GUYS! We're less than a year away from leaving on our first leg of our year long trip! Time is flying by! I'm excited, but also wouldn't mind if it slowed down just a little bit because we have SO MUCH TO DO to prepare!
Trenton has been awesome at finding really great credit cards that provide awesome bonuses and rewards that don't end up costing us much if anything at all! Because of this, we'll be paying for most of our longer (read: more expensive) flights with points and rewards. He'll have to do a post on where he finds these deals and link them so you can work the credit card magic and get some free and super helpful rewards too!
We use credit cards like cash, ps, and aren't ever in consumer debt. If we had to go into debt to get the rewards, we'd pass on that card and keep looking for something else. There are so many cool credit cards out there - it's not worth it to us to go into debt! We've been super blessed and haven't had to go into debt for anything except a mortgage, thanks to Trent being awesome and having occasional scholarships, my parents helping out with my tuition, the government helping us out with grants, and both of us working while going to school.
One of the websites that I know Trent started reading through was mrmoneymustache.com , feel free to pop over there and read up on some of the things that helped Trent to have the confidence and motivation to take a year of off working and do this trip with our family!
Which brings me to my purpose: why are we doing this?
Trenton was introduced to the Family Adventure Podcast probably about 5 years ago and soon after being introduced to the idea that extended travel is an option for anyone who wants to do it, not just the uber rich, he told me about it with not much success. I was not interested! It sounded crazy to me because I hadn't ever heard of anyone doing that! It sounded really unrealistic. He had me listen to a few of the episodes, and after a couple of years of talking about it once in a while, I got on board. I could see the merit in wanting to take a break in the middle of his career to do something that usually only retired people are able to do but to do it with our whole family. I wanted to share world travel with our kids! We want our kids to see other cultures and not only that but to have a chance to LIVE other cultures! Which is why we opted for a year. Not to mention that it'll be easier to rent our house (unless we sell? but we can talk about that later) for a year as opposed to 3 or 6 months. Giving ourselves a year will allow us the opportunity to stay as long as we feel appropriate at each location. We'll have normal daily routines as if we were home, but our afternoons will be filled with exploring the areas around us. We won't be packing our days full of typical touristy things because that would wear us out SO FAST, and we still want the kids to have a routine that will pretty much be the same wherever we are. The difference will obviously be our location change every month or so. We're also hoping our kids will feel gratitude for what they have and learn humility and a hopefully a desire to leave the world a better place than when they arrived. We plan to do service projects in each area we visit - even if the only thing we can think to do is picking up garbage as we see it and throwing it away, we want them to try and make an effort to serve each community and people in our temporary homes abroad.
We are in no way experts, but we're hoping to garner information from those who have done this before, as well as share what we've learned for those who are looking into doing it with their own families!
Stay tuned to hear about Trenton's credit card tricks - as well as links to the website(s) he most frequently uses to find some of the better deals!
For pictures - follow us on instagram @travellingwithlittles
Trenton has been awesome at finding really great credit cards that provide awesome bonuses and rewards that don't end up costing us much if anything at all! Because of this, we'll be paying for most of our longer (read: more expensive) flights with points and rewards. He'll have to do a post on where he finds these deals and link them so you can work the credit card magic and get some free and super helpful rewards too!
We use credit cards like cash, ps, and aren't ever in consumer debt. If we had to go into debt to get the rewards, we'd pass on that card and keep looking for something else. There are so many cool credit cards out there - it's not worth it to us to go into debt! We've been super blessed and haven't had to go into debt for anything except a mortgage, thanks to Trent being awesome and having occasional scholarships, my parents helping out with my tuition, the government helping us out with grants, and both of us working while going to school.
One of the websites that I know Trent started reading through was mrmoneymustache.com , feel free to pop over there and read up on some of the things that helped Trent to have the confidence and motivation to take a year of off working and do this trip with our family!
Which brings me to my purpose: why are we doing this?
Trenton was introduced to the Family Adventure Podcast probably about 5 years ago and soon after being introduced to the idea that extended travel is an option for anyone who wants to do it, not just the uber rich, he told me about it with not much success. I was not interested! It sounded crazy to me because I hadn't ever heard of anyone doing that! It sounded really unrealistic. He had me listen to a few of the episodes, and after a couple of years of talking about it once in a while, I got on board. I could see the merit in wanting to take a break in the middle of his career to do something that usually only retired people are able to do but to do it with our whole family. I wanted to share world travel with our kids! We want our kids to see other cultures and not only that but to have a chance to LIVE other cultures! Which is why we opted for a year. Not to mention that it'll be easier to rent our house (unless we sell? but we can talk about that later) for a year as opposed to 3 or 6 months. Giving ourselves a year will allow us the opportunity to stay as long as we feel appropriate at each location. We'll have normal daily routines as if we were home, but our afternoons will be filled with exploring the areas around us. We won't be packing our days full of typical touristy things because that would wear us out SO FAST, and we still want the kids to have a routine that will pretty much be the same wherever we are. The difference will obviously be our location change every month or so. We're also hoping our kids will feel gratitude for what they have and learn humility and a hopefully a desire to leave the world a better place than when they arrived. We plan to do service projects in each area we visit - even if the only thing we can think to do is picking up garbage as we see it and throwing it away, we want them to try and make an effort to serve each community and people in our temporary homes abroad.
We are in no way experts, but we're hoping to garner information from those who have done this before, as well as share what we've learned for those who are looking into doing it with their own families!
Stay tuned to hear about Trenton's credit card tricks - as well as links to the website(s) he most frequently uses to find some of the better deals!
For pictures - follow us on instagram @travellingwithlittles
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