Our First Post! How did we Become The Perpetual Honeymooners...?

​​Here it is! And Less than 1500 Words! Finally, after years in the making, our first blog post! I didn't even realize how long I've been putting this off... I spent months narrowing down pictures, jotting down notes about various topics, designing a website, then changing it, then going with a different provider, and then updating the look of that website. And, truthfully, I will probably never be satisfied... I love to write, and never seem to be at a loss for words - just ask my husband! However, my suspicion is that all of these delays were simply because I was worried about writer’s block. Then, today, inspiration struck! ​​I wrote 3 blog posts! Then, it hit me… Uh, the first post really should be an introduction… I’m a meat and potatoes kind of girl, so I want to share the “good stuff” with you guys. But, I am also a marketing and PR girl, so I know that blog readers want to know about the author, to insure that the advice is sound, and I am a reliable source. So, as a friend of mine would say, “I’m gonna slow my roll” and make this first post an “about us” post. Then, meat and potatoes – I promise!

How We Met Jordan and I actually “met” in elementary school. Jordan was a grade ahead of me, and although we had many of the same friends, we never really connected. Then, while attending two different colleges, a mutual friend suggested Jordan tutor me in chemistry (Yes, chemistry - cute, right?). It was like we saw each other for the first time, and fell in love immediately (well, “immediately” - 12 years after we met…). Christy + Jordan = Travel: How it all Started

​​I have loved traveling my entire life. My parents have always gone out of their way to make their modest income stretch, to take us on a small family vacation each year. We have experienced many interstate motels, road trips in crummy cars, and eating PB&J the week or two before vacation to save the grocery money, but we never minded. I grew up with a taste for adventure. Jordan didn’t travel much at all growing up. He had family in Texas, and once each year or two, they would go to Waxahachie, Texas to see his Mom’s family. As a teenager, they did visit a few state parks, but travel just wasn’t really a big thing for his family. Not knocking it, just different priorities. Jordan learned very early on in our relationship that traveling was a big deal for me. Being the sweet guy that he is, he quickly learned that I would rather have a trip almost anywhere than a gift. In college (on a scholarship), he was working 2 jobs, paying very little in rent or expenses, and I was working with even less expenses -, so we could afford to travel pretty often. At that point, we hadn’t even considered the feasibility of international destinations, but after Jordan caught my love for travel, we tried to visit cool places in the US as often as we could.

​​Budget Travel Enters the Scene Shortly after getting out of college, reality struck: the recession hit and I lost my super awesome first job, our expenses of each living on our own increased and after 8 years together, we had decided to get married. We were still full of wanderlust, but we were BROKE. We started getting VERY creative with our non-existent travel budget. For every holiday and birthday we asked for gas cards, we bartered things on craigslist in exchange for restaurant gift cards, gas cards, and many, many times I traded website design for vacation rentals, attraction tickets and restaurant gift cards. Sometimes, we even borrowed our parents’ more reliable cars for road trips. We became VERY frugal travelers. In exchange for planning their trips for them, both sets of parents let us tag along on pretty much all of their vacations and weekend trips (We slept on a lot of hotel room floors and vrbo couches!). Wait, We CAN Afford to Travel Internationally? Flash forward a few years to 2012. We both have pretty good jobs, we’ve bought a house to flip, we are almost out of all our debt (except those stupid college loans that we will be paying on until we’re 965 years old) and we’re talking about a vacation. Jordan texts me at work, “How about a cruise?” I immediately picture Real Housewives of (any city) gorgeous, but plastic women sitting on the pool deck sipping matai’s as their gold jewelry and over-tanned skin glistens in the sun. I’m thinking, Only rich people take cruises. We can’t afford that! Sure, we’re doing better than our broke newly-wed status, but let’s be real, here. So, I text him back something to that effect. He says, “No, really, we can take a cruise to Mexico for like $500.” He had, during his oh-so-busy workday, spent a few hours researching cruise.com and found their “last minute deals.”. By the end of the week, we had a balcony room booked on the Jewel of the Seas, our travel papers in order, our road trip to Tampa mapped and our hotel room booked.

The International Travel Bug Bites​​​​

Okay, okay, so I know cruise ports are like the most commercial and touristy places on earth (well, ​​​​other than Disney), but for two kids from rural Indiana, who had never been outside of the US, it was the cultural experience of a lifetime! The arts and crafts, the food, the street vendors; Not to mention the cruise itself with the amazing food, the nightly shows, the incredible rooftop parties. One 5 night cruise, and we were hooked! A lifestyle was born. We stayed awake into the early morning hours on our last night talking about all of the amazing experiences we have been missing, and what it would take to make traveling a lifestyle; The planning, the career choices we would have to consider, and the financial decisions involved (no big house on the cul-de-sac or new cars for us). After living several years as broke, deep in debt, silly newly-weds, who were able to finally dig themselves out, we had (have) become obsessive planners. We have also seen that combining our drive and determination, we are a pretty good team. So, a plan was born.

​​The Plan After that night, we immediately jumped into action. We used the money from our house flip to buy a bank-repo in a safe and cute in-town neighborhood with pretty low taxes and utilities. We have done all of the renovations ourselves, as we had the cash, without loans and no expensive contractors (expect when absolutely necessary). Until about a year ago, we were both driving paid off cars that were each 10 years old with a combined 500,000 miles. My poor ol’ gal finally died, so we purchased a slightly used car that we knew we could pay off with a 2 year loan. We make numerous daily choices that help us save money as well. We have continued to use many of our super-frugal travel skills we learned as broke newly-weds. We travel during off-peak seasons and we aren’t too picky on our destinations. We have also taken up inexpensive travel hobbies like kayaking, hiking and snorkeling. Jordan started a job a couple of years ago that has very accommodating vacation dates. I started my own business two years ago. I have a virtual office and can do about 99% of my duties from literally anywhere on the planet that has wi-fi, so my vacation dates are even more flexible. It would not be an exaggeration to say the majority of our lives revolve around travel.

Did Our Plan Work? The past 4 years, while working full-time professional jobs, we have visited 24 countries (our latest estimate was 40+ major international cities), 5 continents and several of the World Wonders (there seems to be some debate on the “Official Listings” so, we’ll just say “several”). This past year, we had an exchange student who couldn’t leave the country, so during the past 10 months, we have been to 13 US states and visited around 50 major cities. So, we aren’t full-time backers, we aren’t professional travelers, but we are a couple who had a dream to have very little debt, successful careers, great family relationships, and still travel the world. We feel like we’re doing okay on that. If our experiences and little tid-bits of knowledge can help you achieve your goals, then the work that goes into this blog will be worth it. We hope to hear from our readers in this and future posts. Ask questions, ask for clarification, let us know if we can help you. And if you have suggestions for us, we’d love to hear those too. ​

#thetravelingspoonie #travel #budgettravel #travellifestyle #cruise