Surprise! I (along with my husband and 12-month old daughter) will be taking a trip around the world for about a year starting March 2018.

How we came to the decision

My husband and I were both at a crossroad in life. I was feeling stuck in life, possibly wanting to make a career change, and my husband, was an athlete reaching the age where he’s considered ‘too old’ to play. My husband knew that once he made the switch into what society says is a ‘real job’, he would want to really dive in and make a career for himself. For me, it was a little more complicated as I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do.

So, after I quit and before he found something new, we decided that we were going to take a little US road trip. Buy a cheap van, convert it to a sleeper, and go one the road for a little while. But then we got to thinking, if we are both going to start new jobs when we get back, and he really wants to focus on growing a career, then this would probably be our last big vacation for a while. And if this was going to be our last big trip, then we might as well make it a big one and do everything that we want to do. Especially since our daughter is still young and not in school… (and there is only one of her).

So, after a lot of thought, my husband and I have decided to take a once in a lifetime trip around the word!

The route (subject to change)

What we know for sure is that we have a one-way ticket booked to Hanoi, Vietnam. So that’s where we’ll start. After that, the only ‘for sures’ are that we have to be back in the States for a family wedding at the end of August, and another wedding at the end of October.

So here is what we’re thinking:

Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, The Philippines, Indonesia

Oceania: Australia, New Zealand

Euro-Asia: Armenia, Georgia, Turkey

Europe: Greece, Albania, Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Ireland

North America, Colorado, Utah, (maybe New Mexico), California, Oregon, Montana, Canada (Banff), Missouri

South America: Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia

This is all subject to change, as we’re going to do a lot of planning as we go. We have no idea how fast or slow we’re going to have to move now that we have a baby to travel with.

What we’ve saved

We’ve been stocking up on earning credit card reward points with our Chase Sapphire Preferred & Chase Business Ink. We started with a little over 180,000 points. We also just took out a new credit card, the PenFed Pathfinder by American Express to continue earning additional points as we travel. To learn about different ways to meet the spending requirements in order to earn the big credit card bonuses click here.

We also really lucked out with something – my car. I bought a Volkswagen Jetta TDI back in 2014. Then in 2017 Volkswagen bought it back because it was affected in the emissions scandal. Some of the money was used to pay for the hospital bills from my daughter’s birth, some was used for monthly and daily expenses like our rent, and the rest was being saved for a down payment on a house. Well, we never found the perfect house when we went hunting, so we are using that money for this trip – $10,000.

All of that might seem like a lot of money, but for two adults and a child, that’s not going to last a year. Probably not even 4 months. So, we also plan to do some workstay’s. That’s basically finding someone who is willing to host us in exchange for a 3-5 hours of work a day (ranging from babysitting to gardening, to building a house). We’re also hoping we figure out something while on the road to help get a little bit of income. Fingers crossed we don’t have to pause our trip to finance the second half 

Note: Because we have a baby, we don’t feel comfortable spending all of our money and coming home to nothing. So, we also saved enough to live on for 2 months when we return in case we can’t find jobs right away.

What we’ve spent so far

To date (Feb 2018), we actually haven’t spent that much. We’ve purchased our tickets to Vietnam (leaving from Chicago) which ran 30,000+ points per ticket. So, 60,000+ for both Dan and I. Isabel will be 1 when we take off, so she flies for free, but there was about a $55 fee in taxes for a lap infant.

The last day of work for me will also mark the last day of our health insurance, so we also had to buy health insurance of some kind. Since we will be international, we decided to go with a health sharing option instead of traditional health insurance + travel insurance. The fee to join the program was $200, an then we’ll have a monthly fee of $250 as well. So to date, we’ve spent $450 on that.

What’s next?

Our apartment lease ends at the end of February, so we have to finish packing up and moving our stuff into storage. Thankfully I have the best parents in the world that are letting us store our stuff in their garage for free while we are gone. (Thanks mom and dad)!

But, that also means that we will be ‘homeless’ for about 13 days until our trip. Again, my parents have come through and offered to let the 3 of us stay with them (rent free) until we go. We’re happy about this 1. Because it saves us money 2. Because we’ll get to spend some quality time with them before we leave 3. Because we will be able to do a test run with Isabel for sleeping in a new environment and getting thrown off schedule.

We will also be purchasing the visa’s for Vietnam and Cambodia before we leave. The rest of the southeast Asian countries offer free tourist visa’s for US citizens.

We’re also going to book our lodging for the first couple of nights in Vietnam so that we don’t have to do that while tired, jetlagged and culture shocked. We plan to book accommodation as we go for the remainder of the trip, but will definitely book the first couple nights in advance.

There are dozens of other little things to check off our to do list before we go, so we will be busy, busy up until we leave.

Come with us!

I hope you’ll ‘come’ with us on our adventure. Subscribe below to make sure you don’t miss a thing. I’ll be giving the day-to-day updates on Instagram and we’re hoping to do a weekly video update on our Youtube channel. So follow us on those as well