One Year Later: What it’s Like to be Home for a Year after a Year of Travel

One Year Ago

It seems only a short while ago we were getting on a plane after an exciting time exploring London . We had spent a whole year away from “normal”. Away from the hustle and grind of daily life. We were in a world of our own, doing as we felt, whenever we felt like it.

What is life like traveling? You know exactly how much money you have, and the time you have left to make it last. By being diligent, doing your research, and knowing what is important it all works out. Everything else, though, is just pure freedom.

• 

• 

• 

What Is Travel?

Travel is learning to decide when to wake up. It is learning to decide what to do. Choosing who to talk to, which way to go. It is deciding how long to stay, and when to leave. The food you eat, the things you see, the amount of walking you get, is all determined by you. This can be extremely liberating, or it can be a challenge. For us it was a bit of both.

Travel for us was not just about checking things off a list, and seeing all the beautiful places. It wasn’t just about having the most amazing Instagram posts. Yes we had that during our trip, but it wasn’t the focus. Our goal from the get-go, was to learn more about the world. To discover different cultures, meet new people, and experience different ways of life.

Coming Home

When we came home we were out of our travel money, although we were not completely broke. This is because we had kept a reserve amount for setting up life once we returned. We’ll talk more about this a little later.

Our first stop was a friends wedding, where Alex was one of the groomsmen. It was a joy to witness a new family being born, and an honor to be a part of it.

Staying With Parents

While we were traveling we missed our families a lot. When we came back we spent some time catching up, hanging out together, and getting them sick of us again. (Just kidding, who would ever get sick of us?) During this time, we spent a lot of time planning and dreaming about what we would do next. Life seemed so full of opportunities we didn’t really know what to go after first.

In the meantime, Alex spent time helping Katie’s dad with roofing a house he was building. He needed to get the sheeting on before the first snow, and it was a fun experience. In the meantime, Katie did some tutoring, as well as started dipping her toe into photography. We experimented with Airbnb Experiences, VipKid, and looked into maybe setting up an Airbnb.

• 

Buying A Van

The thing we were really on the lookout for the whole time was actually a van. No not one to fit 10 children in to. One we could convert into a little home-on-wheels. While we were traveling we realized that we don’t want to just travel from place to place. We want to actually live for a while in many different places. What easier way to do this than take our home with us wherever we go.

We did a lot of research, and studied the market, looking for a perfect deal. After just a few days of searching we found it. A lightly used Ram Promaster van. It had a 159″ wheelbase so there was plenty of room inside for a cozy home to be created. We bought it, fixed a few small issues, and now we were completely out of money. Yep all that money we had saved up for starting life up once we returned just went WHOOSH!

The thing is that we were able to travel for a whole year not because we were spoiled rich kids, but because we had great jobs, and the secret skill of living off of less than we earned. So back to work we went. This also meant leaving Katie’s parents and moving to Portland.

Back To Work – Alex

As an electrician in IBEW Local 48, I have the amazing opportunity to have really high paying work, a pension, and health benefits. This is one of the reasons why we felt comfortable going on our year long trip. When I was ready I logged on to the job portal, and picked one of the many jobs available. The next Monday I was going through orientation. No job interviews, no resume, no hassle.

Another great benefit about being in a union is that all the electrical unions around the country are friends and whenever one area has extra work they ask electricians from other places to come and help out. This is something we might do in the future when we have the van built out for living in. We’ll be able to travel around the country working for a time, before moving on to the next place.

The job I picked was actually the absolute best one out there. On top of a simply amazing hourly wage that all electricians get working 40 hour a week, this job had lots of overtime, and incentive pay. Incentive pay is when you get paid extra money each day just for showing up. Hey thanks guys!

On top of all that we really lucked out when some of our friends decided to go travel for that first month we were back home. They graciously allowed us to live in their home during that time. While doing that, it allowed us to establish proof of income, find an apartment for ourselves, and settle in to our new rhythms.

Photography – Katie

While Alex got back to work as an electrician, I decided to explore some other opportunities I hadn’t before. Although I had been a teacher before our trip, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep doing that indefinitely. I signed up to be a tutor on VipKid, started building my photography portfolio, and got into the rhythm of being home again.

