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by orofino 4066 days ago
In May 2012 my wife and I did this. It went well, but little went to our initial plan.

The experience was far more stressful than either of us expected. Constantly having to find food, a place to sleep, and figure out where/what is next, was tiresome. However, we really enjoyed the experience and found some places off the beaten path that we really loved. We found out that we love hiking and that we wanted travel more in the future.

I can't remember how we ended up settling on a budget, we targeted $80/day for two people. We saved 60k for the trip which from what I can remember was somewhat arbitrary. We also saved 20k as a 'return fund' to ensure that we had ample runway to find jobs. Returning home was incredibly expensive, we sold everything we owned before we left, make sure you budget accordingly.

Finding work after traveling was simple for me, a bit harder for my wife. I had two job offers, both from people I worked with prior to leaving, before I'd been home for more than a couple weeks. My wife wanted to change where she worked, so it took her a bit longer. None of this was to plan, we had planned to move to the west coast, the sway of a job was too strong.

If we did it again... that is hard to say. Both of us wish it was planned a bit more completely, but I see no way to actually accomplish this. I might say stay in one place a bit longer that we did (maybe a week/city). My wife says she would blog less, and I think I agree, documenting the trip was a lot of work. We did it for ourselves and our family, but it was more work than anticipated.

In the end we finished traveling after only (sorry I know "only" sounds ridiculous) 8 months. We thought we would travel for 1.5 years or more. We spent way more time in South America than initially planned and took a boat to Antarctica which was entirely unplanned. It was really amazing.

If you have questions I'm happy to address them further, I tried to keep this short as I can talk about this for hours.

1 comments

> I can talk about this for hours.

Please do!

Is your blog still up?

Yes, in my profile.
Fascinating, you've done an absolutely amazing job at not just your travel but also your 'inner journey' about how the travelling changed you. Thank you!