A Question we get all the time, is Why do something like this?
Well the answer has lots of little parts, but the biggest reason is that we may never have the time or opportunity in our lives to take a trip like this again! Both of us have worked hard and worked demanding jobs that took time from each other and our kids. This is a chance for us to enjoy each other and go on the adventure of a lifetime!
The seeds of this trip were planted back in 2017 when Ellen started getting into the Financial Independence or FI community. We started looking at how we were spending and how we could save as much as possible in order to better fund our retirement. At one point we sold Ellen’s Tacoma and were down to one car in order to max out our retirement accounts and started working towards some FI Goals. We built budgets that we often struggled to meet, but none the less we were able to change habits, adjust to new spending patterns and still have fun taking trips and traveling when we could.
In 2023, we hit one of our major goals and Ellen and I wondered what the next step in our journey would be. She suggested we travel the country and visit all the National Parks. I told her she was crazy and that there was no way I could give up my career to “take a year off”! As the year went on, the idea wouldn’t go away and we started to actually look at what it would take to make this dream happen. When Ellen convinced me it was financially feasible, we pulled the trigger and bought a truck and a 5th wheel! We used the summer of 2024 to go on several test trips to make sure we could actually get by with us and the girls in the camper. It didn’t scare us off and here we are hitting the road to go on a family adventure of a lifetime.
We are going on this trip with three girls under 5 years old and before you ask, yes we are a little bit crazy. We get asked, “why now with such young kids?” Well to us now is the best time since none of the girls are in school yet, we aren’t chasing kids from soccer practice or swim lessons and putting three girls in daycare for another year is PRICEY!