It’s something we’ve talked about together for a long time, since we decided to save hard, invest heavily and build our “cash machine” so that we could do it. But how would it really feel telling our friends and work colleagues that we are leaving the school calendar and 9-5 work week behind?
Well, it turns out, pretty easy! We’ve had a good chunk of practice now, as we had told close family and friends many years ago (we needed to be honest as they had started to wonder why we never bought new things for the house and said no to expensive trips away!). That gave us some key phrases and common party lines, making the telling of our wider circle much easier.
It was probably hardest telling our parents and siblings back in the very beginning… it would mean living far away, not always being present for birthday celebrations, Christmas, Halloween (one of our favourite times of the year) and all of the little events you look forward to as a family during the year. Everyone was incredibly supportive and I’m sure a little surprised. They probably wondered if we’d actually go through with it, especially as our kids got older. But as the years crept on and we saved more, invested more and planned more, it became more real.
I was quite nervous to tell the kids school, as they have been a great incubator for them. We have questions and reservations about the effectiveness of positive schooling in the current secondary system, but because we’ve lived in a village the primary school has been relatively small and therefore it’s been easier to know exactly what’s been going on in our kids educational journey (and the social restrictions and challenges that come with a classroom of 30+ children). We’ve been very lucky that the teachers and staff were wonderful and great supporters of the kids.
Luckily for us, having told the head teacher now, the school are supportive and excited for us, albeit sad to see our youngest go. She should have completed 2 more years there, whereas our eldest would have moved away and into secondary school anyhow. It’s just been such a secret for so long, that it felt very strange to confess it finally! I almost expected a push back, or was worried it might have negatively affected how the children are seen or treated at school, but it really wasn’t the case and if anything everyone was so interested and curious, they made the kids feel very special with the bombardment of questions!
We had told a few of our closer friends a year or so ago, and they have kids in the same school, so there was definitely an element of relief that we didn’t have to have any more hushed conversations in the school pick up queue “how’s the you-know-what-planning going” wink, wink! After we had told the school we were approached by a few other parents, whom we are very friendly with but don’t see socially, who asked if it was true that we are really going travelling. It’s been a relief and a pleasure to be able to say yes now. Although they often assume we are going for six months or a year and that we’ll be back, and it’s quite difficult to say that won’t be the case. And that we will in fact be travelling and home schooling indefinitely, but at least for the next 4 years for our son and 6 years for our daughter.
I’ve learnt now to expect the next question…. “How are you affording this?”. And it’s quite a divisive subject. On one hand I want to lay it all out and tell them exactly how we did it and that we won’t need to return to work if we don’t want to. It would be nice to confess that we don’t need to worry about mortgage payments etc, as I am really proud of what we have achieved and how we have done this. But on the other hand, I don’t want to come across as preachy, and appreciate that not everyone would have wanted to save, invest, and live our lifestyle for the last 6 years!
So instead, I say that we’ve saved hard, have some rental properties and may come back in the future, but we’re just going to see where life takes us.
It has been a similar conversation with my work colleagues, although I couldn’t wait to let them know I wouldn’t be renewing my contract! After all the years of collecting pay packets so that I could put most of it away in savings or investments or debt payoff, it was amazing to finally be able to say “we don’t need the money”. I have enjoyed it there and will miss a lot of my wonderful colleagues but this represents the success of 6 years or planning. And I will certainly not miss the commute!
My colleagues have been curious, some wanting to take me out for coffee to better understand what I mean by ‘travelling, home schooling and retiring’. I haven’t officially used the term retirement when telling people I am leaving, as it seems a boastful statement to a group of people who have all worked really hard in a tough industry. So for now I’ve just said that I don’t plan to return to work any time in the future, but would be open to doing something if I fancied it in the years to come.
People ask a lot of questions about our mortgage (which we don’t have) and how we will fund our travels. And it’s a different conversation with each person, and everyone reacts slightly differently. I’ve also had conversations with people who would never want to travel and think it sounds nuts! They would not want to leave the house that they have made special, their families and their friends. Plus, a lot of parents have told us openly that they would not want to travel full time with their kids!
And so it has come to the point where I only have 3 weeks of work left, and the kids have around 11 weeks of school to go….. the countdown is almost at an end!
