About Us

Who in the heck are we and what are we doing here?

Hi, our names are Warren and Betsy. We are two reforming type-A personalities who are learning that living large is not necessarily living well.

Betsy and Warren at Friday Harbor

We worked crazy hours for years, bought all the stuff we thought we were supposed to have, lived beyond our means, and were often so busy traveling in different directions that we didn’t see each other for days at a time.

That is no way to live. At least not for us.

And then one day we had enough. We learned to budget and worked to pay off our credit cards. We moved to the West Coast, purged a lot of our possessions, and moved into a small townhouse. That felt REALLY good.

Then I quit my job to start a small consulting business so we only had 1 travel schedule to deal with. Hey, when you don’t have credit card debt it is a lot easier to do that kind of thing.

And then Warren changed jobs and didn’t travel much at all. Better yet, his new job offered a work shuttle service, so our one remaining car sat idle for sometimes weeks at a time. We were starting to like this simplicity thing.

Without a travel schedule we could have a social life, and without all the stress of two hectic jobs we felt less and less need to “reward” ourselves for all our hard work with trinkets we didn’t really need.

Fast forward two years where we were still living well below our means and happily enjoying a social life with many friends. Then my brother had a heart attack and a good friend suffered a brain aneurysm – both in their 30s – and we decided that life is just too short to wait for later. We’ve always wanted to travel, so why not now? (Both of them have recovered.)

We’re planning to leave on our trip around the world in 2010 with the goal to be gone for 3 years.

We’ve learned a lot during this process and expect to learn much more as we prepare to leave, and we wanted to share our experience with others. You may not want to take a trip around the world, but I’ll bet you have a goal that takes time, money, relationships, or all three, and we can tell you what worked for us in saving money, attracting quality people to our lives, and getting rid of the junk that was holding us down.

Learn from our mistakes, copy what works, and add to the conversation when you have a different perspective or a better idea. We’ll throw in an occasional travel story because that is what we love to do, but until we leave on the big trip we’ll be talking about the things that got us to this point, the things that are important to everyone: