We want to take a few months off and travel the country - are we crazy?

December 19, 2006 7:31 PM

Would it be crazy for a family of three to take 4-5 months off to travel the country? What are the main issues we'd have to look out for (I know health insurance would be a big one). And lastly, if we do go ahead and do this, what should we see?

My husband and I are in our early 30s and we have a 2 year old daughter. I am a stay-at-home-mom for the most part, and my husband has worked at his current job in the finance industry for 10 years. He feels that it is time for a change, career-wise. We have also been thinking of selling our house for a while - so it seems like a good opportunity to check out for a few months and do some traveling.

If we can make this work, we would probably put the house up for sale in March and hope to sell it by the time my husband quits his job in May. We'd try to pare down our things and then put the rest in a storage locker.

As far as finances go, we hope to net around 100k from the sale of our house, so we will have that cushion (though we hope not to touch that money since we will need a new house eventually) and we will probably have around 12-15k earmarked for the trip. We have checked into maintaining our health insurance coverage and it comes out to around $900/month (ouch) but we think it's important.

We are no strangers to camping and we have a small SUV (2003 Hyundai Santa Fe) so hopefully we could minimize our dependence on hotels and restaurants by bringing our own supplies/gear. We love the outdoors, cool scenery, and national parks. Thoughts? Feedback?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (17 answers total)

We are taking a year off and traveling right now as I type. However we went out of country but I think I can answer a few things for you.

1. Make a detailed list of what you want to do, then you will have a goal in mind however you can deviate from it when you want.

2. Invest in a nice camera, preferably one with a wide angle lens (I use a digital slr but photography is somewhat of a profession for me).

3. Keep a blog or some sort of diary of your travels. We are doing this +photos and then we are going to make a book out of it of our "year in travel

4. Talk to at least one native each place you go. There's a story there or some helpful information

5. If you stay at a Bed and Breakfast, check for things like wifi, water pressure (we had a time with this) and privacy.

6. Invest in some personal insurance for your belongings. It's not expensive and you may want to do it in your parents name if applicable.

7. Expect much bumps in the road. If we don't have one thing falling apart where we are, it's another thing. We've learned to just expect stuff to break.

I hope this helps! We're in our mid-30's too and are doing the exact same thing (except that we got raped on selling our house and ended up LOSING 3k in the process)
posted by Hands of Manos at 7:47 PM on December 19, 2006

Watch Lost in America first.
posted by The Deej at 7:59 PM on December 19, 2006

What you describe is quite common in Australia. Many people take a year, or a few months, off to drive around the country. Often it is done when the kids are a bit older and will remember the trip.
posted by sien at 8:00 PM on December 19, 2006

I just want to recommend maybe thinking about waiting a few years until your daughter is old enough to enjoy the travelling, unless you plan on repeating this every so often. My parents did all their travelling with me when I was a wee 4-year-old, and one of my biggest regrets is having been to places such as the Bahamas but having no memory of it.

Or, what sien said.
posted by internet!Hannah at 8:43 PM on December 19, 2006

I don't want to discourage what sounds like a cool idea, but I second what Hannah says.

My parents took my brother and I on a roadtrip across the country and into Canada for a month when I was 10 and my brother was 7 and it's a great memory for all of us (sure we got in arguments on the road and what not...) personally, it founded my love of travel and a more independent spirit growing up. The experience also opened me up to being a ... dare I saw, 'worldly' or understanding person of different people.

Traveling for months with a two-year-old sounds like hell to me. And I'm not sure how much fun a 2 year old would have living out of a small SUV for months... or how much of the memory they would retain.

For right now I'd suggest a shorter trip (a few weeks away can be a long time!). Come back and let your husband get settled in his new career while your daughter grows a bit more, then take a break when you have the stability to return to.
posted by jkl345 at 10:02 PM on December 19, 2006

I don't know how hard or not hard it will be to travel with a two year old, but it seems like 2 is a good age for a longer trip since she's not in school yet. It will be harder to go for 4 or 5 months when your daughter gets older.
posted by gt2 at 10:46 PM on December 19, 2006

Just an anecdote here.
My family took a four week trip around the US the summer after my sixth grade, we went from WA, to MI, down to FL, then back home, visiting relatives on the way and doing some touristy stuff. I enjoyed it, but my older brothers slept the entire time we were driving everywhere. And we were in a van, pulling a good sized trailer.

