We had a fabulous travel plan for 2013. It went a little something like this:
- Spend two months snowboarding in Utah
- Fly to Costa Rica for a few weeks
- Fly to Florida and take a two week Caribbean cruise ending in Boston
- Spend a month travelling the US East Coast – Boston, New York and Washington DC
- Fly to Toronto and attend TBEX ’13
- Spend a few months at home in New Zealand
- Spent the Northern Hemisphere Autumn and Winter doing a series of home exchanges across Europe.
I had it all worked out.
But…
Our desire to sell our house for a permanent nomadic lifestyle is currently overriding any immediate urges for shorter term travel. We’re sick of having to continuously return to New Zealand when we expend all our travel money. Not only do flights in and out of New Zealand cost a lot of money but it’s expensive to live here. Worst of all, we find New Zealand boring and feel like we don’t fit in here. Selling up will also require an investment of money and time.
In short, if we travel now we can’t sell our house and if we don’t sell our house we can’t travel long term. Make sense? We’ve been mulling over our house conundrum for a few weeks but we’ve made the decision to put our house on the market in mid-February and sell it at auction in mid-March.
Cross your fingers. Pray to God or Buddha or Allah or whoever to help us make this happen!
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Good luck! I’m sure everything will work out – how exciting though!!
Best of luck, I’m sure it will work out. We are here in Mexico for the first half of 2013.
This sounds like a really reasonable plan & a good compromise to me. So often travelers tell one another to leap and damn the consequences, but I really believe that a little bit of long-term perspective is not a bad thing, and waiting a month or two in order to better achieve your goals and dreams is an acceptable price to pay!
I often find myself wondering/worrying about what Tony & I will do when the money runs out and it’s time for us to head home. I think my fear comes from thinking we’ll be back in a boring city in a terrible state that we don’t like and feeling trapped. We know we love to travel, so I think the key will be: a) finding ourselves a home base we can actually enjoy exploring; and b) preferably having said home base be one that also lends itself to easy travel to other more exotic locations. If visas and costs weren’t an issue, I’d be hightailing it to Europe with you – it’s really a fantastic place for never-ending travel.
Sounds like a good plan! Where in Europe will you go? I can recommend Germany! 🙂
Bethany,
I love these little updates. And i fell your conundrum with the house thing. New Zealand sound like the US and Canada with high consumerism. Good luck on your house. It’s a big decision to sell it. It will be one big monkey off your back once you do and you will be free to roam the world. 🙂
Thanks Annie. I’m so excited by the prospect of having the freedom to roam. Hopefully we will bump into each other somewhere in the South of France. 🙂
Good luck! I can only imagine how free you’ll feel with the house off your shoulders. And I don’t know about the rest of Europe, but there is definitely a higher emphasis on eating well and quality of life here in France!
Thanks Edna. I’d love to pick your brain on the quality of life in France. Will head over to your blog and see what I can find. 🙂