Part 3 of a 3 part series about a location independent lifestyle: This article is a showcase of 100 + families and individuals and their amazing stories who despite their own set of challenges, left their conventional lives behind to live a life of travel and exploration. In part 1 I shared the secret to long term travel and a location independent lifestyle. In part 2 , I shared a little transparency with my new (Monthly progress report) where I show you what I’m doing to create my own sustainable location independent lifestyle and my other top goals while living in France.

Amazing Families & Couples Who Are Making Their Dream of Long Term Travel A Reality

This list is starting small but it will grow to at least 100 plus families, couples and individuals by the end of 2012. I plan to scour the web in search of as many people as I can and put them all here in one place to motivate you and show you just what the human spirit can do. Oh and all the families and couples featured are everyday people. Not lottery winners, not millionaires. Just average everyday people like you and me. Each one has a different story, different circumstances, different challenges and different method of supporting themselves to make it happen..

I will list each family or person and a link to their website if they have one. I also list the following criteria for each.

• Number of kids:
• Type of travel: Road Trip, Slow Travel, Living Abroad in one place, extreme travel conditions, other
• Where:
• Length of travel:
• Challenges:
• Finances or how they fund their life

1- The Dennings of Discover Share Inspire

• Number of kids:  5 kids ( Under 10 years old)
• Type of travel: Road Trip In a Veggie powered truck and slow travel.
• Where: Alaska to Argentina
• Challenges: Internet connectivity. Balancing work time, education time etc..
• Finances: Currently use their savings but their long term plan is to grow their online business.

 
The Dennings are homeless on purpose. They are living in a veggie powered truck and are travelling from Alaska to Argentina with 5 kids in tow. That’s right, FIVE KIDS, Five. 

I think you are going to be in total awe with this amazing family and what they have done so far. The Dennings don’t just want to live abroad, they want to explore the world. Since 2007, they have been determined to create a location independent lifestyle so that they can live the way they want to. Who doesn’t right but they have gone to great lengths to make this happen and in a very interesting way i might add.

They’ve simplified their lives to the bare essentials. No mortgage, no utilities, nothing except their truck and what they can put in the truck. To fund their lifestyle originally, they were living off of an income but they lost that in 2008. Now they live off of their savings and have all they need to continue to live simply – which they are more than pleased with. However their long term strategy is to grown their online business which is already generating some money. They even have a few products teaching other people how to design their own lifestyle like they have.

The Dennings are a special case and it looks like there is no end in site for their adventure. Their latest adventure is taking them across North and South American. They ‘live’ in their truck when they are traveling in between places but whenever they get a chance, they stop and rent a place so they can stay longer. The last time i spoke to them they were renting a house in Panajachel, Guatemala and were there for almost two months. Before that they spent 7 weeks in Bacalar, Mexico. Go read about them at Discover Share Inspire and you’ll never say “i can’t again”.

2- The second family is the Burns Family of Our Travel Lifestyle

• Number of kids: 2 (Under 8 years old)
• Type of travel: Slow travel 6 months travel and six at home base in Malaysia
• Where: Goal is to travel the world
• Length of travel: 1+ years
• Challenges:
• Finances: They started their own a web programming company which the run completely online.

The burns family say that they are a pretty average family of four who decided they weren’t happy with their lives in suburban Australia. They were trying to juggle careers, maintain a house, pay the bills, have a social life on the weekends and most importantly, still finding time for to be with their children. They decided they needed to do something different with their lives.

They considered a bunch of options including career changes, selling the house and moving from the suburbs to a smaller town and even considered  finding work overseas. But none of that seemed like the right answer. in late 2009 the Burns decided to take ACTION and act on a long-term fantasy of long term with their two young children.

The Burns didn’t have a huge savings so they opted to use the skills they had which was web programming and set up their own business online. Exactly two year after they decided to take action and pursue their dream of long term travel, they set up a house in Penang Malaysia to use as a base to travel the world from. They aim is to spend 6 months of the year in Malaysia and 6 months of the year travelling. They also have a great site for other travelling families and couples to meet called Vagabond Family.  I joined it myself and love connecting and reading about other families. It makes me feel less fringe and more normal.

