Our family believes in designing the life one wants to live, and we have designed an approach for our life that builds adventure into our life plan. This approach is evolving through trial and error, so by no means is it perfect. For the ease of referring to this life we’ve designed, we’ll call it the Adventure Possible Life.
The Adventure Possible life borrows five years from retirement. Inspired by Stefan Sagmeister.
In a traditional life, an average person spends the first twenty five years of their life learning through school or trade. The person then spends forty years working with the goal of saving enough money to retire at sixty five. At which time, they hope to enjoy some fifteen years of healthy retirement while living off a nest egg and before passing.
We modify life’s traditional arc.
The Adventure Possible life borrows five years from retirement, dispersing those years in one year blocks about every five to seven years throughout the typical working years.
As a result, we create five or so distinct opportunities for adventure.
We work hard for about five to seven years, advancing careers, making money, saving money, and investing.
For those working years, we thrive, driving professional success while dreaming and planning the next adventure.
The adventure can be whatever desired. It’s personal. Backpacking. Cycling. Paddling. Expat living in a foreign country. RV’ing America. It doesn’t have to be dangerous, unconquered, far away, or even last a full year, as long as we get into the adventure mentality by pushing ourselves into new experiences, disconnecting from the rat race, and forcing change in our lives.
At AdventurePossible.com, we share our family’s story along with lots of lessons learned about the experiences and practicalities of living the Adventure Possible life. Planning adventure. Making money. Saving money. Investing in assets. Exiting and entering the workforce. We focus on these practical topics so that we can learn how to better manage and design this life, and so that you can apply them in your own design.
Why have we designed this life?
The Adventure Possible concept emerged out of our own necessity to balance ambitions for having successful professional careers, building wealth, having a happy and healthy family, and embarking on epic adventures.
We often found these ambitions to be in conflict with one another. As career and family progressed, excuses and concerns about money, timing, and family smothered adventure travel dreams.
The Adventure Possible life helps us make adventure an integral part of life, giving us reason and methods to remove some of the most common barriers to adventure while minimizing the sacrifices related to work, money, and family.
Is this a risky life?
Over the years, we’ve had naysayers tell us we’re going to derail our careers, crush our finances, endanger our children, or otherwise put ourselves at risk by leaving work and adventuring. The questions and concerns expressed by others often lead us to think more deeply about our lifestyle, and in some cases refine our approach to employment, parenting, finance, and education. As we move through the 15 Steps to Make Adventure Possible, we’ll share our perspective on some of the common concerns and deeper considerations we’ve had to ponder. In each step, there are links to other articles and anecdotes from our adventures. So explore the content and decide for yourself how you’ll manage the risk of adventure.
The 15 Steps to Make Adventure Possible
For you would-be adventurers, we’re capturing our learnings in a step-by-step process that we hope will inspire you to lead a life of adventure.
Built around the concept of taking one year sabbatical every five to seven years, we’ll walk you through the following steps and provide you with many ancillary articles for each step so that you can make adventure possible.
Step 1: Determine Your Adventure
Step 2: Manage Debt Before the Adventure
Step 3: Analyze Current Household Spending
Step 4: Cut Current Expenses
Step 5: Create an Adventure Travel Budget
Step 6: Create a Gear & Equipment List with Pricing
Step 7: Create an Adventure Travel Savings Plan
Step 8: Commit to Long Term Savings & Investing
Step 9: Plan your Exit from the Workforce
Step 10: Shed Your Stuff
Step 11: Make Money While You Travel
Step 12: Embark on the Adventure
Step 13: Manage Finances and Other Matters While Traveling
Step 14: Re-Enter the Workforce
Step 15: Return to Step 1
Note: For those steps not linked, the articles are coming soon (maybe).
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Very cool article – we love adventure not just in our home country New Zealand but in other wildernesses 🙂
Sounds great, Mia. Thanks for stopping by and the comment!
I am excited to have found this site! We are in the process of planning a cross country family rv trip, for a period of 6-12+ months. Any help in preparation would be welcome! We can’t wait to make real life changing memories with our family! Thank you for doing this, even if we don’t qualify. What an amazing program!
Nicole, feel free to email me any specific questions. We published a few “how we planned, what we packed, how we decided” posts early on. I’m happy to help answer any questions you might have. So glad to hear you’re doing this!!
Stumbled upon your site when searching full time RV budgeting! Very interested to see how it’s going for you! We just purchased an Airstream trailer and spend all of our time daydreaming about quitting our jobs and travelling full time. I’ll be reading all of your posts more in depth – especially the transition period and what you did with all of your worldly possessions! Thanks and enjoy your adventure!
Hi Sally, that’s great you bought an Airstream. I hope you all can get on the road full-time sooner than later. Let us know if you have any questions while considering your trip. We’re happy to help and it gives us ideas for blog posts.
Mark
I think you guys are so awesome! You are living the dream I’m working towards. I’m currently planning an AT thru hike this spring.
Go Ricky.
For Adventure just only thing about these –
1. Think that you are the purest and best thing that god has ever made.
2. If you try your best , then whole universe will bring you that.
3.Dream for fun,love,family,champion.
4. You are a hero , you are unstoppable, work on your dreams, let them run wild.
5.Create happiness, love, see best in others, do your best.
One last thing , my age is 14 years, hope you understand what i am planning.
– Siddharth Upadhyay
My wife and i just bought a 36 foot 1993 Fleetwood Bounder with only 011480 original miles.
We are going to Oregon first then to Arizona from there we want to just continue around the United States. We are looking for ways to fund our dream. I just put a new roof on, i am replacing the plumbing since it leaks threw alot of the fittings. There isn’t a kitchen,since it was a office previously. Thats our next project after we buy tires it still has original tires they have great tread but they are dry roted. Would you like to sponsor us with 7 Goodyear tires, possibly a kitchen. We are thinking about possibly doing a wrap with advertising from our sponsors. We just need to make sure they have our values. In God we trust and work for, we are constitutionalists and animal lovers who don’t want to hurt our environment our planet. We believe we need government reform without a civil war.