I’d like to begin saying, that it all started one Valentine’s Day evening, when me and my wife were laying on the carpet, next to a gas fireplace, with lights off watching the imaginary stars on our living room ceiling. However plain and unromantic it sounds, it was the day when we decided we want to change something about our life. Not that we didn’t like the warmth of the fire safely enclosed in a metal box, not that we didn’t enjoy the comfy pillows supporting our heads or the quietness of our large house, with our kids sleeping soundly upstairs. We did appreciate all that a lot, and yet we decided to throw it all out…
We could afford our suburban house in safe neighborhood, good school, two IRA’s, two 529′s, and occasional Caribbean vacations. All that from just one paycheck. A really good paycheck, considering we lived in an inexpensive part of country. My job, that provided this income wasn’t bad at all. Actually, at times, I think I even enjoyed what I was doing.
So, what exactly happened that Valentine’s Day night, under the living room stardom…? I’ll never know that for sure. Maybe it was the wine, or the “magic of the moment”, who knows…? Bottom line, we decided to trade all that safety and security of our Family for an open road and the thrill and danger of an unknown adventure. Nuts, obviously…
We couldn’t sleep that night, we couldn’t sleep for many more nights thereafter. It started with an idea of a short sabbatical trip to South America. By next morning, it evolved into a full fledged, multi-year trip around the World. Details, like trip funding yet to be defined.
Obviously, the economic aspect of that idea soon rose to be it’s greatest obstacle and it wasn’t until I’ve laid out a solid plan that convinced my wife to give it her blessing. The plan involved selling all our means of transportation, most household items, putting our retirement and kids education savings on hold, renting the house, anticipating tax returns and researching travel and accommodation options in various parts of the World. Turned out, living on the road was going to be much less expensive than staying in our own house. Or to be exact, staying in the house owned by our bank.
What happened next is an uncommon story of a very common Family, starring Mommy and Daddy (a.k.a. The Nuts), a six years old girl and an almost three year old boy. The story is shared here with the rest of the World as we discover it.