3- 1 Dad, 1 Kid, 1 Crazy Adventure is our third family

• Number of kids: 1 (Under 10 Years old.)
• Type of travel: Slow travel
• Where: South America, Asia, and who knows where else
• Length of time: 1+ years
• Challenges: Single Dad with a special needs son
• Finances: Started teaching Scuba Diving, various jobs writing, photography and medical transcription

   Our next family is a father son team.  Talon is  a single dad to an amazing 10 year old boy named  Tigger.  The fact that he is a single dad travelling is simply amazing but what really blew me away was what he told me about his son. You see his son has special  needs. I’ll tell you more about something amazing that happened in a bit.

Let me first tell you how their journey began. Everyone has their reasons for wanting to travel or live abroad and their story is a great one.   In May 2011, after years of working in intensive care, trauma, and with the dying, Talon left his traditional work life to embark on a round-the-world trip. Now you would think that they at least had a ton of money in the bank right? NO!!!  Talon and Tigger began their journey with $900 in the bank. Talon has been very creative in how he manages to support he and his son from doing medical transcription and writing to photography.  He even became a scuba instructor while in Honduras which has helped them bring in some descent money. Talon says their expenses usually average about $1,000 USD a month and says he could even cut it down further if he wanted but doesn’t because they really enjoy eating out.

His son Tigger has done so well that he is now off all his meds. Talon attributes the marked improvement in his sons anxiety and sensory issues to the amount of time he spends with his son and “world schooling”. His sons progression has reaffirmed and eliminated all the doubts he used to have and he is now 100 percent positive that his decision to live abroad, travel and home-school his son was the best decision he could have made for his 2 man family.

4-  International Cravings

• Number of kids: 2 ( Under 5 years old)
• Type of travel: Expats living in one place.
• Where: Guangzhou China
• Length of time: 1+ years as of 2011
• Finances: Dad works remotely as a web designer. Mom teaches English. Created a product online, teach and run a web based business.

Our fourth story is another family and rather than living nomadically and constantly travelling, they chose to stay in one place, China.

Their story is similar to the Burns in terms of why they chose to live abroad. Basically they were a family that was tired of waiting for the right time to travel, the right time to experience things, enough money to do it all, and tired of waiting for the pieces to fall together so they took action to make it happen.

In Feb. 2011 they moved their family of four to Guangzhou China. With two small children (1 & 3 at the time) there were many things that they were unsure of but they knew one thing for sure and that was that they wanted to go on adventures with their children and experience the world as a family. They have made some amazing friends and have had some unforgettable experiences together.

Mom says that  the ability to give her her older child the opportunity to learn Mandarin and experience a culture at such a young age has been both fun and exciting. Now both of their children speak Mandarin and their almost 5 year old is fluent.  Mom told me a funny story; Their 2 yr old son has learned potty training “split pant” style and she just thinks it’s hilarious watching him flip back and forth.

Dad of the family is a web designer and asked his U.S. company if he could work remotely. Something that before they never would have dreamed of asking. Mom of the family completed an online TESOL certificate before moving to China so that she could teach English while living abroad. While living in China they lived on $16 a day per person….much cheaper than their U.S. cost of living.   They have also spent a month in Thailand and hope to experience more of Southeast Asia while we can. Check out their story at www.internationalcravings.com

5- Man vs. Debt, The Bakers

• Number of kids: 1
• Type of travel: Expats living in one place.
• Where: Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, Thailand
• Length of time: 1 + years
• Challenges: Had over 18,000 us dollars in consumer debt that they paid off.
• Finance: Sold his crap on eBay and got out of debt. Now makes a living online and can literally work anywhere he wants to when he wants to.

   Adam Baker from Man vs. Debt  is probably the most famous modern day family i know who decided to leave it behind for a few years to travel. If you haven’t heard of Man vs. Debt than let me fill you in.

In 2008 after the birth of their daughter, Adam Baker and his wife Courtenay spent a year selling all their crap and paid off over 18,000 dollars in consumer debt. Then In June 2009, they left for what was to be a year in Australia, but quickly turned into more mobile travels through Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and finally back to Indiana.

Now Adam and his wife are running several business online, have several products that help other people do the same thing they did and he’s not done yet. That’s it for now. Stay tuned as i add to this growing list of amazing and inspirational families and couples who left it all behind to travel or live abroad.

