Emily came up with the idea for this trip. It all started one fine August day when we were on vacation with her family and she picked up a travel magazine someone left on the table near the hotel swimming pool.
There was article about a guy who got laid off, rented out his condo and decided that rather than freak out, he would travel the world on a shoestring budget while waiting for the job market to get better.
Emily had just been laid off by Cal State Los Angeles and Northridge. She hadn’t yet begun teaching online and was beginning to collect unemployment. It was her career and income “rock bottom”.
“Look at this,” she said, handing it to me. “We could do that.”
I sort of hated my job at the time and I definitely loved travel. Of course, I grew excited by the idea of it. We spent the next few days intermittently discussing the idea of packing it up and traveling for our first year of marriage if my job didn’t improve and her classroom teaching didn’t come back.
It turned out that Emily had thought of it as more of an entertaining idea and engaging discussion for a brief period. She’s somewhat whimsical and a lot of ideas that excite her in the moment pass like a menopausal hot flash.
However, I’m not so whimsical and anyone who knows me well has seen moments when I grab hold of an idea and won’t let go. This was one of those moments.
Thus, in an ironic twist, I became the promoter of Emily’s idea as she developed concerns and trepidation.
In the courtroom of our relationship, it was clear that it was incumbent upon me to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this trip would benefit us.
The team of lawyers in my head worked hard and met often. Eventually, they figured out that unless both of our incomes went up significantly, we could financially benefit from reducing our domestic expenses and going abroad.
While the judge saw the logic, she wasn’t altogether sure how sound the evidence was. We ran and re-ran numbers. We ran them in the living room, in the bedroom, on car rides, at restaurants and in parking lots. Whenever the discussion resurfaced, I got a higher commission or she got more online teaching work, my iPhone and its calculator app came out.
Although there were many other factors that played a part in our decision, we had to know that the bottom line wouldn’t be worse and preferred it to be better.
On the day we left, Emily was still skeptical as to whether this trip would provide any financial benefit. As we moved our way through Region 1 – our most expensive part of the trip – and our savings account balance began to lower, Emily remained unconvinced that we would come out any better than break-even.
It was true that the costs in Region 1 were at times higher than we had anticipated. It was equally true that we weren’t a cheap date and enjoyed spending some of our hard saved money on the activities we wanted to do and the memories we wanted to create.
Because Greece cut ferry service to Cyprus, it also cut service to Israel. As a result, our flight to Israel was $1,000 from nearby Crete. We didn’t care. It was worth it for so many reasons – the most important of which were that we had the time and means.
As we entered Region 2, Emily had a temporary dip in work. That combined with higher costs than expected in Nepal continued to shake our confidence that the year would work in our favor financially.
Then things began to slide into place little by little. Emily’s work picked back up – sometimes being a little more than she bargained for. Our costs in India, Thailand and here have lined up with our budgeting.
I don’t want to jinx anything, but I’m pleased to say that our debt declined (my car paid off!) while our savings has increased. If all goes well – and there are still many places and costs ahead – we may be able to say that we traveled for a year, did everything we wanted and came out ahead.
During this past week, we’ve been very excited as the situation looks increasingly better.
I’m pleased to also say that this morning I was officially assigned a travel/food feature for the Los Angeles Times. In one article, I’ll be sharing two of my great passions with the people of Southern California – travel and dessert – as I talk about the puddings and other great sweets of Istanbul. It’s also possible they will include some of Emily’s fantastic photos. Our collaboration in this blog may play out in print too.
These are exciting times for us.
At the same time, Emily and I have a list of lessons we’ve learned during our travels. One is that nothing is checked off the list until you see that it’s actually done. So, while we’re very happy, we remain – to use news speak – “cautiously optimistic.” We’re keeping our noses to the grindstone and trying to remain smart in our decisions.
For now, all I can say is that my hard work investigating and fastidiously tasting every baklava we encountered in Region 1 finally paid off.
Sent from my iPad
