I am writing this post from one of the most beautiful places I have ever been…. Southern Spain.  The Mediterranean Sea is peaking through the hills to the south, a white-washed, red-tile-roofed town is nestled in the mountain to our North, and Mount Maroma towers over us to the East.

As I am looking around, I am asking myself “How can this be my real life?”

Wasn’t I just working 9:30am-6pm every day with a 40-minute commute each way? Wasn’t I just complaining to my coworkers about how the weekend went way too fast?

This feels surreal and almost magical. The craziest part is we have been here for 45 days!!

I have to keep telling myself this isn’t a vacation, it’s my new reality! 

Chris and I always knew we would travel……someday. But we didn’t know when or how to make it happen. We had A LOT of credit card debt, full-time jobs, our school loans seemed insurmountable, and being close to our family was important……so how could we move abroad long-term?

 

So How Did We Make This a Reality?

We were on a cruise through the Panama Canal for Chris’s dad’s 60th birthday when we overheard some people talking nearby. They were saying how this cruise was just to kill time in between their house-sitting assignments. After the cruise, they were headed to Australia for a month to look after someone’s house.

Our interest was piqued, to say the least. We started talking to them about their travels and our first question was “What is house-sitting?” Their answer changed our lives forever.

Our dream of travel that we thought was a “someday” started to become something we could make a reality……soon!

 

What is House-Sitting?

As soon as we got back from our cruise, we started doing research. We found that house-sitting was way more common than we could have imagined, especially in Europe. This was perfect because going to Europe was at the top of our travel list.

OK…. So, what is it??

House-sitting is where you go to someone’s house for a designated time period and live there while they are traveling. You may have to watch their pets, water their plants, or just occupy the house. The most amazing part is…It’s FREE.

I repeat…. IT’S FREE.

As a home-owner, especially with pets, it’s expensive to board your pets for a long period of time. On top of that, it can be stressful for the pets to be in a kennel. So, having a house-sitter is a good option.

They get someone to stay at their house as a pet-sitter (house-sitter) for free and you get to live there for free. It’s a win-win situation all the way around.

We started setting goals and planning right away. The biggest realization was that we could do this without much money. All we had to do was get rid of our credit card debt and save up a little money. We took a long hard look at our finances and started focusing on getting out of debt.

Side note: If you think about where your money goes on a monthly basis, it’s rent/mortgage, utilities, car payments, cable, internet, insurance, etc. But with house-sitting, most of these things would be included. Mind Blown!!! The only thing we would need money for was food and travel.

Check out our Webisodes about House Sitting to Learn More –

• Webisode 4: House Sitting Part 1 – How To Stay For FREE Around the World
• Webisode 5: House Sitting Part 2 –

How Do You Find House-Sits?

There are a lot of websites where people post their house and requirements for a house-sitter. Once you create a profile,     you can start reaching out to the different assignments and finding the perfect match.

We did some research on which websites were best for us and we currently use two.

-Trusted Housesitters

-Mind My House

There are many more out there, but you can’t realistically manage more than a couple at a time.  These two websites have allowed us to fully book up our next year of house-sits.

 

How Did We Prepare?

The first thing we did was make a timeline of when we wanted to leave. We couldn’t keep saying “someday.”  Once we had the timeline in mind, we became focused and ready to make this happen.

We had to get creative (there was no money tree in our back yard).

Chris and I bought a house in an up-and-coming area in Indianapolis. It needed A LOT of work, but we remodeled it and flipped it for a nice profit. This allowed us to pay off a lot of our credit card debt in one chunk.

Simultaneously, we were trying not to spend a lot of money going out. We budgeted and constantly reviewed our finances. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t always fun, but we had an end goal in mind.

After the house sold (sooner than we expected), we moved in with my sister and brother-in-law to save on rent and utilities. They were trying to buy a house, so it was a strategic plan for all of us to save money.

At this point, we were starting to see a snowball effect on our debt. We were paying less interest, so we could pay off other things and start saving.

Then came the downsizing. We started selling virtually all our stuff.

It was a great feeling! Our life was simplifying and our dream of travel was quickly becoming a reality.

How long did all this take?

Good question!

From just a far-off dream to becoming a reality, it took us 5 years to move abroad. Don’t let that number scare you though. We had very few resources and guidance regarding how to make long-term travel happen.

That’s why we started Simply See The World, so YOU  will have the information to help you make YOUR travel dreams a reality (sooner rather than later).

The most time-consuming part for us was paying off debt. I am sure you have been there, and it seems like a never-ending cycle of 2 steps forward and 1 step back…. but, with time, a plan, and a little willpower it is possible.

Trust us, our situation was not pretty when we started this process.

While we were getting our finances in order, we were also searching for the perfect house sit, applying for a visa, and figuring out what to pack

So now here we are at a house-sit in Spain.  We are still pinching ourselves!

 

Are We Glad We Did It?

Like I mentioned above, house-sitting made our dream a reality and changed our lives.

But more than that, it really forced us to look at what’s important in life. When long-term travel seemed like it was going to be a real possibility, we started to evaluate our lifestyle.

Simplifying our lives by downsizing, de-cluttering, organizing our finances, and focusing on spending our time with our favorite people before we left, really made us realize what we wanted out of life.

It opened our minds to a new way of living. A simpler, uncluttered, focused, HAPPIER way of life.