How to Afford to Travel the World as a Family

David Cole, host of the popular “Our Offbeat Life” podcast, is a champion for the worldschooling lifestyle and a guiding light for families aspiring to embrace full-time travel.

Having explored 37 countries, driven over 48,000 miles, and flown more than 151,000 miles, David uses his extensive travel experiences to coach families on the practicalities of globetrotting.

Through interviewing current family travelers about their triumphs and challenges, he provides invaluable insights and tips that encourage and equip families to leap into their own worldschooling adventures with confidence.

Check out season 1, episode [#13 ] of Our Offbeat Life! Listen on iTunes and Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

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Leave a Review!

Apple Podcast reviews are one of THE most important factors for podcasts. If you enjoy the show please take a second to leave the show a review on Apple Podcasts!

✔️ Click this link: Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
✔️ Hit “Listen On Apple Podcast” in the middle next to the picture.
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✔️ Leave an honest review.
✔️ You’re awesome!

Introduction

• John and Karen reached a low point in their marriage and needed a change (00:04:49)
• A question about moving abroad led them to discover full-time travel (00:05:15)

Preparing To Travel

• They saved aggressively and reduced expenses to fund a year of travel (00:14:23)
• Created remote income streams as backup (00:14:59)
• Involved their kids in the decision (00:09:31)

Hitting The Road

• Early visa issues created a setback but they persisted (00:47:52)
• Spent extended time in Vietnam due to COVID (00:08:40)
• Faced a serious scooter accident but received care from strangers (00:42:29)

Family Travel Lifestyle

• Kids favorite travel memories are normal activities made special by new locales (00:33:25)
• They practice self-directed education focused on passions, not standardized curriculum (00:24:04)
• Make relationship communication a priority no matter what (00:53:13)

Giving Back

• Built a sustainable Etsy shop to support local Guatemalan woman (01:00:41)

Conclusion

• Full-time travel can be affordable with strategic preparation and openness to alter lifestyles (01:08:45)

Video Chapters

00:00 Intro
04:29 What inspired full-time travel?
14:17 Saving & preparing financially 25:44 Road schooling children
32:25 Most memorable destinations 42:08 Dealing with serious accident 53:50 Making marriage work 24/7
1:00:15 Supporting local communities 1:08:23 Key advice & wrapping up

Transcript

[00:00:00] John: we didn’t know beforehand. You know, we thought you had to be multi millionaire to go travel the world at full time. And so we’re actually saving more money than we’ve ever saved before by traveling the world.

[00:00:14]

[00:00:23] Ella Doron: I just wanna travel. I just wanna travel. I just wanna travel. I just wanna travel. I just wanna see something bigger than me. I just wanna travel the world. I just wanna meet Someone different from me, I just want to travel the world. To see and smell and taste something completely new. I just want to travel the world.

[00:01:01] Ella Doron: I just want to see someone like you. I just want to travel the world, the world, the world.

[00:01:15] Brodi Cole: Hello and welcome to the Our Offbeat Life podcast. This is no ordinary travel show. Here, we delve into the extraordinary lives of intrepid families who’ve taken the leap into full time travel. Each week, we bring you captivating stories from globe trotting families, sharing their triumphs, their challenges, and their incredible adventures, from practical advice on homeschooling on the road, to inspiring tales of personal growth and transformation, we cover it all.

[00:01:47] Brodi Cole: Our mission is to help you, to show you that an offbeat life full of full time travel is not just a dream, but a feasible, enriching, and exciting reality. And, more importantly, we’re here to provide you with the tools, resources, and motivation to take that leap into the unknown. So buckle up, because we’re about to embark on an exciting journey.

[00:02:11] Brodi Cole: Let’s explore the world together, one episode at a time. Again, welcome to the Our Offbeat Life podcast. Here’s your host, David Cole. Let’s get started.

[00:02:23] David: Hello, adventurers. Welcome back to the Our Offbeat Life podcast. Today we have a very cool story for you. We’re joined by John and Karen Yates. They are an awesome couple with two kids that we met while spending a month in Cusco, Peru. We had such a great conversation with them late into the night that,

[00:02:44] David: kind of gave me the idea of creating this podcast instead of, just hemming and hawing about it. so without further ado. Let’s say hi to John and Karen. Hello.

[00:02:56] John: Hey, David. Hey David.

[00:02:58] John: Good to see you again.

[00:03:00] David: Good to see you again. Like I was saying there in the introduction talking with you guys in Cusco really gave me the idea that I wanted to get off the pot and actually start making this podcast. I’ve been thinking about it for years. Originally I wanted to do a book and then I wanted to kind of just interview people and just like.

[00:03:18] David: You know, we had such good conversations and I was like, there’s so many stories to tell. So let’s kind of do it So i’m really i’m really actually glad to have you guys on the podcast since you guys helped Helped me really get off the pot and do it

[00:03:33] John: well, that’s a special, special gift that you’ve given us, you know, too. So that’s, that’s great.

[00:03:38] Karen: So, yeah, it was really, really incredible to hear that. I said, really is one of the, one of our themes really is wanting to inspire people to, to do something, you know, whether it be starting a podcast or starting to travel or, or follow their dreams.

[00:03:51] Karen: That is really one of our main goals

[00:03:54] David: That’s awesome, yeah, and Let’s let’s give everybody out there a chance to know who you are So first, can you introduce yourselves tell us a little about your family what inspired you to really start traveling full time?

[00:04:05] John: Yeah, so we are, we left the states 4 years ago, over 4 years ago, and we left from Kansas City area, we’re from Michigan and Kansas, and that’s where, that was our last location was Kansas City area, Lawrence, Kansas, and so we just kind of went through. a moment in time where we’re like, what do we do now?

[00:04:28] John: You know?

[00:04:28] Karen: Well I’d say it was more than a moment, really. It was, it was a really challenging point in our relationship, in our lives, where we were at a very, very low point in our marriage, struggling to reconnect. We tried counseling, found it very unfulfilling, really didn’t meet what we needed. And so we started talking.

[00:04:49] Karen: And along the way, John did what every marriage counselor preaches not to, he tested me, wanted to see if what I was saying was actually, you know, being put to heart. So he tested me with a question. He was getting ready to go to Thailand for this opportunity, a whole long story. But he asked me like the night before he’s supposed to leave, what do you think about moving to Thailand?

[00:05:15] John: So in my mind, it was truly a test because in my mind, we were never leaving Lawrence, Kansas. We were never going to Thailand. We were never going to move. We were never going to travel. This was truly a pure test to see how open minded she was to this new way of communicating with each other. and so that was really the whole premise of, of that.

[00:05:39] Karen: So the answer, like he asked this question and I’m like, red alert, red alert, you know, sirens going off, like fear, fear, fear. Like, Oh my, that’s crazy. I just sat with it for a minute, two minutes, 10 minutes.

[00:05:54] Karen: I don’t know. It was a long time. I finally looked at him straight in the eye and I was straight in the eye. And I said, to be honest, it scares the heck out of me. And he’s like, okay, she didn’t say no, but as he already precluded here, I went to work the next day. I just kept thinking about it, like, what if we left the States?

[00:06:16] Karen: What if I wasn’t working this job always away from. John, always away from our kids. What if we had more time together with each other? What if we had more time with our kids? What if they’re not in this restrictive public school system? What if, what if, what if? And all these positives started coming in.

