The Adventure Begins: FAQs

As you might imagine, when we started telling people about this trip, people had a lot of questions. Here, we will answer some of the frequently asked questions about our trip, as well as the questions I received through my “Ask My Anything” stories on Instagram.

Why are you doing this?

No, we’re not trying to “find ourselves,” and we also don’t hate the “8-5 grind” or need an “escape from reality” or any of that. In fact, we both really enjoyed our careers and even our specific jobs. What we hated was only having two weeks of vacation a year. It’s pretty simple: We love to travel, and we wanted to do more of it. A few years ago, I mentioned the idea of taking a year off to Jonathan. We started saving money, and once our bank account hit our goal number, it was just a matter of waiting for the right time. (Spoiler alert: It’s never the right time. You just have to do it. But we can talk more about that in a later post.)

Why now? Why not wait until you retire?

We’ve gotten questioned on the timing of this trip quite a bit. As noted above: There is really no ideal time for it. So why now? For a couple reasons:

1. There are no guarantees. This might be morbid, but there is no promise we’ll make it to retirement to do these things. Or that we’ll have the health or desire to do them at that point. We’ve seen other travelers struggle to enjoy destinations due to accessibility or health issues, and if we can avoid that obstacle, why not?

2. We’re at a unique time in our lives where we have sufficient financial means to travel, but don’t have any major responsibilities (mortgage, kids, etc.) that would make this type of trip more complicated. It’s not to say we will never travel again—we most definitely will—but as our lives change, so will our travel, and this is a unique opportunity we may never get again. Also, we didn’t want to get too far into our careers and feel like we couldn’t take a break. (Note: If you already have a mortgage and/or kids, this is not to say you can’t do a trip like this! Plenty of people do. We just know we would personally be less likely to do this trip in the future.)

Did you have to quit your jobs, or did you take a sabbatical?

I worked in public service, so I had to quit. Jonathan was going to resign, but his company offered for him to continue working remotely part-time, so he’s been doing that so far.

Where are you going? How did you decide where to go?

To help with packing, we decided to chase the sun around the world (because cold weather requires more gear and clothing). Therefore, we’ll be starting in Central America (now), then flying to Europe in the summer and traveling east to follow warm(ish) weather. When we first started planning this trip, we created a Google Map and started marking places we wanted to visit. Spoiler alert: The entire globe was pretty well covered. Whoops. So we picked out a few affordable regions (e.g. the Balkans, the Caucasus, Southeast Asia), and created a loose route based on cost of living and weather. But, we are keeping it very flexible because we know we might get somewhere and not love it and want to move on, or we might get somewhere and want to extend our stay, and/or we might meet travelers who say “are you going to XYZ?” and convince us we just HAVE to go there, too!

Where are you most excited to visit?

Ooooh, tough question. Obviously we’re excited for everywhere (or we wouldn’t go!), but I (Megan) am most excited for Colombia, Estonia (+ Eastern Europe in general), Georgia, Jordan and India. I’m also pretty excited to go back to Southeast Asia, which we visited (briefly) for our honeymoon five years ago. But before I list every country in the world…. Jonathan is most excited to return to Portugal, but he’s also especially looking forward to Eastern Europe (particularly Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia). He is also “stoked” to 4×4 and camp through Costa Rica (next week! eek!).

How long will you be traveling?

We saved enough (we hope!) for one year, but we’ll see how things go. Maybe this won’t be the great adventure we envisioned and we’ll come home after three months. Maybe we’ll get to the end of the year and realize we still have the funds and the will to keep going, and we’ll do that. Only time will tell!

You don’t have to tell me your number (wink wink), but about how much money does it take to do something like this?

It totally depends on what areas you want to visit, how long you want to travel, and what type of lifestyle you want to maintain on the road. I would recommend coming up with a number that includes three things:

– A monthly budget x how many months you want to travel
– A set amount of “extra” money for expensive flights, splurge activities or emergencies
– A “nest egg” to make sure you have money to live off when you get home (especially if you don’t have a job lined up)

We did a lot of research about other RTW couples to determine our monthly budget. You can travel (comfortably) long-term for as little as $2,000 per month, depending on where you’re visiting, but obviously you could spend a lot more. We’ll be sharing more detailed budget posts in the future once we know how our budget is actually going to work out.

Aren’t you going to get bored? Aren’t you going to get sick of each other?

Maybe and maybe. 😉 But, we get bored at home (and somehow I think we’ll find enough to keep us busy …), and nothing says we can’t spend “boring” nights in watching Netflix even when we’re traveling. As for spending so much time with each other, this is definitely something Jonathan and I discussed when planning the trip. Really, we only spent an hour or two together each day at home, given work and our commutes, so going from that to being together 24/7 will surely be an adjustment. But, he’ll be working about 10 hours a week, so we can work on separate projects during those times, and we’re not opposed to taking days off to explore places on our own.

Did you get an international plan for your cell phones?

Nope! I (Megan) will be depending on WiFi to connect with people through email, iMessage, FaceTime, social media, etc. I usually download offline Google Maps for the cities we’re visiting, and that’s all the connection I need when I’m out exploring. Jonathan has T-Mobile, which has free international data in 200+ countries, so we will usually be able to use his phone when needed. His plan does not include free international calls, so he also registered for a Google Voice number to make calls over WiFi if needed.

What are you doing for currency?

We have two cards that I would recommend to any frequent traveler: For credit cards, we love our Chase Sapphire Reserve. It has a hefty annual fee ($450), which is why we put off getting it for so long, but it’s SO worth it. You get a $300 annual travel credit, so it really only costs you $150 a year for the card, and it includes Priority Pass, which means you get free lounge access to hundreds (or thousands?) of lounges worldwide. We’ve gotten far more than $150 of free food and drinks from airport lounges in the past year, so the card really does pay for itself. Also (relevant to this question), there are no foreign transaction fees, so we plan to pay with credit card as much as we can for the good exchange rate and the points. (Check out our post on tips for managing money abroad for more details.)

However, we know lots of places will only take cash, so we also have a checking account with Charles Schwab. Our checking account comes with a debit card that reimburses ATM fees every month, so basically = no ATM fees worldwide. This is how we’ll get our currency on the road. For this first leg of our trip, we ordered some Mexican pesos and Costa Rican colones from our bank before we left so we would have a little cash on us when we arrived.

What about getting visas for different countries in advance?

In our experience, Americans don’t need visas for many countries (for stays within a certain period of time), and for many countries that do require visas, you can get yours in the airport for a fee (e.g. Cambodia and Kenya). We are researching visa requirements in advance (some countries require proof of exit, which is important for us as we’re planning a lot of it on the go). We have extra passport photos with us (free, thanks to AAA!) for any visas we’ll need to get on the road, and if a country has really strict visa requirements, we probably just won’t go there on this trip.

More questions? Ask in the comments!

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