What Do You WANT?

So…. do you WISH or do you WANT to lead a location independent lifestyle? Are you willing to TAKE ACTION and are you DETERMINED to follow through? The next time you say I wish I could travel but can’t,  I can’t, I hope you think of these five families who despite having kids, despite having debt, despite not being rich or whatever reason you keep telling you that you CAN’T, they did it. Because they did they took action and had determination.

Not all gifts come wrapped with a bow. Some gifts are less tangible. Some gifts keep on giving years after we are dead and gone.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Each and every one of us has some combination of traits, characteristics and interests that make us who we are.

But, how did you turn out to be the way that you are?

PARENTS

If you’re like me, than one of the single biggest influences in shaping you, your morality and your character development can be directly attributed to your parents, your family or some other mentor in you life.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES

Sure there were other outside forces that helped in the process of your character development like, school, church, friends, sports or other various activities. However, these other things most likely had a fractured influence on you.  The real meat of your essence probably comes from your parents or some parental like figure or mentor.

THANKS DAD

In the spirit of the holidays, I want to give thanks to my father who shaped me into who I am and who gave me the greatest gift of all. A gift that I carry with me everywhere. This gift gives me the confidence to live my life to the fullest the way that makes me the happiest.  My dad gave me ….The gift of an “ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT”. 

His name was was Jean-Louis Andre and he was born on December 21st. He would have been 82 this year. I always miss him the most right around Christmas time and remember this precious gift that I still carry around with me.

Passing On Values: The Secret Sauce

I want to pass on this same gift to my three children.

This leads me to the heart of the problem. How the heck DO you teach your kids to be adventurous, take risks and try new things so that they can live their life to the fullest with fewer regrets in life?

To answer this question, I had to think back to my own childhood and examine my own fathers childhood too. 

Daddy’s Girl

The easiest way for me to explain how he taught me is to show you and tell you a little about my father and my upbringing.

Like most parents, my dad taught me the typical things parents wanted or expected of their children.

• Be practical, pragmatic and well grounded
• Don’t lie, steal or cheat.
• Work hard, study hard, do you chores
• Treat others the way you want to be treated and try to help others as much as you can
• yada yada yada.

MODELING: Be a role model

What amazes me is that he was able to instill in me my adventurous sprit without using words. He never said  “Annie, I want you to travel and see the world”. Or “ You need to take more risks and try new things even if it’s scary”. In fact, he never said anything even remotely like that AT ALL.

It was his actions and the way he lived his life outside of conventional wisdom that influenced me and shaped my adventurous side.

NOT HIS WORDS

He didn’t know it, but by simply living his values and life the way he did, he was MODELING.  NO, not fashion modeling.

Modeling is a phenomenon known in the social sciences where your actions are a bigger influence on someone than your actual words. For instance, there have been studies done that show that children are over 80% more likely to buckle up if their parents buckle up too. Yes, an actual study was done on this.

I’ve seen this same powerful influence of modeling happen with  my own kids. 

When I was learning how to bake, that’s all I did for a month. I baked cookies from scratch day and night until I got the knack for it. Now my middle son and my 4 year old daughter love to bake too. They are really into the whole process of baking it’s kind of cute. My son Andre even thinks he might want to be a pastry chef one day. WOW.  A mom can only dream.

When I taught myself to sew and started making cute little handmade sleeping masks for my business, my son took up crocheting. Yes, boys crochet too ok. Don’t hate! All my kids have a kind of DIY, tinkering nature about them. Which I think is FANTASTIC!

My own father influenced my adventurous side by living his life as a daring adventure. It had such an impact on me that it’s something that I have striven to do also for most of my life.

FOR EXAMPLE

My DAD: He was a nomadic and a world traveler who lived abroad in Thailand for over a decade back in the 60’s and 70’s. This was before it was considered cool and trendy and before the word lifestyle design became popular.

ME: From the age of 10, I already yearned to travel and see the world.

• In high school I begged my father to send me to Montreal to live with my aunt so I could attend a French high school. Which I did. it was the next best thing to going to Europe for me.
• At 18, I left to live in Japan where I worked doing odd jobs so that I could travel through Asia and Europe for 3 1/2 years.
• Now after four years of college, over a decade in the corporate world, 3 kids and 2 marriages, my husband and I are living in France on a family sabbatical of sorts with our three kids.

