Life can be monotonous and most people crave a little excitement. We chose to march to the beat of our own drummer and choose the adventure of a lifetime. The idea came to us on a summer vacation road trip and for the next five years, we planned and brainstormed, processed and stored information. Our hope was that someday our dream would come true. Here we are five years later living our dream. I hope we can inspire you to live outside the box as well.
Choosing Adventure Takes Planning
Planning is John’s forte’. I’m more of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl. We manage to balance each other, though. I have crazy ideas, he manages to put them into action. I’m so glad he’s the way he is or I’d end up in a whole mess most of the time.
Some of our planning questions were harder to answer than others. Some answers we knew would take time, some would come on their own, some we would have to work the details out. Here are some things you should think about before embarking on an adventure like this:
- Where will we live first?
- Where will our second and third locations be?
- How will we support ourselves? How / where will we work?
- How can we do this economically?
- How will this change us?
The Adventure of a Lifetime Requires Stewardship
Stewardship isn’t a word we hear frequently these days, but I’m a firm believer in being a good steward of our finances. Money is hard to come by and I’m not one to throw it away unnecessarily. That’s when we started to develop the plan for our moves. Because the cost of living varies from place to place and state to state, we decided to be thoughtful and strategic about our upcoming relocations.
For example, we moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Bowling Green, Kentucky as our first move. The cost of living wasn’t significantly less, but we did find a few things that were noticeably different. For example, gasoline in Louisville is reformulated and so, for 93 octane, our price per gallon was upward of $5.00. In Bowling Green, we often saw gas prices as low as $3.79 per gallon. We noticed the price of groceries was lower in Bowling Green as well. The same cart of groceries was approximately 25% less in Bowling Green than in Louisville.
In the vein of being a good financial steward, we determined that if we lived in one location that had a higher cost of living, then the next move we would seek out a location that would have a lower cost of living. Likewise, if we lived somewhere that had a significant drop to our budget, the next move may take us somewhere a little more extravagant, like Toronto, Canada.
Planning is key when choosing to live the adventure of a lifetime. Thinking through all of the options at least six months prior to a move helps determine next steps.
Choosing How to Work While You Live Your Adventure
A little world-wide experience in 2020 changed the way people work. So many people have the option of working remotely these days it makes it relatively easy to work from anywhere. I know some folks who even travel during the workweek: They work from the hotel or airbnb, and sight see at night. It’s like getting extra vacation time that fits in with their schedules.
We took this concept to a whole new level when we decided to live out our adventure. Both John and I have the ability to work remotely. For the first year of our first move, we traveled to and from Louisville and Bowling Green every other week. Our business still required us to be on sight with customers for the most part, but slowly over time, we extended from one week to a week and a half, to two weeks, to three weeks. Finally, we found we were spending more time in Bowling Green than in Louisville – And we LOVED it.
Even if you aren’t self-employed, there are still a ton of jobs that allow you to work remotely giving your situation. Here are a few ideas people have mentioned to us. All of these suggestions have remote-worker options.
- Fivrr.com
- Remotasks
- Indeed.com
- Monster.com
- Virtual Assistants
- Data Entry Specialists
How Does Choosing the Adventure of a Lifetime Change You?
Wow! That’s a great question. There is a podcast I recently heard by Dr. Mindy Pelz and Hal Elrod. She told the story of friends who had moved to new locations and with each move, their routines changed. Because their routines changed they saw great success in things like exercising, socializing, and engaging in their new communities. Here’s the link if you want to listen to the whole podcast. I highly recommend it.
What is interesting to me is that we had experienced this exact phenomenon when we moved. We were living in two locations: our home of 18 years, and our new apartment of one year. When we were at the apartment, we got up, went for a 30 minute walk, had coffee, and started our work day by around 7:00 a.m. But when we were back home, we fell into the same old patterns we had been in for 18 years. We got up for coffee, sat around and read for an hour or so, meandered into our workday around 7:45 – 8:00 a.m. We realized very quickly that when we were at home, we felt aimless, and when we were at the apartment we felt intentional. Nothing had changed besides our location.
Change isn’t a bad thing – it’s just a new thing. You can choose what change will look like for you. Change can be the start of that long anticipated novel you’ve been wanting to write. It can be the start of an exercise routine. Change can mean you finally start training for the marathon you’ve always dreamt of running. The point is, allow your adventure to change you for the better! Be the person you’ve always wanted to be.
What is your dream? If you could live the adventure of a lifetime, what would it be?
