Here we go again…with 3 kiddoes

A month ago, I randomly met an old friend of Todd’s who followed this blog in 2009/2010 when we traveled the world for 14 months.  Quite naturally she noted “aren’t you glad you took that big trip, because you can’t do that now with littles ones!”  Yet here we are, on a nearly 3 months-long trip across Europe with 3 children under the age of 6.   

When I tell people that I am taking the summer off to travel with my family the most common response I get is “wow, you are so fortunate that you can do that!”  However, I believe “fortunate” mischaracterizes our situation.  The truth is we are no more fortunate than any of our peers; but we do make a different set of choices:  primary, we choose to live and travel SIMPLY. 

And so I am restarting our blog to share our current journey in figuring out how to keep travel a major part of our lives - both financially, and with 3 little kids.  If nothing else, we hope that sharing these details both inspires people and removes the misconception that you need to be either wealthy or have older kids before exploring the big wide world.  

Where we have been the last 7 years...  

If you all recall in 2009 we left our careers, sold all of our belongings and gave up our rental in SF to take a year off and explore the world.  Upon returning to the U.S in 2010 Todd quickly launched a consulting firm and I started a new career in management consulting.  That following January (2011) we became pregnant with a girl (K).  Our son (L) quickly followed and another girl (Z) joined our family in 2014, a month shy of K’s 3rd birthday.  So really the first 5 years of our return were a long blur of sleepless nights, conference calls, diapers, work travel, deliverables and baby spit up.  

How we can afford to take summers off...

Some time after we got back, I sent Todd an article about the blogger, “Mr. Money Mustache” - an act that I occasionally regret.  In summary, his blog promotes the virtues of living extremely simply, spending as little as possible and saving as much as you can to retire early and enjoy life sooner.  This life-style seemed fairly straightforward to us: I grew up in an austere immigrant family and Todd has always been a frugal minimalist by nature.  We quickly got on board and designed a 10 year plan in which we could retire and travel with our children in the summer months. 

In 2013, we found ourselves in a large 2 level condo in San Francisco, which we acquired through a combination of very hard work, extreme saving and a good bet on the real estate market.  It was one of those amazing deals where it was more space then we needed but buying a smaller place would have cost just as much.  We only had furniture from our previous 700 sq foot apartment and we just couldn’t get behind the idea that we needed two living rooms with two couches.  Shortly after moving in we converted the lower level of the condo (the family room which had a separate entrance) into an Airbnb rental.  We didn’t expect much but the rental quickly become a top San Francisco haven for large traveling families (3+ kids) from around the world!

Why we chose to do it now...

In 2015 my mother unexpectedly passed following a very brief bout with cancer.  Her mortality shook us, and naturally prompted an assessment of our own lives and goals.  Our ten year horizon seemed so distant, so precarious.  I kept thinking, what if we don’t make it that far to enjoy the fruits of our labor?  I have always worked full-time and in May 2016 I got burned out and resigned to spend the summer with the kids.  Financially, we were taking a huge hit and so we decided to spend the summer traveling in less expensive areas of the country while renting out the main part of our home. 

In short, the experience was AMAZING - check out the theboonedoggle page on Facebook, where we tracked the adventure.  We spent the whole summer exploring the western U.S. states and took additional trips in November and December during school breaks.   The kids (who were 5, 3 and 2 at the time) traveled to over 18 states and visited 10 national parks.  In one segment we spent 5 weeks on a camping road trip through 9 states in our Toyota Prius.

Off the success of our endless summer with the kids, we again began to question our 10 year plan:  Must we really wait another 8 or 7, or even five years?  Could we effect some lifestyle redesign that would allow us the freedom to travel like this every year?  Could we live this dream life NOW?  After all, the kids did well enough and through the extreme focus on saving we have learned to live on a lot less than we thought we could and less than we were making.  Sure, the kids wouldn’t remember these trips in detail, but along the way they would learn flexibility, adaptability, love of adventure, acceptance of different cultures, and the joy of exploring new places.  

Our plan morphed into a combination of work and retirement - we would work 9 months of the year and take 3 months off during the summer.  The 9 months of work would support our annual living expenses and allow us to still save a small amount, and renting our home for the summer while traveling would cover the trip expenses.      

How we manage summers off with our jobs...

I love what I do, and it quickly became clear to me that the only way I could make this work was to either become a teacher or create my own consulting firm and bid independently for projects.   After 3 months of working former clients, I landed my first project and was in business.  I of course negotiated a project end date that coincided with the last day of school for the kids.  With this route I take on a LOT of unemployment risk but through living simply it seems a lot less scary.  

Thankfully, Todd was already well equipped for this life style.   When people ask what Todd does, I start off by saying that he really does a lot of things.   He manages our full-time Airbnb downstairs (which he is passionate about); he runs an investment relations consulting company; he is a freelance food writer and restaurant critic; and he is constantly eyeing new investment / business opportunities that fit our new seasonally-nomadic lifestyle.  Most importantly, somewhere between his dozens of projects he finds time to support me through my career: he gets the kids off to school, collects them, cooks dinner and makes sure I don’t have to do laundry when I get home from 9 hours of conference calls.  And all of his pursuits—by design—can be done from anywhere in the world.

So here we are - summer 2017 - 7 years after we came back - we are back on the road but this time with 3 kiddies who are 5.5, 4 and almost 3.    We hope to re-purpose this blog to share our thoughts and lessons learned on travel with kids and structuring life to have summers off to explore the world.    Thanks for following and we are happy to answer any specific questions!