Our travel jar is much bigger than this!

As the popular saying goes… “Life is full of choices”. Obviously there are things in life that are truly out of our control but I feel that for the most part our lives are the result of choices we’ve made thus far. Over the past ten years or so, I’ve begun to understand that at a high level, people like  ‘having’ things or ‘doing’ things. Yes, there are individuals who want both but at some level I believe we gravitate towards one or the other.

Growing up, I definitely fell into the first bucket. Looking back, I think part of it stemmed from the fact that I grew up in a pretty small town. The closest mall was an hour away, the closest airport was almost 3 hours away. My parents owned their own small business and were extremely hard workers. We took camping trips on a fairly regular basis and regional trips for sports and 4-H from the time we were in elementary school through high school but didn’t do a lot of ‘big vacations’. Road trips were our thing . I developed a love of maps during those trips. My first flight was a trip to Disney World in Orlando with my BFF Megan when I was a teenager…pretty sure my love of flying started on that trip.

Fast forward to me getting my first jobs around age 12. Babysitting my cousins and teaching gymnastics. Having an income of my own, small as it was, gave me the ability to ‘have’ things I wanted that my parents may have not necessarily thought I needed. From that point on, I have been blessed to essentially always have a job. For almost the next decade I was a ‘have’ kinda girl. The summer of my junior year in college my parents decided we were going on a family vacation. For three weeks that summer we drove from Maryland to California and back in a Road Trek camper van. I admit at the time I was not very excited. After living on my own for the past year it was a long time to be cramped in the back of a van with my teenage brother. We both did a lot of sleeping that trip. That trip also opened my eyes to all of the places and experiences that were out there and the travel bug started to squirm somewhere deep inside me.

I graduated college, took a minimum wage job at Disney World in the College Program for a few months and then moved to Indianapolis, IN. During that time I had student loans and racked up some credit card debt. A story for a different day but the point is…I felt like I needed new clothes, shoes, trinkets, etc. because they made me happy. I started making friends in my new city and slowly started transitioning from the ‘have’ model to a hybrid ‘have and do’ model. I wanted to experience the new city and did. I had a lot of fun and made a lot of great memories.

My thirties started with me making a career change from accounting to ERP consulting. I started traveling a lot which I loved but was also working a ton. I was spending the free time I did have in a repetitive cycle, spending money out of habit as a way to escape the daily grind. A few years in, I was ready for a change. I decided that I would start seriously saving my money so that I could take a year off and travel the world. The transition to the ‘do more things’ model had officially started. I applied to go on a Habitat for Humanity build in Nepal in November 2014 and was planning on using that as the kick-off for my year of travel.

Life had other plans for me though. Scott and I started dating that year and I decided he was worth coming home for. Our underlying desire to see and do as much as we can while still planning for our future is one of the reasons we make such a good team. Scott has always been good with his money. In fact, I don’t know if he’s ever made an impulse purchase in his life! Marrying him has definitely helped me learn to pause and think before buying and I’m so much happier because of it. During those years of ‘having’ things and ‘repetitive experiences’ I was happy in the moment but it was often followed by a feeling of guilt and regret, knowing that I was in a cycle that was not moving me forward and in the long run not making me happy. Now don’t get me wrong. I still buy ‘stuff’, I’m just much more deliberate with my spending habits.

People often ask how we can afford to travel so much. Simple answer is ‘we choose to’. We both work fairly stressful jobs where we make decent money and get 20+ paid vacation days a year. We don’t love our jobs  but we love that they afford us the ability to travel and save for the future. Pre-COVID I traveled a lot for work. Sometimes every other week but sometimes I would be gone back to back weeks. Again, not necessarily ideal to see your significant other a few days a month but the benefits have been a large part of how we traveled so much the past few years. There are many trips we take where we do not pay for airfare or hotel due to the fact I have miles and points. We have a budget that we try to follow knowing that we are trying to gain financial independence earlier in life than the generation before us.

I’m not saying ‘doing’ is better than ‘having’ by any means. For us personally it is, but again, that is the choice we’ve made. The moral of the story is this…be true to yourself. If there is something you’ve been wanting to check off your bucket list and it seems impossible for one reason or another, take a moment to think about the little choices you are making that may be pulling you further away from your goals. Anything is possible if you really focus and put in the work!