I woke up this morning at my parent's house in Jenison, Michigan. There were cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven and hot coffee already in the pot. Staying with my parents before our epic journey has been fantastic (and not just because my mother is a doll and makes breakfast like she runs a B&B). We've been able to relax and prep without having the added burden of paying a Portland rent. It's been huge. I'd say, if you have the opportunity to do the same, take it! We lived with my parents when Harrison was just born for almost a year, so we had some background experience on the ups and downs of cohabitation. On the whole, though, it has been a real joy. Thanks, madre and padre!

When we first started talking about this journey way long ago, I built a budget on Excel and have used it ever since. I love Excel and I love ❤️ budgets. Don't get me started on pivot tables, because I love them too. So, the budget has been rolling along these past months. We were fortunate enough to save almost 50% of our take-home pay every month. This was made possible by the great fortune of not carrying debt and the fact that we live a pretty modest lifestyle (by American standards anyway). Our current budget just looks at the 10 (+ the 2019 summer months) months we plan to be abroad. In general, it looks like this; a month to month budget that includes the following fields of transportation, housing, food, activities, phone, travel insurance, health insurance, our rental locker in Portland and 10% overage for incidentals. I calculated the ceilings for each of those fields using a daily average. For example, we plan to spend X dollars on food daily for the month of September, so our budget for food is 25X (we are abroad 25 days in September). How did I calculate the daily average cost of food for us (X)? I looked at a typical day out for us in Portland, planned on eating the majority of breakfasts at home and allowing for 2 moderate meals out.

I'll be very interested in how off/on the mark our budget turns out to be (especially with food). So far, our housing has come in under budget in part due to the fact we get to stay with friends a couple of days and we are finding good deals on Airbnb. We'll definitely be paying more for housing than we would have in Portland, but really not by much.

I love talking numbers and I'd be excited to share with you the real nuts and bolts of the budget and how we did it/are doing it. From my research, families that do this do 1 of 3 things to finance it. 1) they sell it all and use it til its gone, 2) they work remotely or 3) they manage housing properties remotely. We're basically doing option 1 with a little caveat (we still have a 10x10 storage locker of possessions) and we are not planning on bleeding us dry, we'll come home with some financial cushion.

Maybe you want to do something similar!?