear more about how our family of 4 is planning to make this trip happen?

This will include how we plan to purge, purge and purge some more to get everything down to what will fit into our 2 cars.

(deep breath)

We have a big task ahead of us. There is a lot to figure out.

But I feel like I have a pretty good track record and I am hoping those skills will serve me well. When I said saving was important I sat down and figured stuff out. I did math, created charts, & excel graphs to figure out how to pay off my debt in 5 years instead of 10. Then I figured out how to pay off our cars eliminating all of our debt. Finally we crunch the number to max out our 401K accounts and then IRA. I said it was important and by gosh you can find the results of my efforts right here on this blog.

The plan is to keep that drive pushing me reach another dream.

If this was difficult to follow it was because there are a lot of little stories that feed into how this all came about. That is one of the reasons I put off posting about it until now. But the time keeps passing and things need to get done.

I figured if I could share the steps on the blog it would help me stay organized. Instead of working on a big project like planning this and then trying to write about different topics on the blog. I could just put it all together and share with you the items I complete .

This blog is after all about travel, parenting and early retirement( read money) and I will have to deal with all these areas to make this trip happen.

So join me, and learn with me. See the good, the bad and the ugly.

Have you ever taken your family on a big trip? Or relocated cross country? Tell me in the comments.

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