What We Had to Figure Out Before Traveling the World for a Year

We had to answer some big questions before embarking on this huge family journey. Things like where to go, how to pay for it all, what fourth grade would look like for our kid…

Beyond these huge questions, lots of smaller ones presented themselves—like what to pack and what to do with our car.

These are the things we had to figure out in order to take this trip in the first place. In some cases, we’re still figuring them out as we go!

10 Months of Travel: The Big Considerations

In the wake of our bubble date and a brief bout of furious early planning, we found ourselves face to face with a laundry list of big questions and considerations. As the plan began to take shape, these were the major things we’d need to grapple with if the trip was gonna happen.

1. Where to Go!

Obviously, travel involves going places. And since we wanted to spend more than a few days or weeks in the places we visited, we had to be selective. We also wanted to build in some flexibility. Could we plan out our potential destinations ahead of time but still leave room to make changes and adapt to the new perspectives and ideas that would emerge?

2. People

We had been in the Pioneer Valley for six years when we decided to leave, the longest time we’d spent anywhere in our lives together so far. Leaving for a year meant leaving behind people we love: friends, family, and community.

There was also the question of meeting people during our travels. Since we were only planning on staying in each place for a few months tops, we wouldn’t have a lot of time to find other families with kids our son’s age. That meant we’d have to make new connections relatively quickly before moving on to the next destination. Could we do it, or were we going to find ourselves socially high and dry for a year?

3. Pets

We have two cats we adore. We briefly researched what it might take to bring them with us, and quickly decided that was a no-go. We’d need to find someone who could care for them while we were gone—no small ask when you’re talking about a year.

4. Money

Travel costs money. Big life changes tend to cost money. But exactly how much would it cost to do this trip? And where would that money come from? Selling the house was the immediate answer, but we didn’t want to take a leap that big without fully understanding the ramifications.

Beyond these obvious questions, as an upper-middle-class white family, this was an invitation to keep aware of the privilege that allows us to consider a trip like this in the first place. And more importantly, to use that privilege conscientiously throughout our journey.

5. Work

A closely related question to money was how work was going to fit into the trip. Would we both need (and want) to work? And how much?

We knew that traveling and homeschooling would make it pretty much impossible for both of us to work full time. But it would still be helpful to have some income and job continuity, and the degree to which depended, not surprisingly, on what happened with the…

6. House

Selling our house was the most straightforward way to fund our trip. But it would mean leaving behind the stability of a place to return, in a neighborhood where our son had started developing some close friendships.

It was a hard decision, but we eventually decided to sell. It would provide enough money to fund the trip and help ease our return—with some new hurdles awaiting us on reentry, of course. (We’ll tell you how those go when we’re hopefully over them!)

7. Health

We’d have to navigate the healthcare systems of different countries to get the care and medicines we might need. Kristen has type 1 diabetes, so in her case there are medicines she 100% does need (insulin).

Plus, travel is just stressful. We were going to have to find ways to take extra care of ourselves and each other physically and mentally through all the moves and changes. Oh, and we were (and still are) in a global Covid pandemic.

8. School

Flynn was about to start fourth grade. Given the proposed structure of our trip, spending a few months in a handful of countries, traditional schooling in a classroom was almost definitely off the table. Somebody was going to have to teach him—probably us.

9. The “Bigness” of It All

A trip like this was going to be capital-B Big. Scratch that, capital-everything BIG. It was going to change our lives in ways we could anticipate and ways we couldn’t. We realized this right away as we started planning on that weekend in January 2022.

And more than halfway into the trip at the time of this writing, that BIGness is something we still remind each other of when things are feeling hard and we need a little perspective-boost.

10 Months of Travel: The Not Quite as Big (But Still Big) Considerations

But wait—there’s more! Once the big considerations were out in the open, smaller ones started to peek through the cracks.

1. What to Pack

If you’re traveling for a year, you need to bring a lot of stuff with you, right? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve discovered a few things about how and what to pack (and more importantly, what to not pack) for a trip like ours, and we’ll be sure to share what we’ve learned for your enjoyment and edification.

2. Our Stuff

Since we were planning on coming back after a year, we were going to need a place to store our things while we were away. Like many families who have lived in one house for a while (five years and counting for us), we had some stuff. But, as you learn whenever you move residences, you always have more than you think. We also had a car we were going to need to figure out what to do with.

3. Passports and Entry Requirements

If you want to travel, you need a valid passport—which we all had. But mine was due to expire in late July 2023. That would have been fine if we’d planned on coming back to the US around then, right? Not quite. Many countries require a passport that’s valid three to six months after you leave or they won’t let you in.

Each country also has its own rules for visiting—what you need to enter, how long you can stay, etc.—that we’d have to research before committing to a place.

4. Taxes

If you’re from the US, the IRS isn’t going to forget about you just because you’re gone for a year. You still need to do your taxes. And being out of the country is probably going to make them a little more complicated, especially when it comes to accessing the tax forms that usually get mailed in January and February.

5. Mail

Speaking of mail, a year is a long time for it to pile up. We needed a place for it to go. Luckily, my parents were able to help us out there. But what about sending and receiving mail while we were overseas? That was going to be a little more complicated…

6. Phones

You can use a smartphone just about anywhere in the world to make calls, look stuff up, and get directions. But can you just take your phone with you and expect it’ll do what you’ll need it to do the moment you step off the plane in a new country? We wanted to make sure we could stay in touch and stay connected on the go.

Viaje con Nosotres

This is all still just the tip of the—yes—iceberg when it comes to the questions and decisions we faced in the lead-up to our trip. Suffice it to say you’ll be hearing more about all of them in future posts.

Our trip is now squarely in its seventh month, and it’s taken that long to feel like we were ready to blog about it, but here we are! We’re excited to keep sharing with you—the places, the people (and other animals), the dos and don’ts, the silly and serious, and the delights both expected and unexpected.