Bringing into reality your dream-level goal of extended travel can feel incredibly overwhelming. So much of your life will be impacted!
Where do you begin?
What’s most important to focus on?
What decisions are your priority?
How long does it typically take to accomplish each step of the prep?
What decisions do I need to make out-of-logical-order to keep me moving forward as quickly as possible?
As you prepare to arrive in a new location, a map guides and informs your decisions. Can we stay in the north side neighborhood and have safe public transportation to places we want to visit on the south side? Are there grocery stores within walking distance of where we might rent a long-term apartment? How far is it the marina dock to the city center to provision? Are there activities nearby the RV park we can reach by e-bike?
Our process is like a map. You start with a Dream-Level Extended Travel Goal which is then broken down into smaller and smaller pieces. The Categories are like streets in a city. As you zoom in, you’ll see the Topics which are like locations along those streets. Action Steps show you how to move from location to location. The purpose of a map is to quickly help you get organized and focused on important information while ignoring the distractions. Our process works the same way.
There are general Categories you’ll need to define and focus on in your planning and prep. Everyone’s Categories list will look different, but by outlining a few below in an example of a 5,000 foot view, you’ll begin to see where you’re headed.
Category
Defining Your Dream-Level Travel Goal
Topics
- Where do you want to travel?
- How long do you want to travel?
- What kinds of experiences do you want to have?
- Do you prefer slow or fast travel
- If you’re traveling with others (e.g. your family) are you all in agreement on what dream-level travel looks like?
- Your mode(s) of travel
Category – Finances
Topics
- Budgeting
- How will you fund your travel?
- Credit cards & banking
- Currency conversion
Category – Health & Medical Care
Topics
- Insurance
- Prescriptions
- Medical appointments (in advance & how to handle while traveling)
- Maintaining fitness
- Dietary concerns
Category – Maintaining Ties to ‘Home’
Topics
- Domicile vs residence
- Voting
- What to do with your personal belongings
- What do to with your vehicles
- Sell or rent out your current home
- How to stay in touch with friends and family
- Choosing your emergency contact person & preparing whomever is authorized to handle problems when they occur
Category – Travel Companions
Topics
- Education – if you have school aged kids, what option(s) are the best fit? What legal support should you have in place?
- Pets – take with you?
- Friends – past traveling companions? Compatibility fit for long-term travel
Category – Travel Prep
Topics
- Passports
- Vaccinations (if required)
- Visas
- Purchasing an RV
- Purchasing a boat
- Travel insurance, electronics insurance
- Packing list
- Creating a ‘go bag’
- VPN & electronics
What’s the next step?
It all begins with defining your Dream-Level Extended Travel Goal in greater detail.
Prepare to compromise if you’re traveling as a family or with friends. Having a clearly defined goal automatically removes many possibilities from your Topics list. For example, if you and your travel companions have a goal of seeing all 50 states in the US in a year, you’ll be creating a different list of Topics than if you dream of taking a one-way ticket to slow-travel Europe or South America or purchasing a boat and circumnavigating the globe.
Begin having conversations with your travel companions. Encourage everyone can make a list of what’s most important to them. When we had those conversations, my goal was to incorporate civics, history and science into our homeschooling curriculum, but for our kids, their priorities were to sleep in their own beds at night and be able to bring along their Lego collection. Our compromise was to purchase an RV to maintain the home stability my sons needed (with enough space to store their Lego containers) and allow us to easily stay anywhere in North America as we visited state capitals, national parks and historic sites.
Dave needed to work remotely, have excellent internet connection and remain in country. Our compromise was to travel primarily on the weekends to destinations that could accommodate our long motor home and provide a strong the cell signal for the hot spot. Sometimes this meant staying in one place longer than we wanted to, but it only took one rush-hour traffic drive through Atlanta while he attempted to keep working to convince us it was a solid trade off.
By including everyone’s needs first, we quickly painted a clear picture of what travel would look like for our family. With the ‘needs’ figured out and providing us with clear boundaries, the ‘wants’ became much easier to define and negotiate.
