The One Where I Get a Job

I just noticed that this is my 100th post!! Crazy. Thanks for following along for 100 little stories of how I got from where I started - to fittingly, my first yachting job. Cheers to all of us!

I came into this adventure knowing that we may have to work separately. Living apart was the downside we were expecting on our way to our goals. That time finally came. 

It happened quickly. I got a call, an interview, another call and then started packing my tiny bag all over again. Juliano drove me to a train stop. I was nervous about working on my first boat, anxious about leaving Juliano and excited to see what it was all about. 

This is what I had been working for wasn’t it?

I sold my house so I could live here.
I quit my job so I could work here. 
I moved to Florida so I could get onboard here. 
I bought two computers so we could live apart. 
I took courses so I could know what to do here. 

The pressure to be happy with the dreams I had achieved was immense.

I stepped onboard and met the rest of the crew. Six crew keep this 130’ boat floating, moving and clean. It was based in West Palm Beach, a 1 hour train ride north of Fort Lauderdale where Juliano was staying. I liked it here. I work hard right away.

I got hired as Stew/Deck which essentially puts me at the whims of both my chief stew and our first mate. I clean the rooms, I clean the bilges. The pay seems low at first, compared to what I was making at my Official Office Job - but then I realize slowly that I don’t pay mortgage. Or utilities. Or food. Suddenly the amount I’m making stretches much further. Also, I don’t have space to put anything I would buy.

I live on boat now.

One Year In.

One year ago today, I picked up a tiny bag. I flew away from my home, my family, my things (not much left) to go and try something new. 

Let’s live on a boat, we thought. Let’s travel for living.

Holy Shit, friends. We did it. 

We live on a boat. We travel for a living.

Where are we today you wonder? Today, we’re in Brazil - on holiday. Yep, on holiday from living on a boat and traveling for work. Craziness! Here are the places that we’ve been since stepping onboard this adventure...

Pretty good for a season and a half, and we’re just getting started. How about this then... I’ve had a couple of very flattering commenters ask if what we’re up to. So let’s catch up. Grab a cup of coffee, and take a seat in the galley - it’s a bit of a long story, but it’s a fun one...

Side Note: I’ll be throwing down my version of "how to be a yachtie" advice. It’s only based on our experiences getting into the industry from Florida. Feel free to disregard if you disagree!

We're on our way!

Early morning flight, stop over in Dallas and we're in our way... So excited to finally be going!

Yep. That is ALL OF OUR LUGGAGE {we're both wearing small backpacks in this pic}. We're travelling carry on only - and I'm stressed already that I've brought waay too much stuff! It's going to be an adventure.


Ps. We're having a debate on the value of upgrading to first/business class. I vote it's worth about $100/hour of flight time. {So a 2hr flight is worth it of its a $200 upgrade.} Buuuut... I haven't quite shifted my mindset to someone with no job! What do you think??

Long Term Travel Insurance for Albertans

The mixture of being Canadian residents and full-time employees with additional health insurance has afforded us the luxury of never really thinking about our health in terms of money. Everything has always been free. We pay nominal fees for some prescriptions and travel immunizations, but not much.

To be honest, I can't even really relate to having to pay for healthcare. You have to pay if you get hit by a car? You have to pay to have a baby in a hospital? This doesn't make any sense to me. I'll keep my politics to myself, but my views are based on my experiences with this system of healthcare.

Venturing out into the world, we had to consider our health coverage internationally. We're both certified SCUBA divers and plan on continuing to dive - so that was a concern as well. Luckily, through the power of the interwebs, most of the research was already done for me.

Yeay to blog friends! Yeay to being lazy!

Steph over at 20 Years Hence, wrote an amazingly detailed post Better Safe than Sorry about her experience with Canadian, American, and International health insurance. I won't even try to recap what she has to say, because most of my posts are rambling diatribes about drinking too much, not information packed learning experiences.

Point is: I agree with all of it, and have had many of the same experiences looking into insurance.

