So here we go. Our first blog post. It is now 2 days before
we start our journey!
This crazy idea started over 5 months ago. Both John and I
are semi-retired and in our mid 50’s. We had part time jobs working at home for
various internet companies and even did some Mystery Shopping. John asked me
one day if I ever thought of living overseas. My answer? No. We talked, mostly
over coffee in the mornings and I started to get comfortable with the idea. The
more we talked the more I realized that this was an incredible opportunity. We
had no full time jobs, no children or pets at home and had saved up some money
from our part time jobs. If we didn’t do this, would I regret it? Would we ever
have this opportunity again?
We decided to give it serious thought. One concern was our
health and healthcare. We ain’t no spring chickens! Being our age, issues come up but if we did
run into any problems, well, let’s face it, healthcare overseas will be as good
and probably better than what we have here in the states. Our insurance will
cover certain situations. We know our limits. We won’t be hiking the Swiss Alps
but we can trek through Munich and Edinburgh, walk dogs in England and hop
trains in Norway.
So the research started. We gave ourselves a month to
research traveling, renting our house, expenses, etc. At the end of January, we
knew this was something we could do. In fact, we realized that it would
actually be cheaper to travel for 1 year than to live at home! In February, we
told our family and friends about this journey. By mid March, we had a signed 1
year lease for our house. We sold 1 car, bought backpacks, sold a camera and
bought a new one, bought sneakers, got a new credit card and checking account, applied
and received our passports, researched phone plans, packed up the house and
moved it all into the basement. By the beginning of May, we had moved out of
our house and into our good friends Bob and Marcy’s house where we had our
first dog sit of our adventure, staying with Addie while Bob and Marcy took a
trip to Florida.
The adventure idea started off as moving to another country,
but we love where we live too much and decided to rent the house. Then we
thought we would live in 1 country for a year. Costa Rica was the first choice.
Somewhere in our internet search, we discovered house sitting. That opened up
the world! We have done house/pet sitting before and along with fostering for
our local shelter, it was a perfect fit for us. We take our jobs seriously so
we got our background checks, joined 4 different house sitting websites and
created a website showcasing our experience with house/pet sitting. Once we had
the signed lease for our home, we started applying for house sits. We had no
idea where we were going other than we would start in either Europe or
Central/South America. Our first confirmed sit came in and it was Europe!
We currently have 7 confirmed sits. We will be traveling to England,
Scotland, Germany, France and Ireland. We have scheduled a week in Gdansk
Poland in between sits. We have close to 7 weeks that we still would like to
schedule for sits. We will be spending a week in Norway before we fly out of
Oslo back to the states so John can officiate a wedding for the daughter of my
dear friend Gayle. Yes, John also officiates weddings on the side! After that,
we think we will go to either Central/South America or Asia.
We hope you follow us along our journey. We’d love to read
your comments. Both John and I will write about our experiences and every once
in a while we will include what we learned while planning this adventure, such
as where to begin your research, picking or not picking phone plans and SIM
cards, how we chose our backpacks and much more. I’m sure there are others out
there planning their own adventure or just wondering if it is possible for them
to pack up and travel. Information is power and we would love to share what we
learned.
Cheers from beautiful Asheville NC!
Barb
