In exactly four months to this day, my family and I will take off on our next big adventure; six months of travelling, climbing, skiing and enjoying uninterrupted time with each other as well as with our French family and friends.

 

We have itchy feet. We need to move out of our routine and comfort zone as often as we can. It’s now been three years since the last time we took off for several months. It was back when I was on maternity leave; we had gone to Europe for four months with our then 7-month-old baby.

 

The time before that was when we packed all our belongings into my small Toyota Matrix and moved across Canada to be ski bums. That was seven years ago.

 

This need to break with our everyday life for an extended period of time is cyclical and tends to germinate in my head shortly after I have accomplished a project or lived a dream I had had for a while.

 

I am not one to be fooled with the promise of freedom retirement will bring. I don’t want to put my life on hold and suck up my urges to live freely and explore the world at my family’s own pace until I am 65 for many obvious reasons.

 

This time around, we are leaving lighthearted as we both negotiated a leave of absence with our respective employers, which takes a huge financial stress off of our shoulders. What also makes a huge difference is that now that we’re homeowners, we don’t have to worry about giving up our rental and fearing to be homeless upon our return. We get to decide the terms of the rental.

 

At D-4 months, the things we need get sorted out in order to be all ready to leave when  November rolls around are mostly administrative. We need to get my daughter’s French passport and a spouse visa for myself, which will allow us to stay for an extended period of time in the Schengen Space. We also need to sort out what we are going to do with our vehicles and try to find reliable tenants for our condo through word of mouth.

 

And of course, we need to save money. Without the option of a deferred leave, it’s up to us to put money away each month so we can live without an income for months. $20K is the amount we have set as our savings goal to live 6 months in Europe. With the exchange rate not quite in our favor, this will convert to a mere 13K Euros, which is a little over 2K per month. We are also securing a personal line of credit, just in case. We will have to be frugal but we know it’s possible.

 

$20,000 can seem like a lot of money to put aside…and at the same time not a lot of money for 3 indivudials to live of of for half a year. We already had some savings for rainy days that we decided to roll into our trip fund. We are saving the rest at a pace of approximately $1,200 a month.

 

We plan on spending as much time as possible visiting friends and relative and therefore saving on accommodation. We are so fortunate that our friends live in some of the most desirable places in Europe. The rest of the time we will rent vacation homes and apartments and will stay in the odd hostels, campgrounds and AirBnB’s.

 

We can also rely on my in-laws’ vehicle to come and go, which will also save us a huge amount of money. The bulk of our expenses will be on airfare, medical insurance, ferries, food, coffee, gas, ski lift tickets and vino and beer (which will be our exchange commodity for staying at our generous friends). oh, and we will also need new climbing shoes.

 

Our project is bringing a lot of excitement in our household and we love planning together and talking about what we are going to do. While we don’t have a clear plan and are hoping to go with the flow, there are some must-do things that we like to prioritize, like spending the holidays with my in-laws, which I can’t recall ever doing before. We also want to go back to Spain, visit Sicily, climb in Greece, ski in Chamonix, hang out in our beloved La Grave, ski in Queyras…

 

We obviously have some compromises to do this summer and need to keep our adventures a little more low key than usual. My husband’s desire for a new mountain bike will have to be put on hold as will our wish to replace the camper we miss so much.

 

We are also mindful about every purchase we are doing as anything that comes into our condo will have to be stored somewhere. But we know how much it’s worth it. So very worth it. Bring on the countdown!

 

What tips do you have to prepare for a long trip?