It has been six years since Whitney and I semi-retired from our careers as physical therapists in 2018 and decided to start living out our dreams of traveling all over the country, and the world! In that time, we’ve achieved some incredible travel related goals that truly just seemed like a dream in the beginning, but we’ve been able to make a reality!
In less than six years, we were able to visit all 50 US States, all 63 US National Parks, over 50 countries internationally, and all seven continents!
This is all while continuing to grow our savings and investments, officially achieving financial independence, and unexpectedly growing a thriving online business! It’s been a whirlwind to say the least!
Keep reading to learn more about our journey to achieving these travel goals, plus some ways that we were able to do it on a budget while still adding to our savings!
Achieving Semi-Retirement and Beginning Our World Travels
In some ways, it still feels like yesterday I was planning our 2018 trip around the world and writing about semi-retirement, and in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago. Before that five month long international trip in 2018, I had only been out of the US twice in my life (two short vacations to the Bahamas and Jamaica) and had never really left the east coast.
Even though we’d been Travel PTs for three years at that point, we had taken all of our contracts so far on the east coast to avoid long drives between contracts which would cause us to miss weeks of work. Back then, we did our very best to maximize our savings rate and minimize our time off of work in an effort to reach financial independence as quickly as possible, and it really paid off for us. Although we weren’t able to see as much of the country as we wanted in those first few years, we knew that once we stopped working full time we’d have plenty of time to explore the country and the world, and that’s exactly what we did.
We initially planned to wait until we reached full financial independence to start taking more time off from work to travel, with that projected timeline being after we had worked full time as Travel PTs for five years, which would have put us starting in 2020 (oh, how ironic that would have been). However, an opportunity arose for us to go abroad for an event in 2018, so we decided to go ahead and start our “semi-retirement” then with a five month trip all over Europe and Asia.
This transition in 2018 changed our lives forever and set us off on a whole new life trajectory where we began only working 3-6 months each year as PTs (after working three years full time following graduation), while spending the majority of each year traveling all over the US and abroad. We also unexpectedly started our Travel Therapy Mentor business during our 2018 trip, which further contributed to our financial goals and allowed us to work even less as PTs moving forward.
While most people wait until after retirement or much later in life to do most of their traveling, we wanted to take advantage of the flexibility and financial freedom of our careers as traveling physical therapists in order to travel while we were young. In our jobs as physical therapists, we’ve talked to many dozens of patients who had grand plans to travel the world after retirement, only to never be able to do it due to health and family related circumstances. Knowing that is all too common, we wanted to work on our travel related bucket list goals much earlier in life, before we settled down to have a family. And this has worked out better than we could have imagined!
Our Travel Goals
Here are the travel goals we set out to achieve:
- Visit all 50 US states
- Spend at least a month in both Alaska and Hawaii
- Visit all 63 of the US National Parks (there were actually only 61 when we started, but we added the new ones as we went)
- Travel to at least 50 countries
- Visit all 7 continents
It ended up taking us only a little over five years to achieve all of these goals, although it actually would have been much quicker if the pandemic didn’t throw a major wrench in our plans, causing us to have to cancel a 5 month trip to Latin America that we had planned in 2020.
We even managed to do all of this on somewhat of a budget, although that budget certainly relaxed over time. When planning out these aspirations, I had no idea how long it would actually take us or how much it would cost, but I was guessing at least a couple hundred thousand dollars each. Fortunately, we were able to do it for much less than that.
Summary of Our Travels
While I didn’t write about every single trip we took over these years, I did write about any of them that were more than two weeks long, and I tracked my half of the expenses for all of them, both short and long, throughout.
Here is a summary of the big trips we took and my half of the expenses for each trip, with links to each of them for a more in depth breakdown:
2018: Around the World Trip– 22 weeks, $5,659 total
2019: Summer European Adventure– 15 weeks, $4,720 total
2019: Cross Country Roadtrip– 3 weeks, $1,246 total
2020: Cross Country Van Adventure– 8 weeks, $2,016 total
2021: Mexico Trip– 9 weeks, $3,207 total
2021: Hawaiian Summer– 12 weeks, $9,180 total
2021: Cross Country Roadtrip– 6 weeks, $1,735 total
2022: Latin America Adventure– 10 weeks- $6,098 total
2022: Alaskan Summer– 18 weeks- $17,430 total
2022: Around the World Trip: The Sequel– 9 weeks- $9,423 total
2023: Epic European Honeymoon– 10 weeks-$9,635 total
2024: South America and Antarctica Bucket List Adventure– 6 weeks- $5,990 total
In addition to these big trips, we also took other shorter 1-2 week road trips to Florida (twice), Niagara Falls, and Michigan/Wisconsin; plus other trips to Puerto Rico, Mexico (two more times), a cruise to the Caribbean, and the US Virgin Islands. We did lots of shorter weekend trips throughout as well, but I won’t even try to recall all of those.
