Something to note before I go on…

We started this blog to be able to write about things we are passionate about, the two focuses being personal finance and travel. The more I think about it, the more I realize the reason why I want to be financially independent is not to have a bunch of money saved up in my bank account by the end of my life, but to be able to create meaningful experiences for my family and me that we can remember and cherish forever. So although I am passionate about personal finance, I’m more passionate about the idea of traveling the world and having amazing experiences!

But before I continue my rants about making your travel dreams happen, it is important to note that we at the Fund Family still have principles we recommend and are striving to live by. For a brush up, you can read the article we wrote about Steps to Wealth Building, but as a quick recap, we recommend to save, avoid debt, invest and give. So when we talk about travel, we want to make sure that we all remember not to let travel derail all of our goals! Sometimes we have to sacrifice for the long-term benefits of wealth building. But sacrificing doesn’t mean you can’t travel! That’s why Carlee wrote about Discovering Your Own Backyard recently. Take advantage of what is around you when you are unable to splurge on more extravagant trips, and if you keep living by sound financial principles, the opportunities to travel bigger will come!

Our First trip to Europe

A few years ago, I was just finishing up the most grueling semesters of my college experience and I was talking to one of classmates about my desire to travel to Germany and other surrounding countries with my wife. I explained to him how we were thinking about doing it, but weren’t sure how to make it work with the timing, money, etc. That’s when he told me: “Dude, just do it!” Simple, but powerful advice! He went on to talk about the time that he and his wife had, before kids, to travel and have other experiences was so awesome and important to their marriage. He said he wouldn’t have traded that for anything. That conversation we had was very motivating to me, so I went home to talk to my wife about it, unsure of whether she would agree. To my surprise, by the end of the conversation with her, we decided we were just going to do it, and a few days later we bought our plane tickets.

Prior to this, my wife and I had talked about it, but for whatever reason we were hesitant to make it happen. I’m not sure if it was fear, lack of belief that we could make it happen, or uncertainty of traveling when we were the ones in charge and not our parents. Regardless of what it was, we overcame it by making the steps to organize our first big trip together. Looking back, I have no regrets whatsoever! Those two weeks exploring Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Denmark were some of the highlights of our early marriage. Never before had we had so much uninterrupted time together, and it did wonders for our marriage!

You think after a big trip like that, our wanderlust would’ve subsided for awhile. Not at all. In fact, as soon as we got back, we were already craving a return to Europe or some other exotic destination! Italy was towards the top of our list, and here we are about 2 years later about to go back on an epic adventure to Europe! We are so excited.

Don’t let life hold you back

Going to Italy was actually in the works for a while now. In fact, our original plan was to go a year ago… but then we had a baby and that plan was put on the back-burner. We weren’t sure after that when we would have the time, money, etc. to make another trip happen, especially with a baby. But not long after we had our baby, we decided we could make it work.

We also decided we were going to take our baby with us! I’d imagine for some, the idea of bringing an infant on an international trip seems quite daunting and crazy. I can also imagine that this holds a lot of people back from travel, and I can definitely understand that. We are only a few weeks away and there are definitely a few things we are nervous about (particularly the flight). That being said, there are always uncertainties and reasons not to do something you want to do. In the end, you can either make it work, or wait for a day when life is more convenient and it becomes easier to travel. For us, we don’t want to wait for that day, if it ever comes. That’s why we are just going to go for it and find a way to make it work!

How we are learning to make it work

We are still learning how to make travel work, especially while our family is still young and growing. Call me impatient, but I don’t want to wait until I’m retired or until my kids are out of the house to travel. I want to experience things along the way as well! Carlee and I are very driven to travel, even with our young family and future kids. We’ve often talked and wondered how our travel is going to evolve as our family grows, and that is TBD. But we don’t want life to escape us because we are just waiting for some future time when life makes it easier to travel. We want to be in control. So I want to share a few thoughts and ways that help us to make our travel dreams happen!

• Live after sound financial principles. As mentioned earlier, if you are living after the financial principles we are writing about, being able to travel becomes much easier. One of the big reasons why we are able to make our Italy trip happen is because we are debt free, we save money, and we seek to live within a budget. If any of these weren’t the case, traveling would be much more difficult and foolish.

• Decide what is important to you. We all have things that we spend money on unnecessarily. It can be clothes, eating out, video games, expensive electronics, etc. Regardless of what it is, you have to ask yourself what is most important to you. Would you rather buy the new iPhone or Android model each year it comes out, or go travel the world? If traveling is important to you, then exercise more discretion and restraint in your spending in other areas that aren’t necessities of life. If traveling isn’t important to you… then I’m not sure why you are still reading this article

• Inform yourself. Information is power. We spend a lot of time researching ways to travel inexpensively. I wrote a little bit about it in a prior blog post, so I won’t go into depth here, but knowing how to find good deals makes traveling easier. And if something like having young children is holding you back (like it almost did us), then do some research to figure out tips and tricks from people who have done it so you know what you can do to make traveling easier and possible! Hopefully after our next trip, we will have some good tips to share as well.

• Plan ahead. We are a little guilty of not planning far enough ahead for our traveling… That being said, what we plan on doing in the future is planning out our travel plans for big trips far in advance. We want to have time to save up for and prepare for these trips more fully. Being able to save for these trips so you don’t have to pull from savings makes trips far less stressful and it won’t derail you from your financial goals!

And for the final thought…

Just go!

If you are financially able, just make your travel dreams happen! Don’t let years pass you by without being able to experience things you’ve always wanted to experience. If you have the means necessary, then make the time to travel. If you don’t have the means, then make the time to get your finances in order so you can go experience the world! If you aren’t able to go now, don’t get distracted or discouraged by the endless Instagram and Facebook pages that show the travel highlights of the lucky few who get all of their travel paid for by sponsors. Shut those off, make a plan, and attack your plan to get your finances to where they need to be so that you can travel the world! In the meantime, discover your own backyard and create meaningful experiences that you will remember forever!

Don’t wait for life to happen. Make life happen!

What holds you back from traveling? What are you doing to overcome those barriers? Let us know in the comments below!