The planning will pay off

Today after years of reading and months of preparation we are leaving. The plan kicked into action in mid-June when Steph quit her job and focused all her time and energy into reducing the clutter in the house so it would be ready for sale. We also sold off the majority of stuff we own and have reduced our possessions down to a dozen or so rubbermaid style bins.

We were already pretty much current on the majority of immunizations we need for a years worth of travel. The common Hepatitis A and B, Typhoid and others were all done before we went to India last December. The Uptown Travel Clinic in Minneapolis did a surprisingly good job reviewing what we might need. They hooked us up with preventatives and remedies to the things we might run into.

Another larger task over the last two months was consolidating various investments and 401k from previous jobs. These companies do not make it easy for you to move your money into other accounts. I wish we would have started this earlier, but our advisor helped us though it.

We also switched up our banking. The archaic brick and mortar banks all have fees, penalties, restrictions on minimums or the need for direct deposits. We can't be bothered with this because we won't be connected 24/7 anymore. We opted to move to online banks and primarily are using Charles Schwab for cash. Their debit cards have no foreign transaction fees and they refund ATM fees imposed by the random ATMs we will encounter around the world.

The other bit of planning was what do we carry for a year. I ended up with a 70 liter pack and Steph has a 60 liter pack. We started consolidating the things we need months ago and would review it every few days until we had only what we needed.

Those are just a few of the things we did to get started right. This planning will pay off.