Dailey Family Adventure: March 2014 — 18 Months Until Departure

The last couple months have been spent primarily on a whole lot of web searches and have resulted in a whole lot of spreadsheets... timeline, budget, passport/visa information, volunteer resources, to do list along with timeframe, packing checklist, and even books to bring (download) to help with the boys' education.

On the timeline spreadsheet we are focusing on the One Year + Until Departure category which includes:

determining a budget,
figuring out what to do about your job (and kids' schooling),
figuring out how to enhance your savings account,
eliminating unnecessary bills,
planning for pet care,
planning an itinerary,
looking for volunteer organizations and opportunities,
choosing a backpack, and
creating a packing list and beginning to shop sales for needed items.

For the budget, we listed all the countries we planned to visit, plugged in the number of days we planned to stay and then included costs for accommodation, food, water, local transportation, entertainment, tips, intercity transportation, souvenirs, mishaps, and alcohol (because it was included in the main categories). Just plugging in the numbers the total came to $103,786! Since that is WAY out of our price range, we need to do a little more fine tuning and get that down to around $100/day for 300 days or $30,000.

Let's move on to jobs... Ray will be separating from the service and has already let his boss and staff know of his plans. I have also let my company know my plans and we are in discussion if it is going to be possible to work from the road. I am not sure if that can be answered before we leave, but we are looking at all possibilities. My plan for the kids is to visit with their counselors at the beginning of their next school year to make a plan for when we are gone. Thus, that has been moved to the 9-12 months until departure section!

For our savings, we have taken our $30,000 and put it in a CD to earn better interest before we go. We are going to be saving a bit more for flights as well.

I haven't eliminated any bills yet, but have been rolling all the bills that I can into electronic delivery and auto-pay status from my bank. This will continue as the bills come in and we will look into cancelling things like Netflix and the newspaper when departure is closer.

Pets... we have some options for pet care but not sure what we will do quite yet.

Itinerary and volunteering... as we are contacting volunteer agencies, we are getting our itinerary figured out. I expect this to continue for some time.

Haven't even begun to think about a backpack. Guess we should get started on that one! Or move it to the 9-12 months category - what's the hurry?

I have probably read 200 travel blogs and they all include a "what to pack" section. Many also include a "what I said to pack and what I actually should have packed" section. I have taken much of this information and made my own packing list, which I expect will be change between now and time of departure.