There are only a few differences we have as Albertans. AHCIP requires that you be in Alberta for 183 days out of 12 months to maintain coverage. Since we will be gone for longer than that, we can call to extend it out. But even that will only bring us up to 12 months of coverage for AHCIP basics {this is free coverage that all Albertans get}. If we lose this coverage, we will have to insure all of our coverage independently, and not just the additional insurance that we would get with most plans.

World Nomads and Bon Voyage are two companies that provide international insurance. After some comparisons, World Nomads looked more like the insurance that we would need, as it included more extended diving and 'adventure travel' coverage.

However, we had two more factors to consider:
{1} We wanted to add onto our current AHCIP coverage, not double it up
{2} If we do end up working soon, many boats will include medical insurance as a part of their package, and we don't want to pay for something that could be offered for free!

We went to check out AMA Travel Insurance options, and they provide some shorter term extended coverage. This is what we went with in the end. We bought insurance until December, which is 71 travel days and cost us $486 for both of us. Not the cheapest, but it's what works best for us.

**Side Note: All of these policies are health insurance that we carry on top of a personal life insurance policy that we pay monthly. Look how grown up we are! Multiple levels of insurance!**

When our AMA coverage runs out, we'll most likely purchase the World Nomads package if we still need it. What about you fellow travellers? Did you purchase any insurance? Have you had any experiences making claims worldwide?

If you have any specific questions about Alberta/Travel insurance - let me know!

We Don't Have JOBS!!

Yep, You are looking at a bunch of unemployed vagabonds for the time being!!

My last day of work was Friday, and it feels soooo weird to not be at work today. No matter - I scheduled us some massages to 'ease our pain'.

[Budget Note: Yep, I knoooow we're supposed to be cheap when we have no jobs and we're planning on travelling. But seriously, we booked with students at a massage school - so it's cheap! And we're helping someone get an education. Who doesn't believe in education?? Exactly.]

We had one last run to the storage locker yesterday, and have some banking and shopping to do to get our last minute packing done... I'll get a money post up in a bit now that we have a solid handle on our pre-adventure finances...

Have a great day - 3 more sleeps to Florida!

We're Moving Friends!

Hi Friends and Family... 

Guess What?

In about 2 weeks. Holy Crap.

Welcome to the blog. I wrote it to tell you a bit about the crazy decisions we were making to sell our stuff, move away and add a splash of adventure to our lives! Take a look around if you want, here's our first post which explains a little about what we're doing and why...

Keeping in touch with our family and friends from home is super important to us... so I'll try to keep this blog updated with where we are and what we're up to as we go. In return, please comment, email, facebook, Skype, FaceTime or message us as much as you want!

We love you all - so buy us a beer before we're gone :)

D&J

ps. for our regular bloggy friends.... telling our friends and family is another check of the champagne list!

OMG. WE BOOKED A DATE.

Holy Shit Friends. We've done it. We Booked a DATE.

Pause.  Rewind.  Review.

It was almost a year ago (Nov 2011) that we first had the discussion. We talked and talked and decided that maybe this Calgary life wasn't exactly what we were looking for right now. Maybe, we should take this double-income-no-kids moment in our life as an opportunity for something crazy instead of a stepping stone to the next inevitable 'phase' in life. We asked each other what our goals were if we were to give up the fairly awesome and successful existence that we had earned ourselves... these were our answers:

Dana: Adventure. I want to travel and see the world. 

Juliano: I want to be financial independent, debt free and ahead of the game. 

Those goals are not usually compatible. But we got some inspiration together, and we threw around a few ideas that might work. The Big Idea came up, and both of us thought "noo... that's crazy!". But soon, 'no...that's crazy' starts to turn into... 'what if...'  which turns into 'could we really?'

Friends, let me tell you - What Ifs can take over your life. Literally. What if we made money while we were traveling? What if we could travel indefinitely? Eventually... What Ifs turn into Could We Really?s. Could we really sell our house? Could we really move away from family? Could we really quit our jobs?

We just started answering YES to every question. YES, we could make money and travel at the same time. YES we could sell our house. YES we could move away. YES is a very powerful word, so it seems.