The only feedback I have to give is that maybe a few months would be enough to see just a ton of different places, but it's more than necessary.

I hope you guys have fun!
posted by philomathoholic at 11:42 PM on December 19, 2006

Any and all time you spend traveling with your family is invaluable. There is hardly any better way to enrich your children than through exposure to new worlds and people.
posted by wsg at 1:48 AM on December 20, 2006

I don't know where you live, but nowadays (where I come from, anyway) putting a house up for sale in March and having it sold by May seems ambitious. That would be my main concern about the whole thing.
posted by srah at 3:49 AM on December 20, 2006

You might want to consider keeping a blog of some sort about your journey both to help everyone remember it and to provide a resource for those of us. I am having a hard time finding it, but a newscaster for one of the network morning shows wrote a good book about a similar trip he took with his family. It would be a definite resource for what to expect (he got all of 10 minutes into the trip before his sister had a fender-bender with one of the rented Winnebagos in rush hour traffic.)
posted by TedW at 4:39 AM on December 20, 2006

A couple of friends took their 8yo daughter around the world for a year with the mother 'home' schooling all the way and she had a wonderful time. 4 years later she doing extremely well at school.

I'd agree with other posters regarding waiting until your daughter can enjoy it more. Then again, if you can change your lifestyles so that you can take breaks more regularly do a trip now, another in a few years & so on.

You might also want to look at an RV rather than the SUV as it will make long-term accommodation a lot easier. BLM, County, State & National Parks are your friends!
posted by i_cola at 4:58 AM on December 20, 2006

The Ride of Our Lives by Mike Leonard is the book I wasa thinking of.
posted by TedW at 5:47 AM on December 20, 2006

$900/mo seems like an awful lot for health insurance. Is that the price for COBRA continuation? If so, look into private, family healthcare like Blue Cross/Blue Shield or something similar. For $900/mo for three people, I can think of some plans with Assurant Health that have 100% coverage after your deductible for that amount of money. (Unless you have signficant pre-existing conditions...)

Also, be sure to invest that money wisely that you get from the sale of your home. Put it into a high-interest savings account (with ING Direct, CITI online, etc.) if you're not absolutely sure that you're going to be spending X amount of months on the road and need liquidity if you come back soon. If you know you're going to be away for a certain amount of time, talk with a financial planner about making some money off your equity.

With $13k, a few months, and some good camping equipment, I think you can see just about everything anyone would want to see in the U.S.!
posted by PandemicSoul at 6:58 AM on December 20, 2006

My parents lived and travelled all kinds of awesome places when I was less than 5 years old (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ireland, Greece)... and I don't remember more than a flash or two of any of it. So I'm with the people who say wait till your child is older if you want to make it any kind of memorable experience for her.
posted by MsMolly at 7:02 AM on December 20, 2006

Book recco: One Year Off
posted by browse at 7:51 AM on December 20, 2006

As PandemicSoul says, you can do a lot better than $900 a month barring serious issues - which I assume if you had you wouldn't be thinking of taking off work and traipsing the country.

As a data point: at 33 I was paying $110 a month for myself for reasonably good BlueCross/BlueShield coverage. Even if you double that and multiply by three you wouldn't be at $900.

Shop around and contact any professional organizations your husband is a member of or could become a member of. Many have group plans and I'd think that would be doubly so for financial organizations - probably a higher than average number of independent small businesses in that business.
posted by phearlez at 9:19 AM on December 20, 2006

I think it sounds like great fun...except for the traveling for months with a 2-year old. I'm not sure you want to strap her down that much at her age. They really need to be developing their motor skills, both primary and fine. They should spend most of their waking time moving around.

Plus, you're nearing the point where you want to start thinking about potty training, if you haven't started already. For potty training, she's going to need someplace that is familiar and readily available...gas station potties aren't probably going to be very motivational.

Also consider that about this age, kids start really pushing on where their boundaries are...both environmentally and relationship related.

Were it me, I would wait until your daughter is 6 or 7 and maybe consider a Montessori or similar school that would let her take off for 5 months without it being a scholastic problem.

All that said, I've known plenty of hippies and rainbow family and others that have raised kids on the road from the time they were born until they wandered off on their own. So, it can be done, and done successfully, just remember that when you're doing your planning, you have to plan on the stages your daughter is going to achieve *while* you're on the road, and be thusly prepared.
posted by dejah420 at 9:56 AM on December 20, 2006