So to sum up some of the stats you might be interested in, here’s the relevant info for our 5.5 years of serious traveling:
- 54 countries visited
- We’ve been to 56 total but 2 of those were outside of this window
- All 50 US states and 3 US territories
- Some states multiple times
- All 63 US National Parks
- Some of the parks we visited more than once, plus we’ve also visited about a dozen National Parks in other countries, and countless state parks and other significant landmarks in the US
- All 7 continents
- With multiple trips totaling several months all over North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, a couple weeks in Africa, several weeks in Oceania, and a cruise to Antarctica!
- ~45,000 miles driven around the US and Canada to visit the states and National Parks
- Total spent for my half of the expenses during all these travels: ~$80,500
We spent a total of ~139 weeks (about 2.7 years) traveling, which is almost exactly half of the total 5.5 year period. The rest of the time was spent resting and recharging at home in Virginia, some forced downtime due to the pandemic, as well as some time working in the clinic (either Travel PT contracts or PRN at home), and a lot of time building and growing our business.
Lessons Learned Through Our Travel Journey
A lot of things about this whole journey surprised me and Whitney, and we both learned a lot of lessons along the way. Here are some of the big ones that stand out:
- Traveling can be a lot more affordable than I thought. ~$80,000 per person for over 2.5 years of cumulative travel is much less than I would have ever imagined. With that being said, it’s worth spending extra for a more comfortable experience. We started out trying to spend as little as possible on our first two big trips, and although those were still great trips, we definitely sacrificed on some things. Once we started spending more on accommodations, our trips became much more enjoyable.
- Traveling, especially long international trips with a lot of stops, is exhausting. As time went on, our trips got shorter, and we started spending an extra day or two in each place so that we had more time to rest. Having an action packed trip is fine for a week or two, but if you’re traveling for multiple months, you need at least a day or two per week of “down time.”
- Road trips are our favorite way to travel, and buying our minivan and putting a platform in the back to spend occasional nights sleeping in it was a game changer. With that being said, spending more than 2-3 nights at a time in the van isn’t a good idea. Our favorite road trips were ones where we spent a night or two in the van followed by a night or two in a hotel or Airbnb.
- Credit card points are very underrated for reducing costs on long trips. Out of all of the trips that we took, we only paid for our major international flights out of pocket one time, and we got nearly 100 free hotel nights with points. That saved us tens of thousands of dollars each and was well worth the time spent accumulating the points.
- Eating well while traveling is very difficult even when going out of your way to try to do it. We had a lot of weight fluctuations over these years from gaining weight while traveling, and then spending a couple of months trying to lose it when we got back home. We also just didn’t feel our best at times when traveling because it was hard to stay consistent with nutritious foods (plus there was the inevitable food poisoning that happened a lot more often than we would have liked)!
- You can grow a business while traveling the world. When traveling, there is a lot of down time at airports, on planes, and on buses that can be used to build and grow something you’re passionate about. The free time to think and write on our first big international trip was instrumental in growing this website and building Travel Therapy Mentor. Our readers, followers, and business income all grew exponentially while we were traveling over the past 5.5 years.
Since the Summer of 2018, Whitney and I have truly had the best times of our lives while traveling around the world. We’ve seen and done more than I would have thought was possible in my entire lifetime, much less in under 6 years.
We both grew as people while spending a lot of time outside of our comfort zones. Not only that, but our bond and relationship has improved greatly while working through challenges and spending so much time together.
Choosing to embark on this crazy travel journey is one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, right up there with deciding to become traveling physical therapists after graduation in 2015. I can’t recommend enough to travel as early in life as possible. It will do wonders for changing your worldview and broadening your perspective.
You can do a lot more than seems possible at first glance by thinking outside the box and finding ways to strategize. I know that we’re not the only ones who have been able to achieve amazing accomplishments like this by pursuing a different path than the standard one. Whether that’s through travel healthcare or another career path, there are definitely lots of ways to design a unique lifestyle that allows you to have more freedom and flexibility so you too can explore the world!
What’s Next?
We are so happy that we have been able to travel, see, and do so much in the last six years. Now, we are thrilled to be embarking on our next big journey as parents! Our first baby is due next month (October 2024) so our lives are about to change big time!
For the time being, we are loving getting settled in at home in Virginia, and we plan to be here for the foreseeable future. After baby arrives, we’ll continue to reassess and see how we feel about continuing to travel versus staying settled down more permanently.
One thing is for sure, we are thankful to have designed a lifestyle (via financial independence, Travel PT, and entrepreneurship) that allows us to have the ultimate in freedom and flexibility. We can choose to settle down, travel, or do some combination depending what works best for our family.
From a financial perspective, we no longer “need” to work clinically as PTs, but we plan to do so intermittently to maintain our licenses and continue to enjoy helping patients. We are also continuing to enjoy the meaningful work we do as mentors in our online business, so we will continue that as long as it makes sense for us.
It’s funny how, like so many others in the financial independence community, I have found myself still wanting to create and work toward passions and business endeavors, even despite not “needing” to work any longer. My thoughts and opinions have changed a lot over the last six years, and I’m sure they will continue to evolve in the future. But I am forever grateful for the flexibility I’ve gained through pursuing financial independence.
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 
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