Gap Year Planning

“Gap year” is a common term across most of the world, especially Europe, where many people take a year off after formal education to travel the world. It’s a chance for people to experience the world before settling down into their careers and lives.

However, it’s not a common term in the US because most of us just fully into our careers and never get a chance to experience this magical gap year, but it should be!

My wife and I took our own gap year in 2013 after spending almost a decade in our careers. We didn’t really have a plan, but more just dared each other to do it, with neither of us wanting to be the one to say “no”!

We did as much research as we could, but most of the experience was learning as we went. We were in a pretty good spot financially as we had quite a bit of money saved, and then we sold our house in New Orleans, with the profit covering most of our trip. One thing I definitely learned was a gap year financial plan wouldn’t have been more helpful than just winging it!

When we dared each other into the gap year experience, we dreamed big about what we wanted to do. My wife quit her job, and I received a one-year unpaid leave for my job at Hewlett Packard, which was pretty incredible. In all honesty, I wanted to leave my job, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to travel and have a guaranteed job when I got back – one of the most unnerving parts of traveling.

With our one year of freedom, we got on to the dreaming… how much of the world could we see during our gap year?! We came up with the “scary” places we thought we would never visit with kids – places like Morocco, Jordan, Nepal, Vietnam and Myanmar. We also added the places we always wanted to visit like Australia, New Zealand and Iceland.

Once we got a general list of places to travel during our gap year, we began building an itinerary that would get us there. I checked into an “Around the World” ticket through one of the airlines, but they all proved to be too constrictive and wouldn’t allow us to explore with the freedom we really wanted.

Instead, we just came up with a direction around the globe we wanted to travel and which continents we planned on visiting. We skipped North and South America since they’re easily accessible for us, and instead decided to focus on Australia, Asia and Europe. It made the most sense to fly west, which was further validated when I found a one-way flight to New Zealand that allowed a 10 day stopover in French Polynesia!

We built a rough budget, purchased insurance, got our shots and applied for a couple of visas beforehand. After that, we sold our house, put our stuff in storage and prepared to travel.

In total, we visited 25 countries in just under ten months. We had incredible experience in beautiful places with amazing people, which changed how we thought about the worlds and the trajectory of the rest of our lives. It was something we’ll never forget.