How Selling My House to Explore the World Changed My Life

Introduction

In 2019, the world was a different place. The world was open for business. Travel and tourism flourished around the world at unprecedented levels. 2019 was the year that I sold my house to travel the world.

It wasn’t a simple or easy decision, but one I’ll be forever glad I did.

This is that story. Let’s dive in.

Selling My House to Travel the World

I really did. I sold my house with the sole intention of travelling the world with my partner and one-year-old.  

As far as standard life advice goes, a decision like that isn’t totally to script. Reactions to the move were, let’s say, polarising. Many people were totally supportive of it. Some even admitted they dreamed of doing the same thing. Others called it irresponsible or immature. It was one or the other with very little middle ground. Not that I cared any great deal.

The most important thing came down to me. I had to ask myself one question. Whose rules was I playing by? The answer was easy.

At that moment, I understood I wanted to be in charge of my own life and experiences. Not let life happen to me anymore and live life on my terms. At least for a while.

I understood the sacrifice and risk that I brought into our lives by doing this. But there was more at play than dollars and cents.

To take control of my life and be the best possible version of myself, I needed a new start.

Having considered all that, it was a decision that I knew would change my life. I just didn’t know how much.

 

Auckland Airport, New Zealand 2019

A Life of Travel

Ever since I was a boy, I dreamed of travelling the world. Growing up in New Zealand, world travel is pretty much that for many. A dream.

Our nearest country (Australia) was a three-hour plane ride away, a little over the distance from San Francisco to Washington DC. The rest of the world seemed so far away. Because it was.

Family and friends would return from overseas trips, telling me stories of places they visited, often with small gifts. Small fridge magnets or toys from these foreign places were treasured more than any other gifts I would receive.

At the age of ten, I was exposed to my first international travel experience as I was lucky enough to jump on a 747 jumbo jet and head to the sunshine of California with my family. I heard strange accents that I had only heard on TV before. Visiting Disneyland and Universal Studios blew my mind. It felt like a dream.  

The seed for exploring the world was already there. My California experience only watered and nourished it.

Another trip a few years later took me back to America. In my teenage years by then, I visited other parts of the country and with a bit more freedom, learned how travel experiences at that age can be so influential.

This was all a lead up to the big move. At the young age of nineteen, I left the safety and security of home for good to travel abroad. Indefinitely. For ten years, I lived in the UK and Australia, moving from city to city and living the best life.  

Opportunities to visit Europe, Asia and the South Pacific were parts of the journey. My life had a purpose and meaning.

 

Cu Chi Tunnels, Vietnam

Reality Bites

Then I got back home to New Zealand. Bang. The door slammed shut. It felt like my life had stopped. The adventure certainly had. Walking the familiar streets of the town I grew up in, time seemed to have stayed still – it felt like I had hardly been away.

Slowly, I began evolving. I was changing into someone that I barely recognised. The person in the mirror did not smile or laugh anymore. The scary thing was I didn’t realise that I had changed at all.

A series of life events left me raising my son on my own. I got on with life in a town and house that I did not want to be in. Living with a mortgage, a couple of dogs and bills that emptied my account every month. I would depressingly look at my mortgage payments disappear every payday, seeing everything I was working for go to someone else. I felt trapped.

‘You must be happy, Marc. You are doing so well.’

People would say stuff like that to me all the time. And I get it. I was, after all, living the Kiwi dream. Homeowner, settled job and family around me. But at what cost? My mental well-being and happiness was the answer.  

If this was what I had to look forward to for the next thirty years, you could count me out. I would be sixty by then. If I got that far. That was me until retirement. The walls were closing in fast.

 

Being lost isn’t fun

A Mindset Shift

A mindset shift was required – difficult decisions needed to be made. When I did, things slowly began to change. I sold my house and moved town after meeting someone special. We bought another home and settled down again.

Still, living the Kiwi dream.  

The reality was that I had just shifted the goalposts a bit. Other than the change of postcode and the fact I was living with someone now, I still felt I was facing many of the same demons that I thought I had left behind in my old town.  

In the wise words of Confucius:  ‘No matter where you go, there you are’.  

Realising nothing else had changed, it was still depressing to look at the debt I owed and my bank account that ran dry every month. I was hardly living. It was still purely existing.  

I often lay in bed at night wondering how it had all come to this. Is life worth stopping only to follow the linear path that society expected me to do? I knew the world offered so many opportunities to those willing to try. I just had no idea how to make them happen for me.

 

Have you thought about this?

Travel Buddy Required

For years, the seed to travel again waited patiently beneath the surface. Hidden away, deep in my subconscious, it was waiting for the right time to emerge.

My partner, Sarah, was from Scotland and had many travel experiences of her own. We would talk late into the night, telling me about her own incredible travel experiences. About the time she took the perfect photo of the big four on an African safari, living with the hill tribes in Vietnam and outback tours of Australia. Sarah’s free spirit was envious. Her drive to move about, following her dreams, was inspiring.