We began to secretly put a plan into place to move us closer to this goal. We saved money, and sold our stuff. We didn't buy or receive any Christmas gifts that year. We only told a few people about our 'crazy' plan.... and then we listed the house. And sold more stuff. And moved. And saved. And waited.

What started out as a silly idea between two people turned into and HUGE project that we felt was taking all of our time and effort. Now that we're close to the finish line, this plan has taken on momentum of it's own and is snowballing ahead of us, dragging us along for the adventure of lifetime.

We're excited, anxious, busy with so many details and a touch overwhelmed. But we really wanted to solidify the plan and make it a 'Real Thing' in our minds. So we bought our plane tickets! Yep.

We are now the proud (VERY PROUD!) owners of two one way tickets from Calgary, Alberta, Canada to the yachting capital of North America - Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. We leave...

September 22, 2012

Holy Shit. It's less than seven weeks away. We're moving this weekend to live in a condo with some friends, and we'll stay there until we leave. I still have to give notice at my work, decide on a packing list (yikes!), register for some courses, book a place to stay, organize our finances here (will share that with you!), finish a million detail of our lives here and about eleventy-million other things.

Let's get this party started!

Cheers, D & J

What a Ride!

Hey Friends, guess what?

We got rid of our car! Yep, our much beloved VW Golf is gone. It took care of us for 4 years, and brought us to lots of amazing adventures. But, the lease was up the same day as our house possession.. so it was a busy day for us!

** financial disclosure: The Golf was leased for 4 years, and cost us $979 to return for some minor repairs and admin fees, ouch **

In the meantime - we’ve been driving our van. And while suuuper handy, it’s been a bit of a weird adjustment. Excuse me while I go all ‘first world problems’ on you here: Driving a nice car like the golf was quite reflective of our lifestyle and status in this city. Now, cruising around in a sketchy van - it’s a tactile adjustment and our first taste of ‘less possessions’. We knew it was going to happen, but having to let go of your ego in even the smallest of ways is an interesting shift in view. Just trying to be honest with you.

We’ve been staying with family in the ‘burbs for a couple of weeks, but next weekend we’re heading back downtown to stay with friends in an apartment. It’s going to be great to get our commute down to just a few minutes, but now we don’t want to deal with the expense of parking - so we’re selling the van (yeay money!) and signed up for an awesome new car sharing program to get us through the next couple of months!

Car2Go is a great program that we heard about on twitter (@danadebrito).We get to rent smart cars by the minute to use whenever/wherever we want! It’s all app based for finding the cars, parking and gas is all included, and it’s charged automatically to our credit cards. We signed up at an event so our registration was free (yeay free!) but I think it’s usually about $35/year.

Ps. I wasn't paid/sponsored by car2go in any way for this. It's just a sweet idea that I paid for with my own money.

Another check off our Champagne List! Cheers!

House Selling 101: Do it in a bar.

Okay friends, I know you all want to know about our trips, but we have WAY MORE EXCITING NEWS to share!

We sold our house!

WHILE ON VACATION. 

Yep, the deal is already firm and possession is June 15. That is exactly 30 days from today. Or 722 hours... but who's counting? Money question: We'll end up breaking even.After nearly 3 months on the market, we're happy with that.

Here's the funny part for you - we got it all on video!  Juliano [the video nerd] was trying to film some beer tastings we were doing for his Portland video when I got the call from our realtor. So, through the magic of technology - I present you:

Selling a house while sampling beer in the middle of the day!

And that is our tale bloggy friends. I'll be rolling out our trip stuff and keeping you posted about the move - yikes! Meanwhile, out of town family will be staying with us this weekend and next... so we'll be busy!

Robots Pay My Bills

It's been awhile since we had any Money Posts up here - and that's really because not too much is happening. Without a house sale, our finances remain stable {mostly}. To help prep us for some long term travel, and get us in the green for some savings... we're working on a couple of things financially:

1. Saving Money! 
You're shocked, I know. People who want to travel are saving money? Yep.
We started putting all of our extra cash into a {previously empty} savings account. All the money we got from Kijiji + Amazon + Extra stuff is in there. Our tax return $$ will go in there too. We've sold around $3000 of stuff {includes some things from the business that we owned} and will get almost $5000 in a tax refund. That puts us at almost $8000 saved - and we're still paying our mortgage! We're already 53% of the way to our 'Have this or don't get on a Plane' amount.

