Seven years ago, we took a leap. We left Nashville, TN to move across country, bringing our jobs with us and hoping for the best, never looking back. We've missed all the friends and family we left behind, but the adventures we've had and memories we've made are irreplaceable. If nothing else, adventure and wanderlust are shared components in the DNA of our relationship (among many others). The new and the novel are the spice of life and something we love to share together. While we may revisit old adventures here, the main subject is that of new adventures. While we love our home and the life we've been building in Colorado, when the opportunity came up to trade "stayin' put" with a richer experience of, ...well, not - we took it! Follow along as we take a year (or more?) and take our jobs and lives on the road. Ten (or more?) locations across the upcoming year - two thirty-somethings, working and experiencing day-to-day life with our two pups, trekking across the Western United States and getting a dose of the different cultures and all there is to offer. Ok, so I know you've got questions... let's get into it! What exactly are you doing again? A minimum of one year, 10 AirBnB locations / 10 cities. Two dogs, two laptops, two cars, the two of us, and probably too much extraneous shit we're dragging around with us. We've rented out our home in Colorado and we'll be working remotely and experiencing the local cultures - not a year of vacation, but a year of life - likely dealing with common day-to-day stressors, trying to fit in exercise, making dinner, walking the dogs, and getting up early for last minute meetings. But, when we pop out to the grocery store or go for a neighborhood stroll, the scenery will be slightly different each time we go! Umm, but why? It may require unnecessary logistics, lots of additional planning, as well as cost. It has meant emptying all our belongings from our house and letting many things go. It has required dealing with multiple contractors to get our house "rental ready". And all of this before we even stepped foot in a new city. Why not just take a typical two week vacation somewhere nice and leave the hassle behind? Good question... it IS a lot, but at the moment, our jobs/careers are more flexible than they've been in the past and this grants us an opportunity we may never have again. There's something refreshing about shaking things up, trying something new, living multiple new lives in new destinations. Meeting up with old friends and hopefully many new ones. Connecting with distant network connections in new cities and seeing their city through their eyes. Embedding ourselves into these new communities and experiencing it along with the stress, not just seeing the detached pristine beach pics, but lounging on the beach after a stressful work day. Accessing a local bike trail to blow off steam. Coworking from a different coffee shop alongside faces I'd never see otherwise (not to mention I may never otherwise look up to notice). So essentially, it's an experience. One that I think we're unlikely to forget and may even build us towards more unexpected opportunities. How did you decide to do this? How do you plan something like this? This idea has been percolating for a while now. For one, as a Product Manager of a fully remote company (GitLab), I've seen many other peers shape their work schedules and lives to better suite their interests. For me, my interests include snowboarding, mountain biking, fly fishing, hiking -- many activities that happen to take place near mountains. We've entertained the idea for a while of moving more into the mountains, exploring an investment property, or somehow finding more creative approaches to enjoy mountain activities more easily, without breaking the bank. We started exploring the idea of a small "PoC"... a proof of concept to see what it's like to live in the mountains. Could we rent a place for a month? Three months? Well, that blossomed into this grander idea... if we are leaving our house vacant, why not rent it out? Why not experience more than just three months somewhere new? And so, here we are... From ideation to execution, we're probably looking at roughly 2 years of knocking the idea around and a good hard 3-6 months of practical hands-on preparations to make it happen. We contacted a local property management company, which was a really important step to take on early in the process. There are factors like timing the market to get the best rent for your home, and in a time when there is more activity... more renters looking for a rental home. They walked through our home and identified improvements we'd likely need to make and the pricing structure for our agreement. It's common to see a 10% property management fee per month, along with costs to get the home listed and upfront fees. Another key step, and one I'd recommend starting right away if you have any designs to do something like this... Marie Kando ya shit. If you are anything like us, it will take multiple rounds of letting go. We got really well acquainted with our local Goodwills, "buy nothing" groups, as well as landfills. Stuff we've accumulated, stuff we've built, stuff we've been asked to "hold onto"... lots of choices had to be made. We also rented a storage unit for the remaining things we decided to retain. It's safe to say we could likely let go of a lot more, but we did our best! One potential travel hack we came up with, as our plan consisted of booking primarily AirBnBs, it's known that you can get discounts on AirBnBs when you stay longer. "Long-term stays" which typically start after 28 days provide the deepest discounts. Seeing as how our plan included booking multiple AirBnBs upfront and in advance of our travel, that requires capital to put down deposits prior to us receiving any income from our home rental. To handle this more smoothly, we looked around for 0% APR credit cards and tried to find a card that also provided some benefits aligned with our travel plans (e.g. gas, groceries, travel insurance). We ended up going with the Chase Freedom Unlimited card but there were a few potential options. We didn't luck out and find any that paid additional points on AirBnB bookings but there are different perks out there and I'd suggest doing your own research based on your specific circumstances. In our case, we could put down deposits on around 6 of our bookings, and plan to have rental income to pay it back down well in advance of the terms. Planning the route Planning the route took a few rounds of ideation and thoughtful discussion. We identified the activities and locations that sparked our interest, as well as the constraints. I wanted more mountains. Annie wanted more beach. We both wanted locations with nice (enough) yards and space for our dogs. We wanted space for an office setup, to be able to work full days as needed. We wanted places we could get out easily to hike/walk and experience the sights, but we also have a budget. The goal was to try to find locations that kept us as close as possible to break-even - keeping costs as close to the rent intake from our home as possible. There are likely ways to keep the budget lower, but for all we were looking for, rent has been more of an approach to subsidize our experience. There's no additional savings from this plan. Many have asked if we're taking an RV, but to be able to live/work, the RV concept felt a bit cramped for all four of us. For others, this may work perfectly for you! AirBnBs could also be much cheaper if not looking for dog-friendly stays with more than a small strip of yard and an extra room for an office (which we still didn't find for all of our stays). So for us, we landed on locations across the Western United States. We mapped a plan to take two vehicles with dogs and travel point to point, keeping each leg of our drive as minimal as possible. We also considered which seasons we'd want to be where and had to make some concessions and decisions to narrow it down. Ultimately, we landed on the following map: