Our journey really started in August of 2022 when Eric and I moved to London for a year for my job. We’d both always loved the UK and London, having travelled there quite a bit for my various jobs over the past decade. Eric has always been an anglophile…loving British humor and history. Our year in London was incredible. We joke that we saw more of London than most people who lived there their whole lives! We took advantage of the proximity to Europe and cheap flights and went to France, Germany, Belgium, and Denmark on multiple trips. Plus we explored much of the island, including 10 days in Scotland. Sadly, we came back to the US in August of 2023 when I knew it was time to move on from my employer.

Back in Kansas City, we pretty quickly realized how much London had changed us. We missed walking. We hated driving! We missed exploring. We missed the diversity. We no longer had an interest maintaining our 100 year old house, so we sold it within the first 3 months and moved into an apartment. Still we were restless. I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be when I grew up when I stumbled across some YouTube channels with people who had retired in their 50s and were traveling the world full time. That sounded interesting. Had I found my people?

However, it felt pretty radical to “retire” at the ages of 50 and 52. After 8 months of decompressing from my former job, I took a new role with a software company and we started booking vacations to try to cure our restlessness. We went to Denver to see our son. We went to Charlotte. We went to southern Missouri and Arkansas. We went to Breckenridge. We went to Iceland. We found new favorite restaurants in Kansas City. And yet, we were still restless.

Knowing we had a week long vacation to Mexico in November, and knowing our lease was also set to expire in November, one day I said to Eric “what if we just don’t come back? What if we sell everything and travel the world? “ Could we do it? Could we afford it? Would we be bored? Could we get comfortable with the change? Could we leave our family? Could we get rid of the life we had built for the last 28 years?

After a LOT of discussion on what we each would need to be comfortable, and with a lot of number crunching and conversations, we decided to take the plunge. We started creating a budget, timelines of when we would start selling things, when we would tell family and friends, and when we would quit our jobs. We started booking travel.

The Journey had begun.

The decision

Two suitcases and two backpacks