2. Automated Finance
Here's where the robots come in. After reading lots of money blogs/advice {Like This or This or This} I'm trying to shift my finances to be fully automated. Here's why:
- I'm lazy/disorganized and I don't want to forget bills or pay them late
- I know I'm going to pay all my bills, so why not have the robots do it for me?
- Bills still get paid if you're not around the internet
- It keeps my budgeting organized and on track - bazinga!

I've already gone into my love for Mint {budgeting software} and it's awesome auto-categorizing, so this is just taking it one step further:

For my home:
- I called VISA to have the minimum payments for both of our credit cards come out of our account on the 15th. I can still make additonal payments on my own towards the principle {which we are still paying down}, but we'll never forget to pay.
-  My cell phone bill & utilities bills do the same, except the full payment for these come out every month
- A small RRSP savings transfer is made at the end of the month
- Property taxes & condo fees are paid automatically on a monthly basis

I still do all of our savings transfers & principle payments on credit cards manually. Mint categorizes all of my spending, so I can then review all of the payments that have been made and calculate my excess income for savings/debt repayment.

For our rental property:
- Post-dated cheques from my renters were given to the bank to be deposited on the 1st of the month
- Mortgage, utilities, condo fees, property taxes all come out automatically
This system is completely automated and I do nothing to it but monitor it monthly.


This has been a great way for us to ensure that all of our bills were being prioritized and paid immediately, as well as itemized and monitored on Mint. It leaves us with a clear number at the end of every month that we can use towards our goals. Currently, we're using this excess money to pay down debt through a snowball approach {Try this Snowball Calculator!}, and using a snowflake approach to our savings - it will adjust alongside our situation.

**Final Note** Budgeting as a couple can be a nightmare sometimes. Everyone has different views and hangups about money, and secrecy is the kryptonite of a good budget. COMMUNICATION is KEY! We need to have 'budget meetings' monthly to review the status of our accounts, our goals and spending ;) **

How do you budget your money? If you are living internationally - how do you manage your money abroad? Money and budgets are a huge portion of travel prep, so we're glad to be taking some steps to move forward... now we just have to get rid of this house and mortgage!!

Living on Our Own Terms

 Whats Up Bloggy Friends,

Sorry I disappeared on such a cranky-old-lady note!  I put on a grump face and couldn't shake it off... It got us to thinking and talking, and we've been guilty of one thing that we think has been sabotaging our success...

we keep living for tomorrow

How many cliche 'live in the moment' posters/quotes/inspirational cards have you seen?? A million?? MORE? Because we're so excited, and so motivated to 'move forward' with our plan, and to sell sell sell, move move move, we have been compromising our own decision-making skills for the benefit of getting to tomorrow faster.

How?? We accepted a conditional offer on the house that was lower than our financial base. Not by much, but it was more compromise than we were willing to make. We put a deposit down on a storage locker that we don't need yet. We keep hurtling ourselves forward without a thought or a care to the consequences, as long as it feels like we're moving forward.

We had to step back and realize that we are not leaving the life we have as refugees, but rather as emigrants looking for a new life. 

We still have our jobs, and we can afford to keep the house for as long as it takes to sell - on our terms. This entire BIG IDEA has been built around living our lives on OUR TERMS and not following the path laid out for us... and we have to start applying that decision making philosophy to our everyday, and our choices.

Here's to living live on our own terms 

~ big and small ~

Timing & Climbing: The Corporate Ladder

Isn’t ‘timing’ something? Good/ Bad Timing gets a lot of credit for things that happen in our lives – and I’m not sure that I buy into that. Sometimes, timing is just timing. 

If you’re a reader of our blog, you know that we are both still working full time in the Oil & Gas corporate world. We plan on staying here as long as we can before we leave [we have to accomplish several things on the Champagne List before we go!].

