5 Lessons From 5 Years of Traveling the World Full-time

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January 25th, 2018 Marco and I cleaned and emptied the apartment that we were renting in Chicago and packed our lives in just 2 backpacks (that we still use by the way…) to embark on an adventure of a lifetime: FULLFILL OUR DREAM OF TRAVELING THE WORLD FULL-TIME. Who would have said that was just the beginning of a whole new lifestyle for us!?

You might read this first paragraph and think “wow, that’s it!? I empty my apartment and pack my life in a backpack to travel the world?”

While part of it is still true, that was the result of a 1-year preparation process that started back in March 2nd, 2017, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil when we made the decision to travel the world together (that same day we became officially a couple but that’s for another blog post. Leave a YES in the comments below if you want to read our love story) After that day, we made a list all the blockers in our lives that were limiting us from achieving our dream:

  • Get rid of debt.
  • Save up enough money to travel at least for 1 year.
  • Decide what to do with our apartments.
  • Donate and sell clothes, furniture, electronics, etc.
  • Health check-ups and vaccines.
  • Buy the best travel medical insurance.
  • Define the first country and buy a one-way ticket.
  • Quit our 9-5 jobs.
  • Get the paperwork done such as passports, visas, and driver’s licenses.
  • Buy our backpacks, and camera gear, and pack!
House Sitting in Krabi, Thailand.

With teary eyes, we feel like those days were so long ago but at the same time also feels like just yesterday. We thought we’ll do it for 1 year, and here we are half a decade later and it just keeps on getting better.  

5 years living in freedom! 

  • Living with the freedom to choose how we want to spend our mornings, our days…
  • Freedom to decide which new projects we want to bring to life…
  • Freedom to choose with who we wanna work or hang out with…
  • Freedom to create a business that makes a positive impact on people’s lives…
  • Freedom to decide how many “days off” we want to take…
  • Freedom to spend time with friends or family or with each other when we want…
  • Freedom to travel wherever we want for as long as we want to…
  • FREEDOM… the so-desirable freedom has been part of our lives for the past 5 years and we feel so grateful for having the courage to pursue this dream of ours.

We fall in love with our lives day in, and day out. We don’t see an end yet. Making this decision was the greatest thing that happened in our lives. These years have been the ones where we felt the most alive. So many memorable places, experiences, and people that we met along the way. Countless happy memories and adventures together including ups and download, many challenges, and life lessons. People we meet always ask us if it’s safe and honestly, we’ve never really had a bad or dangerous experience. We’ve tried many different types of travel lifestyles like backpacking, Couchsurfing, house sitting, vanlife, and we learned that the world is really full of kind and wonderful people. During these 5 years, luckily we only encountered one episode where we needed to use our travel insurance which is when we experienced a flight delay in Miami, USA forcing us to spend a night in Miami before our next flight. It was nothing crazy and luckily our travel insurance answered very fast and reimbursed our cost with not much of a hassle. We highly recommend this travel insurance!

House Sitting in Grand Anse, Grenada.

We could write a book full of lessons but for now, let’s honor the 5 years with 5 lessons…

5 lessons learned in these 5 years

  1. Be always brave enough to change plans as much as you want if the original plan doesn’t serve you anymore… If you’ve been following us for some time, you know what we are talking about… from changing plans being 1 hour away to crossing the border between USA and Mexico with our RV, aka Amy Hiroki, and instead deciding to store our RV to fly for a 4-month house sitting in an ocean front house; to our last change of plans in Colombia where one day before leaving towards Cali, Colombia we decided to change plans and instead move to another Airbnb in a nicer neighborhood in Bogota to focus on work. Neither of us was feeling like being on the move and exploring a new city. We were both craving some downtime to focus on work. So, we listened to our needs and booked an AriBnb for 40USD a night with a gym, conference rooms, and a beautiful terrace with a view of the mountains and just 2 blocks away from a park (crucial for us to be able to be close to nature) and 5min walk from Zona Rosa (the area full of nice restaurants). We were SO HAPPY about that decision! This leads me to the next lesson…
  2. Having a proper working environment and a nice neighborhood is KEY to moving forward with work!! Back in 2018, we used to change accommodation on average every 5 days, the cheaper the better. We knew accommodation was one of the highest expenses when traveling and we wanted to stretch our savings as much as we could. But, after almost 1 year, it took a toll on us. If you’re an entrepreneur running your own business juggling between your business and chores from your lifestyle every 5 days is not sustainable at all. So, we realized we needed to find a new way to sustain this lifestyle for us, and that’s how we found house sitting…  This leads me to the next lesson…
  3. There are as many travel lifestyles as travelers (or nomads) in this world. For us, TRAVEL HACKING + HOUSE SITTING is the winning formula for the kind of travel lifestyle we want for now. It covers our basic needs to make our travel lifestyle smartly sustainable:
    • 0 dollars (or almost) spent on accommodation and flights. Yup, we fly all over the world for free (well we only pay taxes which on average is less than 100 USD) and we don’t pay for accommodation. All in all, we save up more than 100,000 USD every year on flights and accommodation.
    • House sitting provides us with a stable place to focus on work for our business and projects.
  4. “Traveling is not about money, it’s about courage” – Paulo Cohelo was very on point with that quote. Courage to accept you that don’t know what’s going to happen but still going for it, courage to try new things or new ways of doing things, courage to live a different lifestyle, courage to be out of your comfort zone. Money is one of the most common fears and one of the common questions people ask us when they hear that we’ve been traveling the world full-time for the past 5 years. During these years we have met people who started traveling with as little as 7 USD in their pockets and as much as 100K USD in their bank accounts. We’ve met online poker players, remote workers, stock image photographers, architects, lawyers, realtors, and stock traders making a living from their investments, others are online business entrepreneurs, freelancers (community managers, graphic designers, etc) and others do seasonal work or working holiday visas… Just to name a few… the point is there are unlimited options for everyone and money is an excuse. Yes, an excuse. If you want to make it happen, you can. This leads me to the next lesson…
  5. The system where I used to live was too small and there is so much more the world can offer to all of us if we are willing and have the courage to go out and see it. There is a whole new world full of possibilities, there are different lifestyles as much as human beings in this world waiting for all of us to experience them.
House Sitting in Utah, USA.

We’re very grateful to have chosen (and created) this lifestyle and we’re very excited to share this journey with all of you. It is possible to change. It is possible to live a freedom lifestyle. It is possible to live the life that you really want. Cheers to this milestone and cheers to more! 

Leave in the comments any questions you might have about our 5-year milestone of traveling the world full-time. We are always happy to answer and help!

Closing with 5 essentials tools that we use for our travels:

 

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