Our relationship blossomed despite us being in very different places in our lives. When I met Sarah, her personal belongings fit in a small box. She was happy. I felt like I was living in a box that I couldn’t escape.

Then life happened.

We had a baby together. We bought ‘stuff’. Like normal people do. Despite all this, there was still a spark within us. The spark to keep living our lives. Lives that we would look back on one day and be grateful for our experiences instead of wallowing in the ‘what-ifs’. Tragedy had affected both of our lives at a young age. We both had a similar determination to make the most of our time on this planet.

Still, life continued on a monotonous routine of Monday to Friday and weekends. Every day could be mistaken for the next. Like before, the mortgage and pressure of living the life that I was leading was only pushing me deeper into a hole. A hole that I knew, would get harder and harder to escape, especially with a young family to support.

 

Finding love can happen when you least expect it

Just a Dream

One day, sitting alone in my driveway, my day at work had been particularly rough. I didn’t want to go inside my home or go back to work. I felt utterly lost.   Clenching my teeth and gripping the staring wheel, I stared at my house and asked myself the same question I had in my old town.

‘Is this what I really want? Do I want thirty more years of this?’

Nothing about the way I was feeling had changed for years. Something had to give. That evening, I mentioned an outrageous idea that had been in my head to Sarah.

‘What if we just sold up and disappeared for a year or two? See the world.’ I casually suggested sitting on the couch in front of the latest Netflix marathon.

She just laughed at first before noticing that I meant it. Then her expression changed.

‘Are you serious?’

‘We could you know’ as I glanced around the house.

‘This isn’t us. Is this going to be us for the next thirty years?’.

She didn’t say yes, but didn’t say no either. That got me excited. Sarah got nervous.  

The whole scenario sat in the back of our minds for a while. A few weeks later, I started talking myself further and further into pursuing the idea. The fog in my head began to lift. A hint of sunshine came through the clouds. I started to keep myself awake at night, dreaming about the possibilities.  

 

Life is short. Stop wasting time.

Selling the House to Travel theWorld

Where could this journey take us?

To Europe? Definitely. What about North America? Maybe. Even Asia? The list went on and on. Every continent was within our grasp. The decision was ours. It felt empowering. I dug out a couple of my old travel books for a little inspiration. ‘You Only Live Once‘ alongside the ‘Ultimate Travelist’ from the Lonely Planet only fuelled our wanderlust. Images and stories from all over the world within the pages of these two books reminded me of the passion I had for exploring faraway places.

The conversations began about a trip of this magnitude and what it would involve. There was so much to consider. Most importantly, our son had just turned one. These conversations became a daily occurrence.

Soon, we were all in as we realised there was much more to gain than lose. We could make a home anywhere. The town we moved to had not been kind to either of us. It felt like the perfect time to hit the reset button.   

The opportunity to enjoy the open road for an extended period was something that we knew would not come along every day.

The decision was easy in the end. We said yes to life and put the house on the market.

As we moved out, there were no regrets. Not a single moment of reflection wondering if we had done the right thing. On the final walk through the house, I felt nothing. It was just an empty house.

The difference between a house and a home is the people – we would make our home somewhere else. Someone else would make our old house their home.

21 Countries Later

That was in 2019. Ten months later, we would return to New Zealand.

After visiting Australia, South-East Asia, Europe, the UK and the United States, we returned with a new purpose after experiencing so much.  

The quality of experiences we shared with friends and family, as well as seeing the places I had only ever read about in those books I read as a boy was life-changing.  

The direction of our lives had shifted due to our experiences together. The people we met on the journey inspired us. The challenges we faced made us resilient. Not once did we think about our old house, our old lives. We were too busy living in the present but keeping an eye on the future.

Returning in March 2020, little did we know that a once in a lifetime pandemic would unravel the world that we had just seen within a month. Borders closed and planes were grounded as Covid-19 ravaged some of the places we had just been.

 

Frankfurt Airport 2020

Conclusion

Despite all that has gone on, there is one thing above all else that I am grateful for. I am grateful that we had the courage and determination to do what we did. Sometimes, as the pandemic proved, second chances don’t always come around.

People we met on the road were inspired by our willingness to live our lives. In turn, we were inspired equally by their own stories and hospitality. Every single day gave us a memory. Memories are what matters.

Travel does that to you. It opens your mind and gives you a different perspective.   

The whole journey enriched our lives, our relationship and our futures. The greatest gift, above all else, is it has made us better people. That is the gift that I will never take for granted.

So, now it’s your turn.

My story is unique. I understand that. But I don’t think all of it is.  

Is anything holding you back from your own travel adventures? Or are you a long-term traveller who when returning home felt, well lost?

I would love to hear your thoughts, on this or anything else raised in this post in the comments.

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