However, this week – both of us have been presented with excellent career building opportunities.  These are not flash-in-a-pan things, but rather the results of growing companies and time and work invested*.  The shifts in our employment clearly open up our Calgary career paths in positive and unexpected ways.  The path in front of us is clear, comfortable and stereotypically successful.

Honest Moment: This idea is attractive. We thought about it.

We allowed imagination to wander 2, 5, 10 years down the road that was opening up in front of us. Good jobs, great money, stability, big house, babies, yearly vacations…

But just for a moment. 

Then we realized that lack of potential success was NOT what was driving us out of this city, this lifestyle. It was a desire for different adventures. So we called our realtor to come over: We’re dropping the price of our house AGAIN.

I’m glad that we have the occasional moments of wavering – because I think it forces us to keep on track for a reason. It keeps us motivated to continue pushing for the life we want.

Have you wavered in your decision to leave the familiar behind? Have you turned down opportunities for success because you wanted something different?

*Sorry for being vague – these are our actual jobs and we want to keep them private.

It's a Jungle out there: Amazon Sales

Ha ha... see what I did there? My Amazon pun? I'm so funny. Anyways...


I looove to read, and I usually buy my books {Don't heckle me about the library and how free and awesome it is! I have too many fines, and I'm to embarrassed to go back!} But it seems useless to keep BOOKS in storage so I'm selling them. I was actually just going to put them in my garage sale pile - but got a burst of inspiration reading this blog post.

I'm selling books on Amazon now! I'm a legit bookstore! 

I'll let you know how that goes. I'm a bit skeptical to be honest.

I realized while I was listing these that I mostly have text books. WHO WOULD BUY Linguistics or Religious Studies textbooks at a garage sale? ha ha ha... good call Amazon.

Side Note: Most of the these textbooks are SUPER expensive on Amazon! {I haven't been a student in awhile now...} So I undercut the price like a capitalist ninja to get mine sold.

SPLURGE! Macbook Air

They finally arrived! Our little 11" twin babies! We're so excited, it's like Christmas day around here... Here's the scoop:

We had some problems that needed to be fixed:

• Our laptop was almost 5 years old, and dying a slow dinosaur death.
• We needed to be able to communicate to each other & home easily and simply
• I want to continue keeping up this blog - photo saving/editing/organizing required
• Juliano wants to create movies using his video camera - video editing required
• I wanted to promote synergy with music, communication, email/Internet use, photos & videos
• We needed laptops that fit in tiny spaces, and were light & portable

Solution: 11" MacBook Air for each of us! Yep, two of these sweet ladies are now part of our family. We bought them refurbished, so we saved some $$ while still getting awesome computers.

We're hoping that we will be able to:

• Communicate with each other and our home through facetime or skype
• Organize and share our pictures - update: we still have to use flikr to share them
• Create fun movies using Juliano's camera or even iPhone videos
• Share one iTunes account to enjoy music
• Communicate re: budgeting and money through Mint
• Loads more fun stuff and work stuff that want/need to do

Communication is a huge deal for us on this adventure - both to connect with our family and friends at home, and to stay in contact with each other as quickly and easily as possible. There may come a time when we're not in the same place at the same time - and we want to be prepared for that...

For now - We play around and Enjoy!

Update: Stupid Updates! I just deleted my entire itunes catalog while updating my iPhone to iOSX, in order to integrate with iCloud. Damn you technology. Damn you. Going to the Apple store today to see if I can fix it.

Update Update: Those guys at the Mac store fix everything. High Five!

Information Gathering...

I'm a nerd, a keener, a bookie. {Ha ha.. not that kind of bookie!}. So, when we decided to do something like... Go work on a Yacht, I needed to do my research. Juliano wins 'King of the Internet' title for research, but I've done lots too! Here's some of the places that we look for information about yachting, the lifestyle and how to get into the industry:

I bought this book! It was pretty fun to read actually, and offered lots of great tips and information.

I don't want to make any recommendations about this life/industry until I actually experience it, but here are some of the resources that we've found online:

Dockwalk is the most active website, with great forums that answer loads of questions. It also has job postings for information, blogs and articles about the yachting industry.

The Triton is an online magazine with great information, articles and seems to keep the pulse of the industry.

