Why We Left It All To Travel The World

Like many young families, we got sucked into the notion that once you have kids, you need to settle down. For us, this meant buying a house, start saving for retirement and putting all dreams of living abroad aside.

Well we bought the house, started building up our savings but we just couldn’t shake the desire to travel more, it was always in the back of our mind.

We found every excuse for a trip away from home. Our honeymoon was the first time we left the country together (Eileen’s first real international trip (being from NY, Canada doesn’t count)) and we decided to go to the other side of the world, Thailand! When we got back from that 2 week vacation, we started planning a trip back. And when we were home, it seemed like after a couple of days staying around the house, we would get cabin fever. We would wake up early to go somewhere, no real destination in mind, but we just needed to be out.

At that time, traveling full time didn’t really cross our minds. We were happy to have our time off together, granted it was a very small amount of time but it was our time to do things as a family.

Then one day, out of the blue, Andy said to me, “let’s just sell the house and move to Thailand” to which my response was “YES, let’s do it!”. 

After that conversation, we really started thinking about what it would mean to leave our routine, our home, our jobs, our family and friends and embark on a lifestyle that we knew nothing about.

Only then, when we were evaluating our life, we realized how unfulfilling it felt. Andy was working all the time so that I could stay home with the kids, we were stuck in a routine, we were both exhausted all the time and for what? To go on mini trips, to take a vacation once every year, to own a house that we didn’t quite feel “at home” in? It occurred to us that the juice wasn’t quite worth the squeeze. 

Once we understood that the material possessions we acquired over the years were far less important to us than the memories we shared together as a family, the decision to leave everything behind and embark on this wild adventure was an easy one for us.

Our Kids

Now, you may be thinking, okay but what about your kids? Isn’t it selfish to drag them to the other side of the world because you have the desire to travel?

As parents, we will always try to do what is best for our kids, and in this case, it is no different. We are genuinely most excited for the impact this will have on Rowan and Murphy. I could write a whole blog post on what we hope traveling teaches our kids (one day I probably will) but for now this list will have to do.

What Children Can Learn From Traveling

• Compassion
• Gratitude
• There are worse problems than not being able to watch My Little Pony
• Patience
• Appreciation for other cultures
  
• There are worse problems than not being able to watch My Little Pony (yes, this one needs to be said twice)
  
• Living in the moment
• We’re not all that different
• The world is not a scary place

The list could go on and on.

But one main thing that we hope our kids take away from this trip is that it’s okay to break away from what is normal. You should do what makes you happy (with obvious exceptions). If working hard while you’re young so that you can afford that big house, own that nice car and have that huge retirement makes you happy, then great, more power to ya!

What scares us is that if we continued living the way we were, which we can only assume would have gotten worse due to the fact that in the United States money and wealth are ingrained into us, we would have missed out on creating all the memories we dream of having with our young kids. 

The Decision Was Easy

After all of these reasons, it was an easy decision for us. This is what is right for our family and if we only last 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, these will be memories that we will cherish for the rest of our lives. We do not want to wait until we are 65 years old, when our kids are grown and have lives of their own. We want to live in the moment.

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us”

-Anonymous