VipKid is a tutoring platform for English teaching. The students are primarily Chinese, although they are expanding to other countries currently. The pay depends on how you do through the interview process, but I started at (counting the little bonuses they give) around $20 an hour. Not too bad for the ability to work right from home. If you have any questions about it feel free to ask!

My other project was to start working as a photographer. During our trip I had a lot of fun taking pictures with my super awesome and convenient travel camera. I wanted to see if I could apply my new skills towards making money. Turns out I could! This year has been a whirlwind of photoshoots, from weddings, to newborns, to family and senior photos, and even some commercial shoots.

One of my favorite things about photography is that I get a chance to eternalize a special moment in time. I love crafting an experience through a unique photoshoot, or capturing a special moment in a person’s life. The experience has the chance to be relived over again every time someone looks at, or talks about their photos.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Exploring Oregon

We currently life in the Portland metro area, and we really enjoy it. Let’s be honest here, the Pacific Northwest is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Not the sunniest, nor the warmest, but boy does it get green in the spring! It’s also close to the coast, mountains, lakes, river, waterfalls, and there’s even a desert not too far away. Really we do have it all.

We decided to do a bit of exploring our own backyard this year, and discovered even more amazing things. For example, did you know that Oregon produces some of the best wine in the entire world? Not to mention the United States. The wine made here is comparable to that made in the Burgundy region of France at a fraction of the cost.

Another thing we were really pleased to discover, is that Oregon small towns have been the vanguard of the farm-to-table movement. There are scores of restaurants all over the small towns of Oregon which use farm fresh, locally sourced, organic ingredients.

We’ve also gone on some amazing hikes, did a backpacking trip, and climbed an active volcano. In addition, we’ve gone whale watching at the coast, visited the Oregon dunes again, and enjoyed our own little town. It’s been a lot of fun discovering our wonderful state!

Check out our post about Oregon By Clicking HERE!

Investing

When we got back from our world trip we had one of those “now what?” moments. The world has so many opportunities and we were excited to figure out what we will do. One thing we realized was that surprisingly Alex going back to being an electrician wasn’t a bad idea. The pay was good, the work was interesting, and there were lots of benefits.

In addition, when we looked at our money saving journey, we realized we saved for our world trip pretty quickly. Starting from when we had no debt it was only about a year of saving for our world trip.

This realization actually kinda blew us away. The typical narrative out there is that it is really difficult to save money. We discovered that in fact, if you have a goal, a plan, a little bit of determination, and some out-of-the-box thinking it wasn’t actually all that hard. What if, we wondered, it was possible to save for longer, invest our money, and then reach a point that our investments earned enough for us to pay all of our living expenses?! Turns out we weren’t the first ones to think of this.

Financial Independence

Before long we discovered that the idea of being financially independent is actually a really old idea. It’s mentioned in the Bible, Benjamin Franklin did it, and most wealthy people are. The unique thing happening in our generation, is more middle class people are discovering they too can become financially independent. Even without being ultra geniuses, or filthy rich business owners.

The surprisingly simple way to becoming financially independent is to spend less money than you make. I know this is shocking, you’ve probably never heard of such a thing before. What I’ll say next is probably even more mind blowing. The best things in life are free. Yep. This means by building a life around the best things in life, you can actually spend less than you make. When you invest the difference, before too long you will become financially independent.

Calling And Purpose

Although for many people the idea of financial independence sounds exiting, choosing to spend less money typically does not. That’s something that poor people do right? Or maybe when you can’t qualify for any more credit cards or something? The reality is that despite all the messaging we receive to the contrary, the purpose of life is not to spend money.

We truly believe that each and every person has a specific purpose in their life. For some people this purpose is very global, affecting thousands of lives. For others its very specific, serving to radically impact their immediate community. Each and every day we can make decisions to live more or less in line with our purpose, or as some people call it, our calling. We think by being wise with our money we will develop freedom in our life to live out our purpose.