Floatplan is great if you want to try sailing/yachting as a holiday. You PAY to be on the boat as a part of the crew. Usually the itineraries are really interesting {Amazon River?! Cape Town?!} and the boats and crews are smaller and more adventurous.

There's two types of jobs that we're going to be looking for Day Work and Permanent Positions. Obviously, we've not done this yet - so we'll keep you posted on how it goes. These are just some websites that let us know what's out there!

Lastly, we've been investigating training schools to take our certification courses

We'll keep you posted on how we use all of the these resources and more to as we embark ~ but, we just wanted to let you know that we're looking around and educating ourselves about this industry before we even leave Calgary....

Cheers!

Ps. If you know any yachties keeping up personal/travel blogs- let me know! I'd love to find more online friends :)

Our House is LISTED!

It's finally time! After LOTS of cleaning and prepping - we're on the market. The contract is signed, the pictures are up and we're ready for our showings... Curious? Here the pictures of our house:

Front of our house:

This post is long and full of pictures - see the rest after the jump!

Opening and Closing a Business

If you know us personally, or if you picked it up in this post, you know that we owned a business. It was an Esfiha shop at a local Farmer's Market. We called it Mr. Esfihas and it was a realization of Juliano's dream.

Juliano has always been an entrepreneur, in the sense that he's never been very settled with the 'rat race'.  Mr. Esfihas started out with an Idea, some inspiration and a LOT of planning. {Not so different in theory that this adventure!}. It was fun to see it come together, to plan and create every element of our our own mini-ecosystem in the market. We joined a new market and the booth was built from the ground up:

  

 

We were amazed and appreciated all the support that we received from friends and family! It's so great to see that when you pursue something with passion, people truly want to be a part of it. It was a great experience to see everyone come together for us.

The skeleton crew of Mr. Esfihas {all 4 of us!} worked hard to make it an amazing place that was fun to be around, selling delicious food:

 

We had a super-delicious and reasonably priced menu! It was also really cute, a graphic designer and very-crafty friend of ours designed it, and did an amazing job! How great are the little faces??

Here's what we had to say about it on our website:

We started out with the idea of providing Calgary with a new and unique food item, a healthy alternative to fast food. We were both born in Brazil, and grew up eating esfihas. 
Now calling Calgary home, we want to introduce our favorite esfiha flavors to you!

There are lots of great flavors, and all the Esfihas are handmade by us!

See you at the Market!

 Owning and operating Mr. Esfihas was something that we did above and beyond our usual M-F/9-5 jobs. {Didn't I say we're not afraid to work hard?} We were open for about a year, and it was a great experience. We learned so much about how business operates, how to prioritize your life/goals, what giving 100% really means, and how to confidently make really tough decisions.

Turns out a mix of following your instincts and thinking it through usually results in the best decisions!

After being open most of 2011, we've sold our space to an awesome couple to start their own new small business dream! Mr. Esfihas is going on the back-burner for now, while we pursue other dreams. I'm sure that being a small business owner will always be a part of Juliano's life - so we'll see where that takes us...

For now, we loved owing a business and including all the ups and downs that come with it, we don't regret doing it for a second. It was an amazing experience!

Staging our House for Sale

 It's finally time! We're staging our house for sale! I'm so excited because this is a really fun process - and it will force us to get packing... Staging is 'the art of designing your house for sale' and its a big deal now  - There's even a show about it!

Check out this slide show of staged homes sold by our Realtor Anne:

 

Our stager came over last night and left us with a looong list of things to do, pictures to hang, and mostly - stuff to get rid of! We're cleaning out our stuff and re-organizing furniture like mad!

Also - despite all of our selling posts, she wants us to BUY STUFF! Yep, we need some additional decorations, and touches to make our house look like a show home!

We even had to buy RUGS! I know it sounds counter-intuitive to buy things to sell a house but it makes such an impression on the buyers - you'll more than make your money back (and you can Kijiji everything in the end - making it worth EVEN MORE!).

Here's the guys getting dragged through Costco to buy rugs:

We've got lots of work ahead of us before the house gets photographed - we'll let you know how it goes!