In fall of 2019 Mr. Savemycents and I were extremely blessed to have a child of our own, who I’ve nicknamed BB (short for BaoBao, which is a common Chinese nickname that means “treasure”). As I explained in my IVF blog, we’ve been praying and hoping for this child for many years. The first two months, my mother lived with us in New York City and showed her love in the most selfless way by cooking, cleaning, and caring for both me and BB, tirelessly, without complaint, until I (mostly) healed and BB began sleeping for 5 – 6 hour stretches. Her support and love are the main reason why I recovered so quickly and have been able to stay healthy this entire time.
Mr. Savemycents saw how important it was to be near our parents, and proposed a second set of support – be near his parents, for another few weeks, and enjoy the warmer climes of Southern California, as we’d been too scared to bring BB out in NYC as winter temperatures arrived. Then we were wondering if we could perhaps stretch the trip longer by going to Hawaii – a trip that originally got canceled in light of my pregnancy. And then the vision grew even larger – in March, I would be flown courtesy of my company to Southeast Asia for a work trip, and given that my time is flexible on maternity leave, and Mr. Savemycents can work from anywhere in the world, we thought, why not see the world? Many of our travel savvy friends said that the first year before they crawl, is often one of the easiest years to travel with children. They don’t cost much in terms of airfare and hotels, they don’t need much food (BB is exclusively breast fed, and I’m so grateful for that), and they’re relatively small.
As the excitement built and the dates gelled, we pulled late nights for a whole week to get this trip set up, and it is now called on Instagram, #wecanyolonow. It’s a nod to the fact that this is the freedom and flexibility that was purchased by our hard work and sacrifices over the years we built up to FIRE (financial independence, retire early), and a cheeky nod at the fact that a lot of people who doubted or criticized our frugality, felt that we were anti-YOLO. I will be honest to denote where things are self-funded, versus gifted (such as our housing in Southern California).
The trip is in two parts. Part 1 is mostly a home stay in Southern California and Oahu, Hawaii. Part 2 is a much more fast-paced, hotel-based trip around Southeast Asia and Australia / New Zealand (I have family in Australia) – with stops in Qatar (Doha), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Indonesia (Bali), Australia (Perth, Sydney, Melbourne), New Zealand (south island), Singapore, and Thailand (Phuket). In total we expect to be gone for about 85 days. We are excited for the adventure ahead, but also not blind to the fact that traveling with a young baby is much more difficult than traveling as two healthy, able-bodied adults. It is my hope that I will be able to record our actual expenses as well as the value realized through travel hacking (which is traveling for free using credit card points, hotel points, and airline miles), so that this can serve as a helpful reference for others hoping to do the same.
Update as of February 2020: Part 2 has been drastically changed since work trip was canceled due to coronavirus. The current new trip will be Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Los Angeles.
Style-wise, #wecanyolonow hopes to strike a reasonable balance between our original frugal mindset, and a new set of values built around our child. There will be more splurges for the safety of our child, comfort and convenience. At the same time, we will still be making similar trade-offs around wants vs. needs, and try to be value-focused in our consumption.
Most of the expenses you see will assume double occupancy (2 adults), the two of us eating out, and transportation. The reason being is that if you’re a single traveler you cannot always divide everything by 2 to get to a single rate, unless you are sharing hotel rooms and transportation. I welcome interactions on my Instagram profile.