[00:06:35] Karen: Well, you turn the computer on. Yeah, I turned the computer on and in the background for the screensaver that day, was Thailand,

[00:06:45] David: Ah, the universe is speaking.

[00:06:47] Karen: the universe is trying to tell us something. So John left for Thailand. We continued to talk about it while he was in Thailand, and it kind of quickly transitioned from moving to Thailand to traveling full time.

[00:07:01] Karen: It was more in line with something that we really wanted to do. We really wanted to explore the world, thinking we always had to wait until retirement. Kids are gone, you know, they’re, they’re out of the house and we’re done working. We can go do this. And so it transitioned to that. And then John did this incredible thing.

[00:07:19] Karen: He did this little Google search. He’s like, there’s conferences for everything. Are there conferences for people that travel? for families that Travel.

[00:07:28] John: families that travel.

[00:07:29] David:

[00:07:29] John: Yeah. There’s lots of conferences for people who travel. Digital nomads and all that. But as families, I was like, where are these people at?

[00:07:36] John: Cause I don’t see them. I don’t hear them. And there was one that I found and I’m like, perfect. Let’s go. let’s learn how to do this. And so that was like, a year later, we had just missed the 1 that was in going on. And a year later, we kind of set that date, like, let’s go to this thing and see what happens.

[00:07:57] John: And we kind of set that date as we kept moving forward as the date for us to leave. To go on this journey, not just go check it out, but let’s go do this. Let’s start. And so it was, there was a lot involved in the beginning because we were truly at a worst time of our marriage ever. And we, we had no money, literally, we were renting and we’re like, how in the world is this, you know, this dream going to happen?

[00:08:24] John: You know, we’re still trying to make it happen for retirement. How are we going to make it happen now? and so that’s our

[00:08:29] John: step 1.

[00:08:31] David: step one. Well, it sounds like your step one has led you all over the world now. How many countries would you say you’ve been to now?

[00:08:40] Karen: I think you kind of recently we slow travel. So for years, I think we were only at like 10 or 12. Yeah. Which includes COVID. Yeah, we spent 18 months during COVID in Vietnam, which was incredible. But unintended. So you make the most of what happens and we definitely made the most of that one. For sure.

[00:09:02] David: Definitely. Definitely. And like, how did you prepare your children for this lifestyle?

[00:09:10] Karen: That’s a fun one. Because when we were thinking about this, our son was 12, our daughter was 6 and we said, okay, the 12 year olds in middle school, we kind of need to prep him a little bit sooner here. And so we just put it out there before we were 100 percent certain we were going to do this.

[00:09:31] John: It took us a long time and a lot of hours of talking before,

[00:09:36] Karen: you know, before we said, yes, we’re going to do this, but we weren’t even there yet. And we, we brought our son into it. And we’re like, what, what do you think? And he was a little bit hesitant. We had just recently moved like, a year and a half before we had moved into Kansas again.

[00:09:51] Karen: And it was like, he’d been having to start over and start over. And he initially thought of this as just another start over. eventually he kind of came around to it. He’s like, oh, I like this idea. then with a six year old, we were, we were planting seeds. We’re like, okay, there’s things that, that are important to her.

[00:10:07] Karen: Spending time with mom and dad, doing things together. And so we started planting seeds and we waited a little bit longer with her. We told her, and she was like, as soon as she heard that mom wasn’t going to be working outside of the home for nine, 10 hours a day, she was sold. She was all in. Almost 100 percent, she’s like, when do we leave?

[00:10:28] Karen: Like, let’s go now. Why do we have to wait until the date? I’m ready! Yeah.

[00:10:34]

[00:10:34] David: That sounds a lot like our son at the time. Cause he was around six when we, six, when we started doing all the major planning and he was so happy that mom was going to be home all the time and not gone nine, 10 hours a day.

[00:10:47] John: Yeah. The important things shine through when kids, you know,

[00:10:51] David: Yes, it definitely does. It definitely does. as as we’re kind of getting to know you guys, for the our listeners out there through a quick lightning round. so. See what we, see what we know here. So, coffee or tea?

[00:11:05] John: tea, tea,

[00:11:07] David: Ah,

[00:11:08] David: alright. Cat or dog?

[00:11:11] John: dog.

[00:11:14] David: Both of them on the same page, I love it! Pool or beach?

[00:11:21] Karen: Ooh, that’s a tough one.

[00:11:24] John: Both.

[00:11:28] David: Alright, alright, we can beach, okay. I’d go for, I’d go for the pool myself, less sand to clean up with.

[00:11:34] David: would you rather be able to understand and speak every language in the world or be able to teleport anywhere at any time?

[00:11:45] John: Ohh teleport. We’ve been to so many countries that you don’t know the language because and you get along just fine. So.

[00:11:55] Karen: It’s, yeah, I agree. That logic is very sound. I’ll go with teleporting. Airport, airplane travel. It’s just, it’s tirIng.

[00:12:03] Karen: Yeah, I like that.

[00:12:06] David: All right. Now imagine this, you get off the plane at your next destination, and you arrive into the zombie apocalypse. You’re a, you’re able to get to your bags, though. What’s the first thing you would grab and why?

[00:12:24] John: A GoPro? Yeah.

[00:12:25] John: That’s a.

[00:12:27] David: You’re going to document the zombie Apocalypse?.

[00:12:31] John: Record the zombies.

[00:12:35] David: All right. All right. Might have a good YouTube channel right there. All right. All right. So, let’s talk about finances. Cause you know, a lot of people’s question really revolves around how do I support myself if I’m going to jump into this lifestyle? So full time. On the road, how do you support yourselves?

[00:12:55] John: Right, great question. Yeah. So, when we 1st started off, we, we literally had no money, you know, we were had kind of gone. Not kind of, we’d gone through a rough time, moved to Kansas. It made no money on the house. We were renting at the time had no 401k, no savings what to speak of. and we’re like, how in the world is this going to happen?

[00:13:15] John: You know,

[00:13:17] Karen: depending on really one income for the most part. Yeah. So we were looking at job that wasn’t able to go remote, no option for remote work.

[00:13:27] John: So I, the reason I had gone to Thailand was to try to figure out how to make money online and I had started a marketing business. And that had started up pretty well pretty quickly.

[00:13:38] John: And so, before that had opened up a store and just wasn’t our style to go that route. I saw that that was could easily make money as well. We did went into marketing online doing Facebook ads for small businesses. And that had kind of gained some customers easily and very quickly. And so we’re like, Oh, this is perfect.

[00:13:59] John: We’re going to just going to run with it. and so that was our real plan. And our backup plan was to teach English online. and so that was all in place and we’re like, well, we’ve got this income. We can make that happen. Let’s

[00:14:12] Karen: go for it. And in the meantime, we were. Really, really scrupulously saving for this whole like nine months that we were going through this planning period.

[00:14:23] Karen: We made a very like a lot of choices to make sure that we could really save as much as possible. So we were, we had recently bought a pickup truck. We sold it back. We’re like, we’re not going to be paying that truck payment. We’re not going to be paying for gas maintenance, any of that. and that’s where a lot of our savings came in because we weren’t making that car payment anymore.

[00:14:46] Karen: So we scrupulously saved and we’re like, okay, we’ve had a year’s worth of savings, really saved up knowing full well that if we’re traveling to developing nations, the cost of living is so much lower than in the U S so we’re like, we can make this last for a year. We’ve got the marketing agency going.

