Travel Inspiration
How the heck did you think of this crazy trip??
I am pretty sure Zach incepted the idea of taking time off of work to travel to Southeast Asia back in 2020. We were taking a road trip down to Bend, Oregon and he downloaded an audiobook called, Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required. The book is about a couple who achieved financial independence and then decided to quit their jobs, move out of a high-cost of living area so that they could travel the world. If you have a chance to read/listen to this book you will realize we are not really that creative or crazy. We are just copying a lot of what the authors did!
Seattle Housing
What are you going to do with your house when you are away?
This is a question we get a lot. Zach and I are renters and we negotiated a deal with our landlord to end our lease the day we left Seattle. We are excited to escape paying Seattle rent and utilities for a few months :).
Mail forwarding
So, you are homeless now? How can I send you a holiday card, Save the Date, or other random piece of mail that I could probably just send over email/text?
Since we will no longer have a physical address in Seattle when our lease ends we decided to use a digital mailbox service called iPostal. This will allow us to view and manage our mail remotely while we are traveling. We can scan mail and if it is important we can have it forwarded to wherever we are in the world. But you can also reach us by sending an email or text :)
Storage rental unit
Okay, fine. I will just email or text you but since you are homeless, where do you put all of your belongings?
About a week before our road trip we started moving our belongings into a storage unit. Zach did a lot of research on the best deal for storage units in Seattle. He found an awesome deal for 75% of a normal $115/month rate for the first two months for a 10x10 Unit size in an indoor heated facility that is newly built. We are pretty sure it was heavily discounted for the first few months because one of the main garage doors to exit the facility is broken. We found it to only be a minor inconvenience since we didn’t have a lot to drop off and didn't need a huge moving truck. Averaging out over 5 months we plan on having the unit the price is ~$90 / month.
Minimalism
How did you fit all of your stuff into a storage unit designed for a 1 bedroom apartment?!
There was a documentary on Netflix called the Minimalists: Less is Now that came out in 2020 which discussed the idea of minimalism. Zach and I watched it and tried the 30 day challenge which is getting rid of 1 item on day 1, 2 items on day two, 3 items on day three and so on for 30 days. We have found it to be incredibly freeing to minimize our belongings to the items that truly bring value to our lives. We also left a few large pieces of furniture with our landlord to help her furnish her future short-term rental unit. We didn’t think it would make sense to move and pay to store large furniture that we no longer wanted.
Vehicles
Where do you store your car(s)?
When I quit my job in October I had to give back my company car so we were left with one personal-owned vehicle that we needed to figure out what to do with. We decided to store our car at my parent’s house in Arizona. Driving our car from Seattle down to Arizona will also give us the opportunity to take a road trip to see Zach’s parents in Reno along the way. We also plan on making a few additional stops in Portland, Ashland and Las Vegas.
Phone
Isn’t it expensive to get an international phone plan for that long?
A lot of questions have come up about using an international phone plan while we travel. We currently have Google Fi which switches between multiple carriers as well as secure Wi-Fi connection and our current data plan + text messaging can be used in 100s of international locations at no additional cost. This service is perfect for our trip because we will not need to set up an additional international plan, we just show up in the country and it starts working.
Travel Insurance
Wait, you both aren’t working? What are you doing for health insurance?
We signed up for SafetyWing Insurance which is designed for world travelers.
We hope this has been helpful information if you are looking into planning a similar trip or just curious about our trip. Let us know if you had any other questions about our logistics that we didn’t cover here!