Rewind: Dying the way you lived

It wasn’t just his traveling that influenced me. It was the things that he accomplished, the way he lived and even the way he died.

Death

Years ago, when I was 21, my dad tried to be a good Samaritan by stopping the getaway car of a robber who had just robbed our local grocery store.  He was struck and thrown 30 feet in the air and landed on his head. He died 3 days later from massive head trauma leaving me and  my then 14 year old brother alone in the world.

Life

In life, he lived a life that he wanted to live and as a result, he was a bit unconventional in his ways.

Not only was he a world traveler, he also had a pilots license, owned a single engine plane, lived abroad in several Asian countries totaling almost 15 years and spoke 4 languages. French, English, mandarin Chinese and Thai. I have photos of my dad climbing coconut trees, holding snakes and doing things that most people from Canada or the U.S. just didn’t do in the 60’s and 70’s.

Being Adventurous in spite of…

But how DID he get to be so adventurous?

As far as I can tell, my dad lived adventurously in spite of his parents. Maybe it was because of the times he grew up in that lead him to be more adventurous. At this point I am only speculating.

He grew up DIRT POOR in Quebec Canada. When I say poor I mean like depression era poor, where they only had one frying pan in their house and didn’t always have enough to eat.  At 15, he left his home to go live and work on his grandparents farm to earn some money.

I think that one act alone,  of leaving his home as a teenager might have been the catalyst that propelled him and gave him the courage to travel even further and live his life more adventurously.

Around the age of 22, he left Canada and immigrated to Boston Massachusetts in the U.S. where he learned to speak English.  I still remember his funny Bostonian and French accent that was so uniquely him.

Eventually he joined the military to get an education in engineering. Somehow he ended up a pilot and working in Thailand for a a military operation called “Air America” which was located in a city called Udon Thani.  He lived in Thailand for over a decade and married my mother who was Thai. I was born a few years later in the 70’s and lived in Thailand until I was almost five years old. Ironically, my first language is Thai, but I no longer speak it. (Use it or lose it people)

Fun fact: About my  place of birth:

If you are not familiar with Air America or Udon Thani Thailand, there was a movie loosely based off of this operation called…Surprise “Air America” starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey JR. You can read more about the Air America operation here on Wikipedia.

Living Like An American

We left Thailand and settled in California after my mother passed away in a bus accident. Dad tried to live a conventional life. Perhaps more for my sake than his. Or maybe it was because he had had his fill of travel and adventure. I’ll never know.

Trying to blend in

Despite his best efforts to blend in, dad couldn’t resist the pull of his adventurous spirit because although we lived in the suburbs and he had a great job as an engineer working at National Semiconductor, we didn’t always live, act or look like typical Americans.

For starters, dad remarried a woman who he met in Taiwan. (Dad went to Taiwan often to train his counterparts.)  Her name was Shew Chang and she raised me until she passed away when I was 14. (Yes, there were a lot of deaths in our family.  It made for a very international and eclectic household: Try as they might, we didn’t always fit the classic image of the American household.

My Unconventional Childhood Home

Growing up all I ever wanted to be was normal. I thought we were anything but normal and I was embarrassed of my family because of our differences. 

• Birthday parties were horrible as far as I was concerned.  I hated the fact that my dad didn’t have hot dogs and hamburgers and cake at my birthday party like Vicki V. did at her party. Nooo, we had to have Pad Thai and garlic with black bean crab with a mung bean desert. Not exactly a child friendly meal in our neighborhood.
• Instead of camping in the back yard or at camp sites, we spent summers in Thailand or Taiwan.
• On one of our summer trips abroad,  Instead of a dog, I got a pet monkey.
• Exotic for us wasn’t Mexican food, but rather fish eyeball soup, chicken feet and turtle soup. “YES I know, not good”.
• Instead of Billy Joel,  Bruce Springsteen and Pop music, I loved Asian Pop and Euro trash.
• Instead of baking cookies, we made Asian dumplings and had Asian dumpling making parties.

I could go on and on.