Like us you might also be wondering, what is my purpose? What am I called to do on this earth? We are asking this question as well, and are beginning to have an idea of what it might be. The wiser we are with our money, the more financially versatile we are, the more we are able to see what our future holds in store for us, and how we are able to live out our calling.

Materialism And Advertising

There is one thing we wanted to touch on before moving on, and that is the topic of feasibility. The prevailing opinion of a lot of people is to assume that everything that was stated above is a pipe dream due to the “realities of life”. That there is something that we are missing and we’ll realize it before too long. There are two reasons for that and they go hand in hand.

In a more general sense we live in a world of blatant materialism. People buy bigger houses, and cars than they need, go on vacations they can’t afford, and spend every dollar they earn without a glance at the future. We live in a culture of “keeping up with the Jones’s” where everyone is trying to one-up everyone else.

On a more personal level we are constantly bombarded with messaging encouraging us to spend more, more, and more. Marketers have really dialed in what levers to pull when it comes to enticing people to spend their money, convincing them that the item is not a want but a need.

There is one simple way to combat both of these issues and its pretty simple. Turn it all off. Unsubscribe from the newsletters, the coupons, stop reading the news, and figure out what it means to actually live your life. Figure out what is actually important to you, not the advertisers.

Our Plans Going Forward

To be honest, at this point we don’t exactly know what we’re doing going forward. The main reason is that there are so many different options, and choices still to be made. We do have a general idea of what we want to do though.

FI

Underpinning all of our plans going forward is the concept of Financial Independence. This is often referred to as FI. FI is the idea that when the income from your investments are equal to or greater than your spending you are FI. This can be achieved a variety of ways, from investing in bonds, the stock market, real estate, or owning a business.

We are not quite sure exactly what our investing journey will look like, but a few things already stand out to us. One thing we have noticed is that real estate seems like a solid and also fun investment choice. In general the stock market is considered a pretty sure thing so we aim to invest some there as well. Finally the idea of owning some kind of business that allows us to earn money while helping other people seems like a great choice as well. Of course this blog plays in to that, and we are excited for other opportunities as they arise.

One thing we have learned is that no matter what exactly you do, having a firm grip on your own finances leads you to have more freedom in the choices you make. We know exactly where our money is going each month and how much we make, by making sure to track it. In general we try to have a savings rate of at least 50% each month although that does vary month to month.

Over the course of the year 2018 we had a total savings rate of approximately 40%. This is a good start and our goal is to increase that to 60% in this next year. Even if we fall short of our goal we know that by setting it in the first place we will do better than if we didn’t set one at all.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Van Build

When we came back from our world trip one of the first things we did was buy a Ram Promaster van with a goal to build it out into a campervan. We kind of imagined this being this super fun project that we get done really fast and then go travel in it. Reality has been a little different. Instead the van has been our mobile garage for all the stuff that doesn’t fit into our apartment!

We do have plans to still build it out, and we have done a lot of research on how we’re going to do that. So far we have installed a roof vent, and ordered some windows. We also have the insulation that we’ll use. This is looking like it is going to be little bit slower project for us, but we are still excited about one day having a really cool van that we designed and built out ourselves.

There are a lot of reasons (excuses) why this van build has progressed slower than we initially hoped for. The real crux of the matter is that the van was actually not our whole focus over this past year. We had full time jobs, and we had a lot of fun living a wonderful life. As we slowly work on it over this upcoming year, we’ll continue sharing our progress!

Explore

Going forward we hope to keep exploring this wonderful world we live in. Our immediate goals are to continue exploring our beautiful state. In addition, we are working on getting the Southwest Airlines Companion pass this year which will help us explore the US. This is accomplished using Credit Card Hacking or as some people call Travel Hacking, and we will share more about how we are doing that in a future post.

We also plan on getting the van to a somewhat travel-ready condition before this summer and go on a few trips. This means that the van probably won’t be picture perfect and be all off grid and comfortable. Our goal is for it to be insulated, have room for a bed, and have basic framing of counter tops for use. Once the van is in that condition we’ll dial down exactly our preferred layout and make it all Pinterest pretty!

