Career Break Ideas

I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a career break for the last few weeks. I’m married, with a 2 year old son and another one due in a month. We recently sold our house and we’re renting at the moment so we’ve gone from being asset rich / cash poor to cash rich / asset poor. So a lot of the financial stress of a mortgage is gone, we’re sitting on a cushy pile of cash, the kids aren’t in school yet, and I’m just thinking I want to get out of the rat race for a few months and just enjoy time with family and travel a bit. So I’ve been trying to think of ideas of what we could do during this time off. I don’t want to just sit at home, I want to do or see something, but I also don’t want to be blowing $10K a month doing so (i.e. flights, hotels, restaurants, etc). I was thinking something along the lines of renting a little beach house in Mexico/Thailand/Bali/Goa sort of thing, somewhere were it would be cheap on rent where we could cook for ourselves or eat out cheaply and that would be an experience for us as a family. Another idea, though more expensive, was renting an RV and touring the US/Canada/NewZealand/etc. I’d also want to spend a bit of time with my mom and dad who live in California and Germany, so I’d be making stops there as well. I’m also happy to break up the trip into different phases (i.e Beach in Mexico for a month, RV from California to Colorado, stop in Germany to see my dad for month, rent a house in the mountains in Romania or wherever (somewhere cheap if it’s in Europe), etc. I’m looking for ideas on what we could do. The main limitations I’ve got are as follows: 1) 2 kids, by the time I do this they’ll be 3 and 1 years old. I can’t be climbing Matchu-Picchu with them, it needs to be relatively safe, etc. 2) I don’t want to blow the bank, I’d be happy to spend say $50K in 6 months. This sounds a lot but considering it covers ALL of our living expenses for 2 adults and 2 kids, travel, food, etc, it’s really not much at all. Any ideas are welcome.

50 k for 4 people in 6 months might make it a bit tight.given that it’s your family i don’t think you can actually slum it out for so long.

europe and america are going to be expensive so i might look at places other than mexico cause the phillipines,indonesia and goa/varkala are similiar at cheaper prices.

edit: i just saw you are going to visit your parents.assuming you are staying with them you should be fine

land in california,rent an rv for wherever you want to go,fly from there to germany,do a couple of road trips to france,spain etc.fly to thailand/singapore/indonesia wherever you want to go with a 2 day layover in istanbul.

head home

world ends soon.

If you have reason to go to Germany, why not take a trip there and do a roadtrip around Germany or take the rail to neighboring countries? It would be a great way to see Europe and probably a heck of a lot more interesting than just doing a roadtrip within the States.

Am I the only person who thinks travelling around with 1 and 3-year-olds will be a somewhat unpleasant experience? It seems preferable to go somewhere cheap/exotic and stay there for a while. Though I guess if you are used to the kids, maybe it’s different…

^ Yes, but it seemed like he was pretty committed to doing so. For me, I love traveling and having unbridled fun, which also probably explains why I’m not married and don’t have any kids (at least that I’m aware of)

you got a little bit of money, save that up.

you neither cash rich or asset rich.

^

are you taking a LOA from current company or are you leaving company? if you are leaving company, how do you plan on finding a new position

As a parent of two, it sucks.

I’d rather put all my money in TZA for the next three weeks.

What about a trip to Fiji?..It is close to Australia /New Zealand so you can cover quite a bit of ground in one go.

I’d say that you could easily spend three weeks in New Zealand, several more weeks exploring Australia (which is as big as the U.S., anyway)…Fiji may be worth a trip but it will be very expensive and not that much to see there / not much time needed to spend there.

Basically if money is a concern, being anywhere in that part of the world will be pricey. However, considering how far it is from the States, it may be your best chance to see it. A buddy of mine and I did a 10-day road-trip around the South Island of New Zealand earlier this year, covering about 2,500 kilometers. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, and it seemed like every time we stopped even on the side of the road, we were seeing some legendary landscape that you’d think came from the movies or high-tech graphics design (as a reminder, Lord of the Rings was filmed at various points on this island).

maybe you will even come across a couple of hobbits

There are probably some hobbits on this forum too

Apparently Tolkien wrote an own version of the king arthur tales…its coming out soon i think.