The One Where We Quit Our Jobs
It all started in October. After several long weeks at work and a particularly difficult merger, I was day-dreaming about the endless possibilities of travel. For Phil, what he was referring to as “systems fatigue” was weighing heavily and impacting his ability to make a difference in the lives of his clients. We were both feeling burned out.
For years we had been watching travel YouTubers live out our worldwide destination fantasies, so I pitched the idea to Phil: We’ve already been saving up. What if we continue saving aggressively to quit our jobs and travel for a season.
We are both pretty practical individuals, so this idea felt like The Big Scary. Would we have enough money? Would we be able to find jobs? What the heck would we do for health insurance? The jury is still out on this last one because #healthcare.
At that point, I called my forever-and-always-Mom-energy-friend Aimee to which she promptly exclaimed OH MY GOSH THIS IS AN AMAZING IDEA YOU HAVE TO DO IT! I’m not quite sure if this was what convinced Phil or if it was my detailed Excel sheets outlining expenses & income, but we will give it to Aimee.
We set a monthly savings goal with other markers in place (ie./sell Phil’s 1998 Chevy S-10 that was only being used to help me sharpen my stick-shift driving skills) and picked a date: end of March. In 6 months’ time (with what we already had in savings), we projected that we would have the funds to travel for 3 months with a cushion for finding jobs again afterward.
It’s important to note that we have both been working full-time or nearly full-time for 12 years, giving us some additional resources (primarily savings and HSA accounts) to make this happen. We had also spent the past 2 years building out the back of our Toyota RAV4 into a convertible sleeper camper, making comfortable budget travel within the US much more accessible.
As the end of March approached, we had shared our plans with several close friends & family members and were amazed by the support we were receiving. This did not keep us from having multiple panicky moments filled with What the h*@& are we doing?!
For insurance purposes, we shifted our date slightly to April 2nd & set the dates to give our notice. We began to map out a rough route across the US and set our sights on Yosemite National Park as our primary destination. We tried our best to quell the nerves that were bubbling up and push full-steam-ahead toward Our Grand Adventure.
The day finally came. We put in our notices to our employers. There was no going back to The Way Things Were.
And then, in the blink of an eye, April 2nd arrived. We turned in Phil’s keys and shipped back my work computer. Our work here was done.
After years of watching travel videos, building out our SUV camper, learning the road-trip ropes, saving toward our goals, and planning for this adventure, we had made it to the point where it was only us & the open road. No back to work on Monday. No regular paychecks. No normal routine.
Just us and our dreams. And a million paths forward with only ourselves to figure out which ones to traverse.
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