Hi there. We are glad to meet you! Let us tell you a little about ourselves.

We are Steve & Jodi Smith and we have been married 23 years. We're the proud parents to two boys-both grown, and our nest is empty! Our pet "children" includes Jezebel our German Shepard mix, along with Butthead and Sophie, our cats.

We were both born and raised in Michigan and transplanted our family to Gulf Shores, Alabama about 15 years ago-we were ready to leave those long, bitter winters behind us. Our family now lives just a couple miles from the Gulf of Mexico. While that may sound like a dream-it comes with it's own challenges (think tourists, hurricanes, and snowbirds!). We have enjoyed our time near the beach, but we are ready to explore some other areas. It is time for a journey 4 change.

In the past nine years, we have lost most of our family's older generation. Jodi has lost both of her parents and stepfather who raised her. We both have also lost all our grandparents, several cousins, and aunts. It has been one wave of grief after another. Suddenly, our family has changed dramatically.

Jodi's mom was the first to pass unexpectedly from a minor surgery in July 2011. When we lost her, we became full time caregivers of Jodi's grandmother and cared for her until she passed in May 2018. During that time, we also dealt with Jodi's stepfather fighting lung cancer as well as raising our youngest son who was still at home. Coupled with losing other family members, it has been a pretty stressful, sad time.

Jodi's mom and stepfather had traveled a bit while they worked, but they were saving their big trips, such as a road trip to Alaska, until they retired. Sadly, her mom passed away one month prior to receiving her first retirement check. She never drew any of her retirement and all the plans they had never happened.

It was a very rude awakening for us. We had been "living the American dream" that included several new cars (and the payments that went along with them!), two houses (with two mortgages!), loans, credit cards, as well as student loan debt. We ate out a lot and bought what we wanted when we wanted it. It seemed like we "had it all"-- but we did not truly own any of it! We had been living our lives working to pay for "having it all" and waiting to "live" until we retired. Truthfully though, we had not even thought of how we would maintain our lifestyle when we did retire. We just did what we wanted when we wanted and did not consider the future.

The unexpected passing of Jodi's mom taught us that no one is guaranteed a retirement. The so called "Golden Years" are not promised to anyone. It was eye opening. We decided we did not want to chance waiting until retirement until we started to "live". It was time to make some changes.

Our first step toward living life on our terms now was to sell one of our houses, at no profit, just to be free of the mortgage.

Then we both started working extra jobs and paid off the house that we live in. The day after we paid off the house, we booked our first cruise and our love of travel was born. Steve had traveled in the Navy, but Jodi had not. Since that initial cruise, we have visited several countries, taken many more cruises, and begun to dream of other destinations.

Our extra jobs led us to opening our own passenger transportation business and becoming fully self-employed.

This is really when our journey began although we didn't recognize it then.

In 2019, Jodi's father passed away and we inherited a travel trailer. Shortly after that, we had to make the decision to close our passenger transportation business due to changes in our local market.

At that point, we both began to do some heavy soul searching about how we wanted to restructure our "middle age". Steve was 52 and Jodi was 48, and we were now in the position to chart a new direction. Our children are raised, and our caregiver responsibilities were finished.  What we do for our income was being forced to change due to our business closing. Our main home was paid for although we still had some debt (mostly what we had incurred trying to keep our business open). We had already begun paying that down using some of Dave Ramsey's principles. It was the perfect time to re-evaluate our direction.

While we were well on our way to becoming debt-free, the forced change in our business operation really got us thinking about what was next. Did we want to just be debt-free? What did we want to do? How did we want to live?

Over the past couple of years, we both, without the other knowing it, had begun following several couples online who had sold it all to travel. These couples were not at the age of "retirement" but had decided to live their lives on their own terms. While each of them had different paths and styles, each couple had planted seeds of inspiration in our minds. When we begun our conversations about changing our lives and learned we both were following the same couples, we were quite surprised! It made it easier to start looking at unusual options and ask ourselves brave questions.

What if we.....

• Did not wait until retirement to travel and experience the things we wanted to?
• Changed the way we lived our day to day life to support a new lifestyle?
• Decided to live our dream and not the American consumerism dream?
• Started a journey 4 change?

After many conversations, research, soul searching, and speaking with our children, we have decided to completely shake up our lives!

We will...

• Sell our remaining house. Completed August 17, 2020
• Use the proceeds from the house sale to free up our financial obligations which will allow us to travel now.
  Completed August 2020
• Move into the travel trailer and explore the United States for at least one year. Begun August 17, 2020
• Possibly build a tiny home that is off-grid after that year.
• Be very budget minded and keep our expenses low.
• Make intentional decisions to create new income streams that allow us the flexibility we want.
• Collect memories and experiences-not things.

For the first time in our lives, WE will be in control of our journey.

We have committed to living in the travel trailer/motor home for one year. In that time, we will explore, travel, and experience things that we can only imagine! At the end of the year we will re-evaluate and decide if we want to keep our home mobile, build a tiny home that we could build debt free, or even possibly explore living in a new country. Our options are now limitless and ours to explore.

That brings you up to date. We're now in the early stages of launching our journey and are excited, scared, nervous, and thrilled to embark on this new season of life.

We welcome you to our new world and are eager to share this journey 4 change with you.

Grab your compass and let's go!

Jodi & Steve

This original post was written in December 2019. It was updated October 2020.