[00:15:05] Karen: We’ve got the backup plan, which is important. And it turned out we needed that backup plan. COVID hit, the marketing agency went kaput. And we’re like, okay, let’s teach English. Not what we really wanted to do, but we’re out there. We’re loving what we’re doing. We’re loving the travel. We’re like, we need to make this work.

[00:15:25] Karen: So we started, teaching English, which kept us going for quite a while.

[00:15:31] John: Yeah,

[00:15:33] David: Yeah, teaching English was a great way for people to make money while traveling a few years ago. it’s become a little more difficult nowadays. you have to do a lot more marketing than you used to, but, since you’re no longer really teaching English, what kind of creative ways have you made or found to make money while traveling now?

[00:15:55] Karen: So it got to where, yeah, you mentioned that it’s not so easy to teach English. It was not so lucrative anymore. So it’s like, okay. Push comes a shove, you got to get a job. You got to have something coming in. We didn’t have the savings at that point. We kind of gone through some of them during COVID. So we didn’t have the savings where we could just sit back and figure things out.

[00:16:15] Karen: So I was like, okay, I need a job. I was lucky enough to be able to find a fully remote job that is very supportive of me traveling. So that works for now. We’ve got a lot of things in the works. Additionally, John’s. Trading, stock trading. So day trading, which is very nice there. He can do that from wherever, but it really came down to when I was looking for a job, finding one that was accepting of me traveling, because a lot of companies, they’ll say that they’re remote and they’ll say that the job is remote, but they want you in one location,

[00:16:54] Karen: this company, they’ve been.

[00:16:57] Karen: They’d been fully remote since before COVID, which is, you know, unique. And they had several people that traveled already and they’re like, yeah, you can make it work. We’re good with it. And I’m like, nice.

[00:17:10] David: did you have to do a lot of, research to find a company like that? Or did you just luck into this one?

[00:17:16] John: So on the job sites, so it’s looking for a job as a full time job. It’s tough. And luckily we had both of us looking for. 1 job. So there’s on the job sites, recruiting sites, indeed. And some of the other ones, you just click remote and you kind of filter through those remote ones and see how you can fit into whatever it is.

[00:17:41] John: They’re looking for, um, because what she’s doing now is. You know a completely different world from what she was doing before. So how do you find that job and a lot of traveling? You know, we’ve learned a lot from traveling is it doesn’t have to be what is normal The way you think so and it works We’re still has a U.S. Job, but the way we thought about going about getting that job I say we, but it’s, you know, she’s working. She’s doing it. Her job is to not to think outside the box and to allow yourself to be open to looking at something completely new and completely different and it’s pretty incredible. You know, we just did all the things you walk through and did a resume, had them help with the resume. and she now makes more than she did as a chemist working out here in the world. And it’s like crazy, you know, like who would have thought like we were stuck in Lawrence, Kansas, taking the blue trail on the weekends to go walk around the lake. And now we’re, you know, walking down Machu Picchu and it’s And it’s insane. It really is insane.

[00:19:05] David: definitely. Definitely. Yeah. You can’t quite be a, a chemist remotely. I don’t think I haven’t, I don’t know.

[00:19:13] Karen: There’s actually a little bit now where some people do. One of the guys I worked with, one of my past colleagues, he actually has a full time remote job where he does literally what’s called super chemistry. Does the research, sends it off to somebody at a CRO company in India or China. They actually do the work.

[00:19:29] Karen: He checks it. It’s, it’s not common. So yeah, I really had to look at what is my, what are my skills? What is my skill set? What can I use from that to parlay into something completely different that I can do while traveling? And so just being open to thinking about different ideas, thinking about different careers, I mean, to.

[00:19:49] Karen: Just to put it out there, you know, I went from being a chemist to doing R and D tax credits for a tax and accounting firm. vastly different.

[00:20:02] David: Oh, it is different. Yeah. I mean, you guys have moved all over the place as far as the work that you’ve done. Like you said, chemist, marketing, and now doing this, accounting work. I mean, it’s a lot and it’s a lot of changes and that kind of goes to show our listeners out there that you really need to be flexible.

[00:20:19] David: And like you said, think outside the box. If you want to make a lifestyle like this work. Yeah. So John, what is it that, what do you, what keeps you busy while you’re, while you’re traveling? What keeps you busy?

[00:20:31] John: So, you know, we have come a long ways from where we were before we left as far as having no money. And so that’s kind of been our goal. And one of the. You know, 1, 000, 003 reasons that we left was we were not in the spot. We want to be financially. So we need to make something happen. and so I do day trade.

[00:20:49] John: So I, I’ve been a financial advisor. I’ve traded stocks pretty much my entire life. So, I, I’m experienced at it and it, it’s, you know, it’s not a consistent. Income or, you know, it’s not, it’s not flat, you’re not getting a paycheck, but it does create income on a regular basis. And so that’s the beauty of it.

[00:21:08] John: so I do trade and sometimes it’s for an hour or two and sometimes it’s all day, but that’s kind of how we work. And this is. You know, we still live our, our quote regular lifestyle. We still go to work. We still, you know, you know, eat at home, cook dinners at home and just pretty much have a, a regular lifestyle, how you would have in the States.

[00:21:33] John: The only thing different that we do now is our location, which is.

[00:21:39] John: You know, it’s always changing, but it’s, our locations are what we used to think of as, you know, exotic vacation spots that we would hope to go to in retirement. And so, and we can live here now.

[00:21:54] David: Yeah. Ha ha ha. Has the time changes and time zones and things like that had any effect on your ability to work, any of these jobs?

[00:22:06] John: No,

[00:22:08] Karen: no, we were fortunately not working. You know, I was not working the remote job when we were in, in Asia, Southeast Asia, it’s difficult to connect with us. Very difficult. But we’ve been in the Americas for the last, what, a year and a half, two years, I can’t even remember. It’s been quite a while. So yeah, it’s not been so difficult.

[00:22:32] Karen: We’re planning to go to Europe next summer. A little bit concerned about some of the time zone, time changes there. It’s just something that we’re going to factor in, you know, we may switch up our, our family routine to where we go do things in the morning. And then. The afternoon and evening hours are work hours. It’s something we have to figure out.

[00:22:53] David: that’s how we were when we were in, Asia. evening was my work time and daytime morning was our family out, and about time.

[00:23:02] John: Yeah.

[00:23:02] David: It works well. Yeah, it works well if you can make it work for you.

[00:23:06] David: So speaking of family, let’s switch a little bit to education on the road. So how you ensureer your children are receiving a Proper education while traveling.

[00:23:19] Karen: Anyone ensure their children are receiving proper education. That’s a great question because really, if you think about it living in the States, we were dependent upon the public school system. Well, the public school system is. Not very personalized. Anyone who’s been involved with that knows it’s, it’s one size fits all really, which didn’t really work for our children.

[00:23:42] Karen: So, we were actually really excited to start traveling and to be more in control of their education because we’re like, man, we can push them in areas where. They’re already developed. We can speed past all of the review that you get every year, and we can allow them to really hone in on the things that they love.

[00:24:04] Karen: So, our son at 12 was already into computers. He loved computers, loved programming. He’d read this, like, 300 page book on different computer languages. And he’s been able to explore that on his time. So there was schoolwork, and then there was Him playing, but learning coding. So when he was 13, actually, we signed him up for a Harvard computer science course online, which it took him some time to complete it.

