Why the plan to travel for a whole year (or more?)?
When we were younger, we had no experience and little interest in international travel. We’re both from low middle to working class families with little money to spare for flights across the oceans and expensive vacations. A family vacation was usually just a road trip to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
In our last twenty years together, we’ve caught the travel bug. We’ve been to Italy for a two week tour with our son Brendan when he was just 14. We’ve been to England twice, to travel with friends, and once to hike the “Wainwright’s Coast to Coast” across northern England. We spent one Christmas and New Year in Sweden with the our son-in-law’s family. Our last pre-retirement trip was to France in 2016.
We have come to love our travel experiences. We usually design our own travel experiences rather than joining organized tours because we prefer meeting the locals and immersing ourselves in different cultures.
We’re Retired: This huge change in our lives means we no longer have to get back to work in two weeks. No more work. No more responsibility. Our time is ours to spend as we wish.
“Wow! You must be rich to afford a year in Europe!”
That’s how folks respond when they hear our story. But we’re really not wealthy. Solid middle-class suburban, but not wealthy. Sara & Evan had one house, with a substantial mortgage, no third home, not even a second home, two cars, but no personal airplane, and no yacht (Alright, so we did have two kayaks. Does that count?). But the costs of maintaining our home and commitments in Florida would eat up most of our now fixed retirement income. We considered renting out our home to offset expenses, but concluded that it was too unreliable. Besides, our lovely home was larger and more costly than we needed anyway. And at age 67, Evan was tired of all the yard work and had no desire to pay others to do it either.
The Decision: Sell the house and get rid of everything we own. We planned to begin by walking the Camino Frances to Santiago de Compostela, so our goal was to sell, store or give away anything we couldn’t take in a backpack. What a remarkable reversal to the usual American way of life. Instead of collecting more and better stuff, we were getting rid of it. And what fun it was to divest ourselves of years of stuff. Especially that stuff you’ve stored in the attic or basement, that stuff you just keep but never see or use. Meanwhile Marie Condo’s advice on ‘tidying up and letting go” was also helpful. So what did we do with it all?
We Sold It: We sold the house, and some of the furniture, the kayaks, lots of other things.
We Gave It Away: A garage full of tools and all of the housekeeping gadgets. If a visitor admired anything we owned, furniture, decorations, or whatever, we would respond, “Please, take it with you.” We gave a truckload or two to the church for its “Rummage Sale” and a good deal to the local Good Will Store. Evan’s stereo & surround sound system is also headed to the “Rummage Sale.” We gave our 2003 Mazda Tribute to a young single mother on a tight budget. We gave our 2010 Prius to our son, Brendan, so he could enjoy a year without car payments.
We Loaned It: Some furniture went to our son in Jacksonville, and others to our friends in Florida, so they can use it in our absence: furniture and two TV sets. If and when we return to set up a new home, we may or may not reclaim this stuff.
We Have It Stored: Renting a storage unit would cost as much more for storage than it would to buy new when we returned. So we stored very little, and only by asking family and friends to store it for us. For instance, Evan could not part with his guitars and his music.
Who knew that giving stuff away turned out to be such great fun! We sent very little to the garbage. We loved looking for someone who would value or benefit from what we had to give. And we gave away some very good stuff, most everything we didn’t really need. Once you got your head around it, seeking the “bare necessities” and jettisoning the rest was really fun.
