About Us
Hello! We’re Jenoa and Colin. In 2019 we traveled around the world for 12 months, visiting 3 continents and 19 countries.
Our year of travel was the most joyful, freeing year of our lives. It lived up to every expectation we had for it. Because we had such a remarkable year, we want to pay it forward and share our knowledge so you can travel long-term.
How can we help you?
Traveling the world is both fun and exciting. But booking flights, reserving hotels, and researching itineraries take a lot of time and work. Saving up enough money to leave your job and travel long-term requires a lot of patience and determination.
Our goal is to make long-term travel possible and easier for you.
How did we travel the world for a year?
We did this by saving up six figures in 4-years on normal salaries, prioritizing our goal to travel, and living a very simple and frugal lifestyle. Throughout your reading, you will find that we are all about living with less in order to experience more in life! We also compiled a lot of resources along the way to make it possible.
When we first met, both of us mentioned how we’d love to take a year of our lives to travel the world, although, for a while, we weren’t sure if a trip like that could actually be possible for a regular couple like us. Neither of us had huge incomes, we weren’t influencers, nor did we have loads of money set aside in our bank accounts. In fact, I only had $50 in my bank account and Colin owed $11,000 in student loan debt at the time. Not necessarily the ideal situation if you want to travel the world, but also, not that unusual of a starting place either. But, penny by penny, we got to work saving to make our dream possible.
We set a goal to quit our jobs to travel and prioritized it. I made a poster that said “Travel the World by 2019” and hung it up in our hallway. We made changes to our expenses (like cooking instead of eating out and reusing clothes instead of buying more) and started spending a lot less money and lived frugally. At the same time, we enjoyed our lives and realized that stuff didn’t necessarily bring us happiness.
After 4 years of hard work and saving, we had saved up enough to quit our jobs and travel for one year. Yep, that’s right. We didn’t work for an entire year and simply enjoyed all of the wonderful things in life without worrying about 9 am meetings.
It wasn’t until we got back from our trip that I realized my passion for traveling extended beyond having my own travel experiences. I wanted others to experience the same things I did from traveling the world. Not only did I get to see so many beautiful places and experience amazing cultures, but traveling for a year without work was the most incredibly freeing feeling I’ve ever experienced. Now, I want to help you travel the world and experience the same carefree feeling that I did.
So why did we create this website?
When we tell people we’ve done extensive long-term traveling, we tend to get a lot of curious folks asking us for travel advice.
- How did you afford to travel for a year?
- How do you plan for such a long trip?
- How did you prepare for your trip?
- How do you save enough money to travel the world?
- What is it like quitting your job to travel?
We realized that a lot of people are interested in traveling the world, but they aren’t sure where to start. We get it – it’s overwhelming and sometimes seems impossible. But if there is anything we want you to take away from this blog – it’s this: Traveling the world is possible if you can learn to live with less in your day-to-day life and be mindful of your spending habits.
We hope you enjoy reading our blog, and we hope to see you on the road!
Happy traveling!
Colin
Hi, I’m Colin – an adventurous, fun-loving, amateur baker who loves traveling the world and still thinks Jazz Kittens are a good idea. Not sure what Jazz Kittens are? Send me an email and I’ll tell you all about it.
I embarked on my first international adventure when I was 19, when I moved between Ukraine and Moldova for 2 years.
Later, I embarked on a month-long backpacking trip through Western Europe where we camped out in Paris (they have camping in Paris?), slept on the hills of Cinque Terre, and woke up to the ocean breeze and million dollar yachts off the coast of Monaco. That was the most adventurous, wild, and fun experience I have ever had up to that point in my life.
Then, in 2019, Jenoa and I set out for Thailand with nothing but our backpacks for a year of travel. No work, no responsibility, just enjoying each and every moment.
My own personal experiences traveling has opened up my eyes to the world and made me realize how incredible the diversity of our planet and cultures truly are. My love for traveling makes me want everyone to have the same experiences that I have had. That’s why I am starting this. Because I believe that traveling makes us better people and enriches our lives.
Jenoa
Hey there! I’m Jenoa. I am a natural homebody who, for some reason, can’t stay in one place for very long. I like to design things, and I love to spend my evenings cooking up foods from around the world.
The first time I thought about traveling the world was when I was 10-years old. My teacher asked us to write down our biggest dream in life, and I wrote down “travel the world”. I like to say the rest is history. I went on my first international trip back in 2010. I spent one month traveling around Europe with my French class and then traveled to Spain solo to teach English. I came back from that trip feeling as if I had discovered a huge part of my life that was missing – traveling. I remember thinking to myself – how do I do this more often?!
That trip changed the course of my life. Since then, I have been to 33 countries. I studied abroad in Switzerland for a year and definitely traveled more than I studied during my time there. That’s probably the reason my French still isn’t great after all of these years . . . oops. In 2016, I realized that working 55+ hours per week in corporate finance was not for me, so I quit my job to backpack and volunteer in Europe for 4-months. More recently, I quit my “dream job” in fashion to travel the world with Colin for one full year in 2019.
To me, experiences are what life is all about, and I hope this website can help you experience the joy of traveling, too!