[00:24:37] Karen: He wasn’t able to do it in the one week timeframe. He was 13. Well, he didn’t care. It wasn’t about how quickly can you do this? It’s how can you challenge yourself and grow? And so we’ve used a lot of different tools over the years. But really, you know, we just encourage the education we’ve used online programs.

[00:24:58] Karen: We, we do things together as a family. So, you know, we’ll read together as a family. We, I don’t know, part of the thing you go into the grocery store and a trip to the grocery store is a math lesson big time. You’re converting currencies. So how much does this box of lucky charms cost in, in Thailand?

[00:25:20] Karen: And are we willing to pay the 13 that we calculated is to buy this box of lucky charms? The answer is no.

[00:25:28] David: So, so then, all right, so that’s one definite way for, for road schooling is, you know, calculating costs and things like that, putting them in an online course like you did with this Harvard class. what does a typical day look like for, for your kids?

[00:25:44] John: Yeah. I think, you know, for our youngest, we have a program that she goes through and it’s regular. It does all the subjects. it’s pretty in depth as far as. Teaching, you know, so because we work, we kind of our hands off and we needed something to just let them take on their own. so she’s pretty, pretty well versed in that, self learning, self learning piece.

[00:26:11] John: And she’s ahead of her schedule by a year or 2 and a half, 2 and a half years. And so this year we’re going to. Change it up to something a little more in depth. I don’t know if it’s in depth more in depth or not, but it’s, it’s a different program where it’s more involved for her. So she’s 11 and she’s going to be doing 9th grade curriculum.

[00:26:38] John: And so, you know, 1 of our concerns. Just starting out was, we need to keep track of every little detail of what they do so that we can. You know, graduate them and, you know, we did the homeschool license  as we left submitted it to the state. And, you know, it’s kind of meaningless now that we’re out here and can understand that, but with this new program, we’ll have a curriculum transcript at least to keep track of everything for her because we’re looking at high school.

[00:27:12] John: Yeah, so that’s just 1 piece of the puzzle. And for our oldest, you know, he did that for a little while and, you know, he was 12 going on 13. So his teenage years. To be real open, he kind of was like me when I was in school, tried not to do is tried to do as little as possible in school. And so he did exactly that, you know, and as we’re working, and he’s self learning, he’s literally doing nothing and kind of missed out on a lot of it as much as we tried to prompt him and get him to do more and more and more.

[00:27:48] John: It just wasn’t working. And so this is kind of the hard part of, of traveling and. Relying on a public education, but now you’re relying on yourself and, you know, our expectation was you go through this programs and we felt like we were failing because he was not doing it. and just clicking buttons, you know, a lot of it was just clicking buttons to get to the next page and not really grasping it to to move,

[00:28:17] Karen: not really intentionally learning yet. Yeah, he was grasping it. He’s. He’s a very smart kid. A very smart kid. Yeah. And, but we, we have talked about this a lot because how do we feel? My education was very different than John’s. John tried to do as little as possible. I was, very much the opposite.

[00:28:32] Karen: I was the, the brown noser who did every single assignment and very well. So it was a little bit of a struggle really for me to say, why are you not doing this schoolwork? We’ve kind of come to the conclusion that the entire time he has been learning. You know, he’s doing a lot of the coding. That coding involves a lot of logical thinking, involves a lot of Formulation really on what you’re doing. And he was always an avid reader.

[00:28:59] John: so this, the more we backed off of, of forcing the issue, the more he got into coding and from that, you know, we were able to, able to help him find a, a coding job. For a dentist. So he was helping code an app. And so right now he’s coding a trading bot for us. And so, we’ll pay him handsomely when that starts generating income, but you know,

[00:29:29] John: Because we’re in today’s world of developers and programming and things like that, there are other boot camps out there that adults are going through these six week boot camps and getting jobs at Google, and there’s lots of different programs out there that are available to do that. And you don’t need this American high school degree diploma diploma to get into a college.

[00:29:52] John: If that’s the route he wants to go, there’s. You can go pretty much anywhere, uh, around the world, which is incredible, you know, the things that we’ve learned about that were in Germany and in France, they’re teaching courses, all their courses in English, and it just, you can do that. And the cost of it is a 10th of what it is in the US.

[00:30:17] David: Yeah, there are so many different opportunities and different routes to go once you open yourself up to the possibilities of them. So that’s awesome. And, and, it’s cool. It sounds like it was a roundabout way with you and your son to try to get him to this point. But it sounds like he always knew what he wanted to do.

[00:30:35] David: You said it. When he was 12, he understood and liked the computers. He liked this, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him. He’s brilliant. sometimes he reminded me when we were talking, of myself when I was younger, when I was teaching my, my, my, my teachers how to use their computers. Cause you know, computers and PCs were brand new and schools back then.

[00:30:53] David: And I was the one telling my teachers how to do it. so, and that, and then I went into computers for a while because of. You know, that’s kind of was my passion for a long time, and he’s brilliant like that. And it’s good that he’s found a way to go that way. And you guys have found a way to connect him with the resources and tools to foster that in him. So that’s really cool.

[00:31:14] Karen: Right. And to really accept it as being something different, right? I like to say, like, I never knew a day as a child where I didn’t know that I was going to go to college. That was ingrained in me, you know, from infancy, you will go to college, you will go to college, right? This is the path that you take.

[00:31:31] Karen: And so I put that on our children when they were born too. And once we started to, actually, before we left, it was one of the questions. John, I talked about is what if they don’t go to college? Is that okay? And for me to change my thinking to say, you know what? This is a different world now. And if their passions do not lie where you absolutely must have a 4 year college degree. Then I need to be okay with that. And so it was some education on our part, some learning, some changing of our. Thinking as well that needed to, to come about because we had been programmed as we say programmed, with how our parents thought the best path to success was, and we had passed that on to our children, but looking at going and traveling and saying, you know, what, what if we had to kind of reassess that and say, is it okay?

[00:32:33] Karen: And we both said, yes, it is. Okay. Okay. But then, you know, there’s more learning along the way, so always learning, there’s always something new, especially, you know, living this life. We definitely experience a lot of new things and we have to be open to

[00:32:49] Karen: them.

[00:32:49] David: always new things. Always. Well continuing on that with the kids and everything. What would they say are their most memorable? Things that you guys have done so far in these four years.

[00:33:03] John: Yeah, one pops right into my head for our youngest. And it’s so, it’s so awesome because we live, you know, around the world and it’s not a vacation. it’s just where we live and it’s, it’s so incredible. So we like to go hiking and like to do things out in nature. and so her best memory, which is.

[00:33:25] John: Really cool because it would probably be the same thing if we were living in the States. So we’re in Vietnam we’re in the middle of nowhere riding our scooters to Go for a hike that we had told her for her birthday and lo and behold we took a different route And she’s like, where are we going? And afterwards we she said I knew we weren’t going hiking because you were wearing a white shirt.

[00:33:48] John: So we went to a water park for her birthday And so, this water park is her best memory of all the places we’ve been. And so, it was during COVID, not during COVID, it was right at the beginning or the end or somewhere, where it had just opened up. Reopened. Yeah, reopened, and we were the only ones in the entire water park, so after a little bit later in the afternoon, there was started to be a few people in this water park, giant, giant water park, massive water park, like a real water park that you’d be like, oh, we’d pay 60 to go to this in the States. So, That’s hers. Yeah, that’s hers.