Appreciating the difference

Needless to say, I wasn’t very popular in school. I didn’t really fit in with the Asians and I didn’t fit in with all the white kids. (that’s the major down fall of being a Hapa as the Hawaiians call it.) But I can appreciate it now for what it is.

I’m glad that I didn’t have a typical upbringing. Growing up different than others around me was in a way, my own little adventure and it gave me the confidence I have now to make life choices that might go against the social grains of our society.

What Can The Average Person Do With Their Kids

Which brings me back to my original question of “how the heck to teach kids to be more adventurous”.

Well, you don’t’ have to do anything extreme like travelling and spending summers in Thailand, Taiwan or move to France: unless that’s what tickles your fancy. You can do small little things everyday to instill a sense of adventure simply by doing new things or exploring the unknown. You might already be doing this without even knowing it Just like my parents did for me.

• Introduce foreign foods to your kids. I’ve been feeding my kids cuisine from all over the world since they were born. As a result, I don’t have very many problems with my kids eating habits. They eat just about anything including Kimchee the stinky Korean cabbage.
• Sign them up for a sport. My kids didn’t do much basketball or football. We lived by the San Francisco bay so they took part in a youth sailing program. Sports are a great way to instill a sense of outdoor sports adventure.
• Learn a language together for the fun of it. Japanese, Arabic or ???? I was lucky, I already spoke French so I’ve been teaching it to my kids since they were young. My youngest daughter is fluent in French and probably speaks better French than English. Had I not spoken French, I might have learned a second language alongside with her. You can do a self paced lesson with software programs like Rosetta Stone.
• Give your kids music lesson: Instead of piano, what about an accordion?  Ok, that’s my dream. That and the musical saw. Don’t ask.

These are just a few of the many things you can do to grow your kids adventurous spirit.

Not only will it be fun and interesting. It will give them the confidence to be more intentional with their life choices rather than letting life slip by.

I may also give them the confidence and guts to be adventurous and live outside of the conventional bell curve so that they can create a life based on who they are, not what society tells them they have to do or how they are supposed to live.

BEST GIFT EVER

Passing on my adventurous spirit to my kids is the best gift I can give them because I know they will remember it long after I’m long gone just I like I remember my own father.

Thanks Dad. I wish you were here today to see me and your 3 grandkids. I love you!

Merry Christmas Everyone From Our Family To Yours

French: Joyeux Noel, Chinese: (Mandarin) Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan, Thai: Sawadee Pee Mai, Japanese: Shinnen omedeto

Are you or will you teach your kids to be more adventurous?  Did  your parents teach you to think outside the box? If so how did they do that? I would love to hear your feedback.

If you have ever thought about hitting the road or taking a vacation for a week or two you know how hard it can be to just travel with the bare essentials.

You always bring too much and have to leave some things behind because there just isn’t enough room in your bags.

Add three kids to the mix, inventory and stock for a travelling home based sleeping mask business and the fact that you don’t have a home anymore to live in.  AND…………

HOW MUCH STUFF DO WE TRAVEL WITH?

The result is a laundry list of some pretty unique problems. We have to bring as little as possible while still keeping the things we need with us for up to 3 months at any given time. Every once in a while, we head to our storage unit outside of Boston Massachusetts to switch out our things. Clothes for summer or winter, different toys or board games, misc. items we don’t need all year round. It’s a pain, but somehow we manage and it all works out.

I never thought I could live like this considering the life we used to live. But you’ll be amazed what you can do when you put your mind to it.

RECAP:

In case you are new hear and don’t know our story, here’s a recap of our situation. It’s very, very, very condensed…..

After losing our jobs in California and being unemployed for a couple of years, we left our home in search of jobs on the east coast in August of 2010. We ended up staying in Montreal for almost a year where we decided to forget looking for jobs, invent our own and try to create a lifestyle that lets us travel with our three kids while growing our online businesses.

Well, it’s summer now and we left Montreal to see my husband’s family for the summer.  After summer who knows. France? Costa Rica? A full time job somewhere?

Stick around to find out what happens and how we handle long term unemployment and get a rare chance to rebuild our life from typical suburban family to adventurous vagabond family all while trying to keep a home business afloat, start 2 new internet businesses and raise 3 kids on the road.

p.s. If you have any comments, I would love to hear them. Even if it’s just to say HI.

HI…