Going Big

So I may have hinted in earlier posts that we are saving up for the wedding and a period of “extended travel” after our third year contracts finish. Being vague was the name of the game while Matt and I were trying to number crunch to see if it was even possible to spend some time traveling. In our opinions, we figured we’d either go big or go home with this trip. What does go big mean? It means we were looking at traveling extensively for 9-12 months. No easy feet, especially when it comes to finances.

Deciding to embark on this kind of adventure is easy. Working out the logistics of making said adventure happen is a completely different story. Matt and I have been discussing going on a RTW (round-the-world) trip since we touched down in Korea. Many a night in our first year here was spent walking along the river path discussing jungle treks, temple ruins, flight itineraries and regional weather. At that point, spending a year traveling was just a pipe dream.

Now that we have been in Korea for a while and have tracked our spending habits, we can realistically come up with a plan for savings. At this point, after lots of calculations and taking every purchase for the next year and a half into consideration (flights, trips, matt’s potential eye surgery, any small excursions around Korea, wedding expenses, etc), we feel that we can save enough to travel for a full year.

The biggest issue when deciding to not work for a year is figuring out how to pay for bills. Unfortunately, we cannot just pack our bags and go wherever the wind takes us. Even though we don’t have a mortgage, or kids, or any ties to anywhere, we have the responsibility of paying our student loan bills. When you factor in paying for bills for 12 months without work, it adds up, a lot. The total amount we have to save just for bills is astounding. In no way would we be able to take 12 months to travel without our third year bonuses.

Why stay a third year? Everyone wants to know. We could easily come home this coming March, try to find jobs and be around to plan our own wedding. It sounds nice, except for one thing: the bonuses. Not only are our bonuses significant in themselves, we will also be getting back three years worth of pension, which ends up being a LOT.

With the bonuses we can pay for our student loan bills for 12 months as well as the large flights for our trip. What we need to come up with through saving is spending money for day to day expenses while on the road.

This number keeps fluctuating. It’s hard to calculate how much money two people need on a daily basis for all of the different countries we’re going to.

Where are we going? That will have to wait for a later post :)

So hurray for finally announcing our plans for post-Korea! If all goes according to plan, we will be traveling from March-November 2013 and spending the holidays home in Maine. After that, who knows?!

More info on the big trip to come!