[00:34:35] Karen: I think for our son, it’s been a lot of the outdoors. The places where we’ve gone hiking, where we’ve been out by ourselves. So, I was in Gaudi, is one that comes to mind, in Peru. And, what was the one in Mexico? The, it’s Apopo. It’s Apopo National Park, where we’re up in the mountains.

[00:34:57] Karen: We’re up at altitude. It’s just this really quiet. Introspective place, and I think he really just. enjoys that. I don’t think he’s really associated it yet. Made that connection that he is away from the electronics, away from the coding, but we have, and we’re like, this is incredible. He really loves that.

[00:35:21] Karen: you know, just all the incredible places, you know, Tikal in Guatemala and Machu Picchu and Peru.

[00:35:28] John: We were up at, you know, the, we stayed at altitude for almost a year and, you know, to get to Auzangate, we were camping at Over 18, 000 feet feet, which is, I think Mount Everest first base camp or something, this thing, and so, you know, it’s, it’s a different place.

[00:35:49] John: There’s not many people up there. it’s good to have the solitude, the solitude places really stand out for all of us.

[00:35:56] David: yeah, yeah, it’s really cool to get to see all these places. and just on your weekends, instead of like paying thousands of dollars for this once a year vacation, it’s just your normal weekend. You work all week and then it’s your normal weekend. You know, going to see something really beautiful, going on those hikes.

[00:36:15] Karen: Right? Yeah. Sometimes we have those pinch me moments, even on the weekend or a weekday. I mean, like, we’ll just be going. You know, we were in Peru in the middle of nowhere in the Sacred Valley and we’re just walking along and there’s just beautiful mountains all around us. And it’s just like, this is a Wednesday afternoon.

[00:36:33] Karen: Yeah.

[00:36:34] John: And we always remember back home in Lawrence, Kansas, you know, we did, we took the blue trail around Clinton lake and the trail or the white one. And so we’re out here, you know, in the Sacred Valley walking down the trail and I’m like. This is not the Blue Trail, I remember.

[00:36:52] John: So,

[00:36:53] David: Oh, yeah. I love how colorful the mountains are there in Peru. It’s just like so many different colors.

[00:37:00] John: yeah.

[00:37:01] David: So, all right. How about what’s the one thing your kids would say they miss about their old life?

[00:37:09] Karen: What would they miss about their old life? I think our youngest would say she probably would have said playgrounds. Some of the places we’ve traveled definitely haven’t had playgrounds, certainly not of the same magnitude that you would find in every community in the States.

[00:37:27] Karen: But,

[00:37:28] David: There are a lot more workout machines. The outdoor work working machines are that I’ve noticed in Asia and in South America.

[00:37:36] Karen: Right. Definitely.

[00:37:38] John: We’ve asked them many times, you know, what do you miss? And, you know, do you miss people? Do you miss friends? Do you miss the school activities? And neither one of them have, have said that they miss it. They’re

[00:37:50] Karen: right. I think when we went back to the States for the first time, so we’ve been traveling for three years at the time, we went back to the States for the first time.

[00:37:59] Karen: And I think what we all loved was drinking tap water and hearing English routinely spoken. And so definitely places we’ve traveled, there have been people that speak English, but we’ve never. We haven’t visited Europe yet, you know, so we haven’t been to England where English is a native language. We haven’t been to Australia.

[00:38:23] Karen: So I think hearing English as the primary language, it was like, Oh, this is kind of nice. We can just communicate a little bit easier. But that’s also 1 of the beauties is while we’ve traveled, you know, they’re learning Spanish now. They’re both actually much more. able to speak Spanish than either John or I, which is great because we use our 11 year old as our translator, which gives us some funny glances sometimes.

[00:38:50] Karen: But even before that, it’s really incredible to see how kids can communicate without language, they can find a friend at the park. You know, when we do find a playground and they can play together and they can swim together on the beach, even if They don’t speak the same language and so while they enjoy that, they’ve also learned how to communicate without that.

[00:39:13] David: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, let’s bring it back to you all for a minute because all right, I mean, I know that traveling can be fun. It can have its hiccups. we’ve talked a lot about us, some of that stuff internally. I’d like to let our. Our listeners out there hear a little bit about some of your favorite destinations, and then we can get in a few of the hiccups that you’ve come along the ways as well. So what’s been your favorite destination? You can both have different ones, it’s fine. What’s your favorite destination so far?

[00:39:47] John: Favorite is tough. We’ve, you know, we’re going back to Guatemala, which is the 1st place we’re going to go back to, but I think, you know, we had such a special time in Vietnam because we were there so long that Man, it’s tough to be just mind blowing for, for the, just the people and the, the places that we visited.

[00:40:13] John: you know, we had such a strong image of what Vietnam was going to be like, which helped cement, uh, the opposite of what we encountered. And so that’s been really powerful because I never wanted to enter Vietnam. And for us to end up there and spend 18 months. It was life changing.

[00:40:36] David: That’s how, that’s how I felt about Columbia. I, I had this one world view in my brain from youngest of ages, you know, and getting there and seeing

[00:40:49] David: 180, people with the most friendly people in the world and a lot of the places had an awesome infrastructure and I just loved it. So,

[00:40:59] John: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s, that’s one of our favorites in Vietnam and we have a lot of memories there. Good and bad. still have people that we talked to. So it’s, it’s pretty, incredible. All the places we’ve been to, we always remember the people the most. And then we remember the experiences and all of that.

[00:41:22] John: so it’s.

[00:41:23] Karen: And then hiccups. Well, we can have, we can have fun ones where we can talk about, you know, beds that are hard as a rock

[00:41:30]

[00:41:30] David: oh

[00:41:31] Karen: and pillows that are, you know, paper thin showers that we had this, we called it the suicide shower when we were in Nicaragua, there was literally wires attached to the shower head that occasionally sparked.

[00:41:44] Karen: So there’s fun ones like that where it’s like, okay, this is different. And we, you learn to roll with the punches when you travel for sure. But the toughest one, and I’ll, I’ll dive into it. We had an accident of actually, we had two scooter motorbike accidents. both with my son and I, and the second one was really, it was pretty scary.

[00:42:08] Karen: I wiped out, and I have a concussion, so I don’t remember any of this, but I was going on a, it was a turn, and then there was a hill, so I was trying to accelerate while there was sand at the bottom of the hill, because we’re on this peninsula, close to the ocean, there’s sand, I wiped out. Our son ends up with a broken wrist.

[00:42:29] Karen: I end up with a concussion. I’m knocked out, bleeding head, pouring into the asphalt, filling the cracks in the asphalt. we end up, thankfully there was some passerbys that called an ambulance that called the scooter company to pick up the scooters, so we didn’t have to worry about that. That helped, you know, staunch the flow of blood.

[00:42:51] Karen: Made sure the ambulance found us. Just this incredible outpouring of love. Our son and I, ambulance

[00:42:57] John: drives by us because it’s such a small road, it has, it knows it has to turn around. So it goes by us and keeps going and we’re like, there’s nowhere to turn around that way. So it couldn’t turn around. It took probably another, I don’t know, felt forever, but it’s probably 15 or 20 minutes before it could turn around and get back to us.

