Brad and Sheena met in high school during a mountain bike race and went on to build a traditional life for themselves with all the success and comfort that your mid-twenties can afford. But the couple couldn’t help but feel something was out of place.
They’ve been kind enough to share their savings plan; you can find it on their website.
“We looked back at the last five years of our life and didn’t have much to show for it,” Brad said. “We said, ‘We need to do something interesting before the rest of our life flashes before our eyes.’”
After a friend passed along a National Geographic Explorer article about a couple who had quit their day jobs to travel down through South America and up through Africa in a Volkswagen bus, Brad asked Sheena if she wanted to give it a shot. She said yes.
Sheena quickly turned her skills as an accountant toward finding every way possible to squeeze money out of their budget, from giving up their large rental home for a smaller place located closer to work, to riding their bicycles more often and skipping frivolous spending altogether. By the end of their two years of saving, the couple was spending less than $200 a month on non-essential items. They’ve been kind enough to share their savings plan, and you can find it here on their website.
“I didn’t even know how a car worked until we decided to go on this trip,” Brad says.
While on a business trip, Brad found the ideal vehicle: a 1984 two-wheel-drive Vanagon that had 200,000 miles on the odometer when he drove it home from Hollywood.
“You’d think I would have done more mechanic work before we started,” Brad said, “but I just fixed the things that were broken on [the van] and just left it. We focused mostly on making it a comfortable place to live for three years.” Continue reading »
Article source: http://www.autoblog.com/2013/04/22/help-a-couple-drive-their-1984-vanagon-around-the-world/