For this year we have a few exploration goals. We are participating in the 52 hikes challenge, with the goal of completing 52 mostly unique hikes throughout this calendar year. In addition we have a National Parks pass which expires after July which we need to use at least a few more times. We are hoping to visit the parts we haven’t seen yet of Olympic Park, make our first trip to North Cascades Park, and perhaps explore parks in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, California, and Nevada. Having a van that can be used for travel will help with this!

Purchase a Home

Currently we are renting an apartment which is really close to where Alex works. Over the past year we have been saving a good amount and have enough for a down payment on a home. Because of the enormous costs associated with driving (our savings for our world trip were significantly boosted when we moved closer to Alex’s job) we really want to stay within biking distance of Alex’s job.

The homes in our area are quite competitive when it comes to pricing which makes it a little tough to find a good deal. We are doing a lot of searching, comparing, and assessing our market. One thing we are not doing is looking for our “forever home”. Most people should probably not be doing such a silly thing until they have at least reached Financial Independence. Instead we are analyzing to make sure that whatever we do get is a good purchase from an investment standpoint.

This could mean that we might end up living in apartments for the foreseeable future. For someone who spends every last dollar this is a bad idea since paying off a house is often the bulk of the investing they do. This does not bother us, however, since we try to invest as much money as possible. In addition, if we end up not buying for a little while and then decide to go into full time travel mode it’s one less thing to hold us back.

Serve

Over this past year we have had an opportunity to attend a church right across the street from us, get plugged into a community group which meets once a week, and serve other people. We have grown a lot in the past year, and have come to deeply appreciate living in vulnerable community with others.

As we continue on this adventure of life we want to always keep hold of a life in community. Although it seems really cool to jet-set around the world, in reality we hope to always have a component of living a life of service to others in our lives. We can see ourselves helping a church plant in a foreign country, working with an orphanage, or perhaps even volunteering with disaster relief work.

Adventure can mean something so much deeper than going ziplining, rock-climbing or scuba diving. We have deeply appreciated those times during our trip when we were able to serve, and they were adventurous in and of themselves.

Move To A Different Country

One of the things we have thought about doing is perhaps moving to a different country. Living abroad is often much cheaper than in the US. For example, while we were traveling from place to place, which is generally more expensive than staying in one place, we had spending’s consistently under $100 a day. In the US however, things are generally much more expensive and we have not had a month of lower than $100 a day on average even without traveling.

This means that if we were to move to a country like Kyrgyzstan for example, we know we can live off of no more than $15,000 a year of US money. Even if we went all out and had an expensive lifestyle of double that, it would still be a lot cheaper than living in the US.

This is something we think about from time to time, and why the idea of Financial Independence seems so alluring to us. We know we could have an amazing life in a cheaper country doing more of the things we love to do, and not be tied to trying to make money.

• 

• 

Have A Baby

Some of you may have heard that we are going to have a baby! It’s going to be a baby girl, and we are so excited to welcome her into the world. We’ve already started geeking out with a whole bunch of parent books, and buying some of the things we will need (second hand). In addition, we have also found a great birthing center where we will have the baby and we are so excited for this amazing experience.

When we left on our world trip many people told us “It’s good you’re doing this now, since there’s no way you’ll be able to once you have kids.” To all these people I would like to respectfully say please stop projecting your choices in life onto us. Babies are not as expensive as the media would have you believe, since how much money you spend on anything is entirely your choice.

This means that although some of the above may change due to changing goals and desires, as always happens, we still plan to have awesome and adventurous times with our children! We are not scared to travel with kids, live in a van with kids, or move to a foreign and possibly third world country with kids. Life is full of amazing opportunities and we are excited to take advantage of all of them!

Conclusion

Thank you for taking time to read this longer than normal blog post! This past year has been a lot of fun, a year of growth, challenges, discoveries, and opportunities. We are so excited for all that it has in store for us and for you!

If you need adventure and travel inspiration, follow us on our Instagram @thatoneadventurecouple! Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our Adventure Newsletter where we feature all our favorite travel spots, tips, and you’ll get a free e-book!

Are you on Pinterest? 

Follow us & PIN This Article!

• 

•