[00:43:21] John: so it was a very scary time. and having that accident. Yeah. Just put so much in perspective. you know,

[00:43:29] Karen: it really did. So our son and I ended up spending a night in the hospital in Vietnam during COVID. John and our daughter were not allowed in. In fact, we weren’t even allowed in the hospital until they had done our test. I don’t remember any of this. I guess a concussion. My first memories of it, like 1130 that night, I woke up in this hospital ward. Like think of like one flew over the cuckoo’s nest kind of hospital ward. I see our son across the aisle and he’s, he’s eating, which is, you know, perfectly normal for our son being a teenage boy.

[00:44:04] Karen: I signed, I love you to him. He signed. I love you back. And then I lost consciousness again, and, but the incredible thing about this is, you know, I end up with a concussion stitches in my head MRI all banged and bruised road rash everywhere. The incredible thing is just the outpouring of love that we got from perfect strangers.

[00:44:30] Karen: And then actually from our neighbors. We’re in this building. There’s eight apartments. The people across the hall from us happen to be American. No other Americans in the entire building. No other tourists. They’re all Vietnamese. Our neighbors are Americans. They helped John so much. They stayed with our daughter that day. One of them came with John, ended up getting our phone. We had one phone between the two of us. No way for John to get into the hospital. He was able to get our phone into me. So that we could talk to their, their phone. And I was just as outpouring of love, the scooter company, they didn’t even want to charge us for the rental.

[00:45:11] Karen: And we’re like, we wiped, like I wiped out on your bike. You’re back there fixing it. At least let us pay the daily rate. And they were like, no, no, no. And we’re like, no, we’re going to pay at least the daily rate. Like you came and picked up the scooters. Like, we didn’t have to worry about this. And it was just. This outpouring of love and support and it was just so incredible

[00:45:36] John: and it was no language, you know, we’re no language really you can’t we can’t communicate like

[00:45:41] Karen: we could not speak Vietnamese. We could not understand it. it was just incredible and the other thing that that accident really brought home for me was a bigger purpose in life.

[00:45:54] Karen: That I need, I have a bigger purpose, more than just being a wife, more than just being a mom, more than just traveling around and enjoying the beautiful world around us. I really felt like, no, I have this larger purpose. I need to inspire people to do, to go after their dreams, do whatever it is that they really want to do. And that came out of that accident, and so this accident, which I wish truly, truly wish had never, ever happened, there was so much good that came out of it.

[00:46:25] David: How early on in your travels was that?

[00:46:29] Karen: That was a year and a couple months. Yeah, so our 1st accident was actually a month, less than a month, a month, and

[00:46:41] David: Wow.

[00:46:42] John: we’re like, oh, boy, this is how we start,

[00:46:46] John: you know,

[00:46:47] David: And yet you kept, yet you kept trucking on and finding ways to make this lifestyle work. and you said at the beginning of all this,

[00:46:55] David: That you started this with when your marriage was a bit rocky. You were at a low point in your life and in your marriage. How has traveling brought you closer together or?

[00:47:08] John: yeah, I think that, you know, the, there’s a 1, 000, 003 reasons as to why it all happened. And so it’s, it’s difficult to say. What led to that, you know, I want to kind of reverse here for a second, because we traveled through the U. S. from Kansas City to Vegas for the 1st month.

[00:47:29] John: And then we were going to Australia, and this kind of leads into your question as well. And so we’re getting ready to get on the plane and they call us up to the desk. You don’t want to check something real quick. And I’ll share it here with you, David. They said something was missing. And had you ever had a, had you ever been arrested?

[00:47:52] John: Had you ever been arrested? Well, I was 21 at one point,

[00:48:00] Karen: and young and stupid, and a male,

[00:48:02] John: young and stupid, and, and. Got pulled over and was arrested for drinking and driving. and so I had been arrested and didn’t wasn’t able to get on the plane. So we’re literally the plane is leaving and, you know, it’s we’re boarding.

[00:48:18] John: It’s not like an hour a day earlier. It’s we’re boarding the plane and. We’re told you can’t get on this plane. So that threw a big monkey wrench and we’re, you know, every dime at this point for us is sacred because we’re like, this has to go to plan or we’re in trouble and we’re not even out of the states yet and we’re going, we’re in San Francisco.

[00:48:42] John: And, you know, to buy a Coke is 40 or something. And so we don’t get on that plane. And so those tickets were non refundable. So that money’s wiped out. We’re like, where do we go now? And we’re, we’re just scrambling. It’s one of the biggest hurdles we’ve been through. you know, traveling to get to this destination of this family summit, the conference that we want to go to.

[00:49:12] John: In Bali and we’re scrambling around stuck in San Francisco. We’re at Motel cheapo, you know, that’s not cheap at all. It’s like, is this is this, you know, should be the Hyatt here. And we can’t afford to be in San Francisco much longer. I know why there’s homeless people in San Francisco. And so we’re struggling here.

[00:49:34] John: Like, how do we get out of this place? Do we just call it quits and go back to Lawrence, Kansas literally that early on? because You know, to buy a new tickets. And so we, we trekked on and that whole scene right there did make us, it forced us to get on the same page and think together, think of solutions, think of ways we had done more communicating in that moment of time of what do we do next.

[00:50:08] John: we weren’t screaming at each other. We weren’t fighting. It was just kind of this symbiotic journey of we have to move forward. And so it has brought us traveling has brought us together because of the time we spend. Together,

[00:50:26] Karen: well, to be fair, though, not to give your listeners the idea that we were yelling and screaming at each other while we were planning to do this.

[00:50:33] Karen: No, no, we had kind of overcome the worst of the hurdle and the planning definitely brought us closer together. But then. Definitely handling the hiccups along the way, dealing with the, Oh, shit moments. What do we do now? Just has allowed us to be even closer, spending the time together that we had always lacked because of work.

[00:50:58] Karen: You know, even if we’re still working remote jobs, We’re across the table from each other, you know, we can look at each other. We can stop and give him a kiss, you know, we can do that. And it’s very normal. It’s very natural. And we’re still spending, you know, we are still together. And so, yes, our relationship has improved magnitudes. Orders of magnitude better than it was.

[00:51:24] Karen: And. Yeah, definitely traveling. You know, there are hiccups that you have to get through. And then there’s those moments that are just like pinch me moments like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we’re here experiencing this together with the kids with the kids and it’s not vacation.

[00:51:42] David: Yes,

[00:51:43] Karen: Yeah, it’s all combined to make it so much, so much better, stronger,

[00:51:48] David: and I love that you share both of those stories. John, I mean, you and history, a lot of a lot of men have made mistakes when they’re younger. There’s a lot of women who have made mistakes when they were younger, too. And sometimes they can come back and bite you, and you don’t necessarily know that until until you’re older and it happens.

[00:52:05] David: but that’s why so many people are able to inspire, younger travelers or younger people by telling them, this is the mistakes that we made. This is how we’ve grown some of them. This is, so this is how you can avoid that situation. So I appreciate your candor and coming out and talking about that.

[00:52:25] David: And especially seeing how your, your marriage has changed through the communication that’s involved in all of this, not. The listeners, not that travel solves all your marital problems. It’s a good idea to talk and get on the same page before you get into this lifestyle. but you can make it work through talk, through communication. And that’s awesome.

