On December 31, 2018 I was laid off from my job.  After the health problems I had gone through a few years ago, my confidence was shaken to the core.  It is now summer, 2019, and still no replacement job on the radar.  This, I have to admit has knocked me off my feet as I have never in my life had a problem finding a job. Together with turning 60 this spring, Linsley and I have decided that it’s the universe telling us to go in a different direction! 

I know that doesn’t sound like the thoughts of two sane people, but with all that has happened in the past years, life is too short to struggle and try to keep everything together for other people. Our children are all set up, have their own homes and lives, and we are now reduced to the role of listeners.  We listen to their numerous complaints about each other, but they don’t want to listen to any advice we give, so after lots of heart wrenching thought and lots of research, we have decided to “drop out”! 

By that, I mean that Linsley and I have decided to liquidate everything and starting a new adventure.  

“Dropping out” has been an often talked about concept between Linsley and I over the years, but was always placed on the back burner because kids needed this or that.  It always seemed selfish to go off and have a life, but we have recently had an epiphany…

… now that the kids are all grown up….. THIS IS OUR TIME!!!

I will be writing regularly to update you on the details of what that entails, and I’m pretty certain that there will be some set-backs and some heartache along this process, but we will face it all head on, because we owe it to ourselves to make the most of our time here and have no regrets at the end of it all.

We know for sure that we are not the only people who have made this decision, and we know that there are an awful lot of people who wish that they could make this radical move, we are neither wealthy, nor special, we just have the conviction to make it work.  I’m sure we will stumble along the way, I’m sure we will have some absolutely amazing experiences and meet some truly remarkable people in our travels, and I will be on this blog to share it all, good and bad alike!

We will document from start to finish our journey to freedom!

It begins tomorrow…… we have a realtor coming to tell us what we can reasonably expect to make by selling the house.  Then the next day we have a home liquidation company who will survey our belongings and give us a reasonable estimate of what we could realize by selling it all, lock stock and barrel!  Between the two, we should have enough to purchase an RV and hit the road!  We have an RV picked out that we truly believe will serve our living needs, and plan to spend our summers up north and the winters down south.

We are not doing this on a whim, we have done a lot of research and although we will be semi-retired, Linsley will still continue to work (he has worked from home for the past 6 years and can continue to do so once we head off) which will give us cash flow to live on.  I will find ways along the way to make money too.  It is important that we go into this with a solid plan of how we will live.  It wouldn’t make sense to just run off and find that we run out of funds to live a few months into it, and we want to be self-sufficient for the long run.  One thing that we have discovered is that we are both ready to let go of all the “stuff” that for years we held sacred (belongings) and have carried around with us each time we moved.  Life is too short, we don’t want to grow old and regret not having our adventure.

This is the start of the rest of our lives and we are so ready for it!  Come along with us on our journey, live vicariously through us as we take the bull by the horns, or maybe learn how it can be done.  If we can do it, anyone can. We are totally down to earth normal folk who just want to be happy and travel and meet new people.