[00:52:47] Karen: Right. And one thing we have learned definitely because we are together 24 seven with our kids is there are times when we, John and I, we need to solve something. There’s disharmony between the two of us and we have just learned that that’s a priority. And so if we need to tell the kids, look, we’re going in the bedroom because we need to talk, then that’s what we do.

[00:53:13] Karen: And we don’t put it off. We don’t say, Hey, see you later, honey. You know, we don’t do that. We prioritize that. And so with a remote job, I can say, you know what? I’m going to be back in a bit and I can walk away and we can fix what needs to be fixed so it doesn’t fester. It doesn’t stir and boil and become even worse. Our lifestyle allows us to actually do that in the moment. We don’t have to wait till work is done, till the kids are in bed, till anything. We just say now.

[00:53:50] David: Yeah. And that’s, that’s amazing. Yeah. Because this full time family travel lifestyle, it’s not that much different than living in the States and going off to work, except. You are together more. so you do have that more of an opportunity. You’re not gonna go away and fester, like you said. You, you, you have your, you can go away if you need the time to get, get away, just get out and about.

[00:54:20] David: But you don’t have to let things fester

[00:54:22] David:

[00:54:22] John: but you’re right. It’s true is everything is very similar to. A lifestyle in the

[00:54:29] John: states, as far

[00:54:30] David: You have the same costs

[00:54:32] David: relationships,

[00:54:33] David: You have the same costs involved. I mean, you still have to pay for a place to live. You still have to pay for food. you still have to pay for some transportation. it’s just the amounts of those things vary. Whereas if you’re in the U. S. in a house or an apartment, most likely they’re going to be the same and fixed every to every month.

[00:54:50] John: right? Right. Yeah, we’ve saved, you know, our living expenses have dramatically dropped and, you know, so it’s that is a big. Massive difference of living out here that we didn’t know beforehand. You know, we thought you had to be multi millionaire to go travel the world at full time. And so we’re actually saving more money than we’ve ever saved before by traveling the world.

[00:55:17] David: All right. I don’t want to let you go before we talk about it. Your work with local communities, because when we met in Cusco, you guys really inspired me and how I thought we had some cool community stories where we talked to some locals and things like that. We’ve met others who talked and spent time with locals, but tell us about your interaction with this woman in Guatemala and what you did for her.

[00:55:44] John: Yeah. It’s just, it’s

[00:55:47] Karen: very

[00:55:47] John: special story. It’s very special. So we’ve arrived in Guatemala. We go to Antigua and we’re walking down this beautiful You know, iconic street in Antigua and it’s a very touristy spot. And so all of the locals are coming up to you and wanting to sell you something. And we travel, so we don’t collect collectibles or things as we go along trinkets or anything.

[00:56:12] John: And so this lady came up to us right away. And it’s one of the first ladies, I think that wanted to sell us, you know, her wares and I’m like, no, I just. I can’t, not going to, can I take your picture, you know, and I’ll give you, you know, some something.

[00:56:29] Karen: Yeah.

[00:56:30] John: Something small. So I take her picture and I’m looking at this picture and I’m like, holy cow, this.

[00:56:37] John: You didn’t look at it until later. Okay. True. I didn’t look at it till later, but I’m taking all the pictures. Say thank you. Give her, you know, some paper money. I don’t know how much it is. And I realized later on that it’s. 50 cents or something. It’s a ridiculous low amount. And I felt really bad and I’m like, I need to find this lady to give her something.

[00:56:59] John: Cause she, she took it and said, thank you. And I’m realizing this is not even money for her. It’s so little. And so I felt really bad. And so when I look at the photo through the photos that I had taken, I realized that this photo is one of the best photos I’ve ever taken, period. and I’m like, holy cow, I need to find this lady and really show her the photo, one.

[00:57:25] John: And then pay her something that was worthwhile.

[00:57:29] Karen: You really wanted to share that photo with her as well, you know, give her a physical copy of it. Yeah, and it’s such an iconic photo because there’s this beautiful yellow archway in the back framing the volcano. And she’s standing there in this beautifully embroidered bright yellow top cultural, you know, and she’s got her basket on top of her head, holding out her scarves and her arms.

[00:57:55] Karen: It’s just gorgeous. It’s so colorful and it’s just so iconic. So the thing is, we don’t see this woman for weeks and

[00:58:02] John: weeks and we’re looking for her. She’s got to be here. Like this is her, this is her route. You know, everybody is here selling their things. We can’t find her. And so finally, I think five or six weeks later,

[00:58:16] Karen: we see her again.

[00:58:18] Karen: And John’s like, you, and she speaks no English. So we go up to her and we’re like, we have something for you. But of course we don’t have it with us. We haven’t printed this photo. So we spend the next We say, okay, we’ll come back here in an hour. Can you be in the square in an hour? And she’s like, Oh, so we spent the next hour scrambling around going to five different print shops, trying to print this photo before we find one who can actually print it.

[00:58:45] Karen: So we get it printed buy a frame, find her and she’s so touched, just emotional. Like, oh my gosh, one, you know, it’s, it’s a nice photo for her, I’m sure, but she’s just so touched that we went to the effort to do this for her.

[00:59:01] John: So give her, give her the photo and proceed to buy, you know, all kinds of things from her. So we had this connection, you know, early on from the first photo, we had a connection. And then when we, when we saw her again, like she recognized us instantly and I recognized her instantly and we just had this Reconnection again. spent a lot of time with her. Well, we, the photo, then doing the photo and buying things and after that we saw her like almost every day.

[00:59:35] Karen: we went out, we would see her. Finally, we learned her name, Raquel.

[00:59:40] John: We learned her name, but we, like, we couldn’t go around town without running into her like. unplanned, just having to see her every day again. And so it became our connection.

[00:59:51] Karen: She always had the most beautific smile. It’s just absolutely beautiful. Lights you up and we’re like, Oh my gosh.

[00:59:57] John: So to answer your question, what we were trying to do was help her in some way because we really ran into each other and became friends after seeing each other so much. And so I was like, how do we help her? You know, you can’t just give her money and say goodbye.

[01:00:15] John: See you later. You can, but that’s one way. And so we wanted to open up a Etsy store for her. So we proceeded to ask her and how would this work for you? Do you like this idea? So we opened up an Etsy store for her, which required a lot. And this is kind of where the schooling comes in. Our daughter, helped us open up the store and helped us.

[01:00:41] John: Take all the photos of all the products, enter descriptions, find the descriptions and do all of this. And so we knew that Raquel could not handle an Etsy store. She’s not tech savvy. She doesn’t know how to do it. So we literally have run this store for her. so when something sells. We contact her. We send her the picture. we send her the money and she then goes to DHL and ships it. So we don’t have any of the product. We don’t have to take care of anything. All we have to do is say, Raquel. We got a sale for you. Here’s the money. Here’s the photo of the scarf. Go ahead and ship it. So we sent her the money, you know, everything, 99 percent goes to the States.

[01:01:32] John: So it’s enough money to cover all of shipping. It’s enough money. She’s making more on the scarves that we sell than she would selling them there on the street.

[01:01:42] John: Yeah.

[01:01:44] David: Oh yeah, the ones on the street, I mean, you can buy them for 10s buy them in the U. S. and it’s going to be know,

[01:01:52] John: Right. Right. So shipping is. It’s it’s a pretty great how it all turned out. You know, shipping is covered. and I think one scarf, well, two scarves, pays her rent for the month

[01:02:10] David: wow, that’s really

[01:02:11] John: and covers all the shipping. So,

[01:02:15] David: So it sounds like you really, you guys really, you made a great connection and you guys were in a place to be able to help her out. And. In a way that, not, I mean, not everybody’s able to do that. And what really inspired you to like, say, you know what? I like her scarves. Let’s let’s set this, let’s set the shop up.

[01:02:38] John: yeah, it was more of the connection of the part of the people, you know, her and I, it wasn’t. Let me go help somebody. We tried it in Cusco because we had a similar connection starting with, and that I think you’ve got to see a little bit of that where we were trying to help this lady and it, it just didn’t work out because of the money situation of how,

[01:03:01] Karen: because of the shipping costs.

[01:03:02] Karen: Yeah. The shipping costs. International shipping is very expensive. Yeah. And so we were able to find a way in Guatemala to make it. Affordable to where we can make the numbers work in Cusco. We weren’t able to do that. And it was a little sad because we were like, we have this connection with somebody and that’s really what it is.

[01:03:18] Karen: You know, like we see Raquel and we’re like, Oh, she’s such a wonderful person, a beautiful, you know, inside and out, and it’s like, we just want to help her and her children. How can we do that? And, you know, not just a one time thing. Right. So the Etsy store is wonderful because there are continual orders.

[01:03:39] John: Every month.

[01:03:39] John: It’s not once a year. It’s not here you go one time. It’s literally every month that we get to stay connected to her because we talk to her about, hey, we got another sale. and so we have that interaction regularly. So it’s been a, it’s been a great journey.

[01:03:56] David: That’s really cool. Yeah. And, and for those of you listening, who are curious about this, we’ll have a link to the Etsy store in the show notes so you can take, take a look at it and maybe buy something for Raquel. Help her out with help her out. So she’s got some beautiful stuff. So that’s really cool. All right. Well, Before we wrap up, I do want to do a little travel trivia with y’all.

[01:04:21] Karen:

[01:04:21] David: So, we’re big fans of, you know, trivia pursuit type questions, so let’s see what we can do.

[01:04:29] Karen: Yikes. You’re scaring me here, David.

[01:04:31] David: Alright, well you’re two brains, so let’s see what you’ve got.

[01:04:35] John: Hmm.

[01:04:36] David: which ancient city is located high in the Andes Mountains and is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in South America?

[01:04:48] Karen: Might that be Machu Picchu?

[01:04:50] David: Ding, ding, ding. There’s one.

[01:04:53] Karen: We’ve We’ve been there.

[01:04:55] David: All right. Now, which ancient city is located in the rainforests of Guatemala and is home to some of the tallest pyramids in the Americas?

[01:05:06] John: That would be Tikal.

[01:05:09] David: Yes, Tikal.

[01:05:10] John: Yeah. Incredible

[01:05:11] Karen: place. We loved it.

[01:05:13] David: Incredible. All right, now, which archipelago of islands is located off the coast of Ecuador and is famous for its unique wildlife? Giant tortoises, marine iguanas, blue footed boobies, that sort of thing.

[01:05:30] Karen: ah, the Galápagos.

[01:05:31] Karen: Yeah.

[01:05:33] David: Three for three!

[01:05:35] Karen: All right. You’re giving us easy ones here, David

[01:05:38] Karen: It’s okay. We’re okay with that?

[01:05:40] David: It’s just what pops up in front of me here. now which Bay is located in Vietnam and is known for its thousands of limestone, karsts jutting out of, Emerald waters

[01:05:53] John: Yeah. That’s Ha Long Bay.

[01:05:56] David: Ha Long Bay, yes very. Yeah Very good.

[01:05:59] John: we were there during Covid, so it was a different, unique experience with no tourists. Mm-Hmm.

[01:06:06] David: I bet. I mean, to see that Bay and have little, very little people be there, it would. Yeah, that would have to be beautiful. All right, last one. which vibrant Colombian city is known for its colorful colonial architecture, lively plazas, and stunning beaches? And it’s often called the beautiful walled city.

[01:06:27] Karen: ah, Cartagena, Columbia

[01:06:30] David: Very good. Where, where are you guys today?

[01:06:33] Karen: in Cartagena.

[01:06:36] Karen: Across the street from the beach,

[01:06:38] Karen: So

[01:06:40] David: So five for five and we end up where you are. Very good.

[01:06:43] John: right.

[01:06:45] Karen: Very cool.

[01:06:47] David: Well, as we wrap up, do you have any travel advice from your experience? what would you give to other families wanting to make a positive impact during their travels?

[01:06:59] Karen: I’d say 1 of the biggest things we do is we stay away from the resorts. We do not feel that we are on vacation. We are living right? And so our most favorite interactions come from interacting with the community with the people around us. And so we’ve, you know, the resorts are some, I mean, come on. It’s luxury.

[01:07:20] Karen: It feels wonderful, but you don’t get that same interaction with people. And so 1 of the biggest ways that we’ve saved money from vacation is we don’t stay in hotels. We don’t stand resorts. We stay in Airbnbs. oftentimes we book them for a month, and if we liked them, then we’ll ask to extend. oftentimes the owner will give us a discount, lets us stay in beautiful places, but with the people.

[01:07:46] Karen: that’s really, really important to us to, you know, shop at the local grocery stores, you know, to go to the markets, the markets are some of our favorite places, to get some of the most incredible produce and wares. Through the markets, but that’s definitely one of the ways that one, we’ve saved money, but two, we’ve really had those interactions, those personal interactions that are so important to

[01:08:10] John: us,

[01:08:11] David: Very cool. All right. And, how about those listeners that might be inspired by your story and considering a similar adventure? What is one piece of advice for them?

[01:08:23] John: you know, I think, um, if you are looking to move into a new lifestyle, it is just that it’s a new lifestyle and what you imagine it to be is how it can be. and so that’s the beauty of it. And I, I think our message, my message is that it’s not a vacation. I keep saying that to ourselves to remind us that it’s not vacation.

[01:08:45] John: It’s, it is very similar to what you’re doing back home. it’s just in a different location. and if you can live your lifestyle how you want it to be and grow your relationships like we have and just kind of embrace the family, you can do that. And it’s very difficult to do that in the States. you know, so I think my piece of advice is to, to allow yourself to imagine what you want it to be like, and that’s exactly how it can be

[01:09:21] David: I like it. I like it. Imagine it. Yeah. Imagine it into being. Yeah. Well, that’s excellent advice. All right. And to everybody out there, that’s a wrap on today’s episode. I want to thank you two very much, John, Karen, for being here again. You guys really helped me get off the boat and actually start making this podcast.

[01:09:46] David: So to me, this is a very special episode having you guys on board. It’s really been a good experience talking with you again. Some of the same stories you talked about in the past together and giving our listeners a chance to hear these stories. You guys have a very inspirational message. I hope that we can share some information about y’all to our listeners in our show notes so that they can connect with you as well in the future if they have any questions, but,

[01:10:15] David: it’s not always easy, but it’s doable this lifestyle. So, until next time, everybody just keep dreaming, keep exploring and remember the world is yours to discover. Take care.

[01:10:28] I just want to travel, I just want to travel, I just want to travel, I just want to travel. I just want to see something bigger than me. I just want to travel the world.