OUR FAMILY OF 5 LEFT CHICAGO TO TRAVEL THE WORLD FOR A YEAR: WE SPENT $56,000 AND 'IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT'
An unspoken question lingers on people's faces when they hear our family of five took a gap year to travel around South America. "What an unforgettable education for your kids!" they exclaim. But I can see them wonder silently: How did you afford it?
My husband Matt and I planned for several years to go with our three kids — now ages 10, seven, and five — on a family sabbatical. We finally took the leap in July 2022, when our youngest was three.
We turned off what my husband called "the money spigot" — the steady salary and benefits from his full-time software developer job — and set off on a 12-month adventure. We didn't know how much income we'd make with both of us freelancing on the road, Matt coding and me writing.
Our year abroad cost about $56,000, by our calculations. That includes flights, rental cars, buses, lodging, travel insurance, tours, food, and other living expenses. And it required pulling our kids out of public school to use the world as a homeschooling classroom.
The trip was a risk — but it was totally worth it. We bonded as a family. We affirmed our values of living simply and traveling slowly. And in the face of uncertainty about itineraries or finances, we gained confidence in our ability to navigate the unknown.
'Unforgettable moments' from visiting 8 countries in 1 year
Our expedition began with a 44-hour Amtrak train ride from our home in Chicago to Los Angeles, where we got on a flight to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
We visited seven South American countries, as well as Costa Rica. We stayed anywhere from one night to two months in each place, volunteered at several farms or ecological projects, and blogged about our experiences along the way.
Some parts of our trip felt luxurious, like the two months we stayed in a newly built 2,400-square-foot Eco Lodge at a mountainside farm in Brazil. Instead of flat suburban Illinois streets, each morning we opened the windows to look over the first-floor green roofs and mist rising from the hills.
Other stops were more of a challenge, like our two weeks in a one-room cabin in Bolivia. It had inconsistent running water and a dry toilet that we had to empty ourselves.
Much of our time was filled with the mundane, like hunting down baking supplies in unfamiliar grocery aisles and explaining to our then eight-year-old yet again why he had to do Spanish conjugations before getting in the pool.
But we had our share of unforgettable moments. We hiked among llama-like guanacos in Chile's Torres del Paine National Park. We got stuck for days in a northern Argentina border town because we neglected to get visas to Bolivia. We picked baskets of bright red coffee berries in Ecuador's Intag Valley.
We'd do it again in a heartbeat.
How much our trip cost, and how we could afford it
Before our trip, we estimated our monthly expenses while traveling would be about $4,000, based on our usual spending habits and the lower cost of living in many South American countries. We budgeted about $12,000 for flights, estimating six one-way flights at about $2,000 each for our family of five.
All told, we expected the trip to cost about $60,000, or less than a year of life at home in Chicagoland. A current-day estimate of the same trip would be higher due to inflation.
Our family prefers to slow travel, meaning that we spend more time in fewer places. This allows us to go deeper into local rhythms and relationships while reducing the number of high carbon emissions flights and saving money.
When feasible, we took long-distance buses, which are often cheaper. This allowed us to experience landscapes we'd otherwise have missed, like the stunning ascent into the Andes on an eight-hour bus ride from Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina. We counted more than 25 switchbacks on a small stretch of road.
Staying longer in many places reduced our lodging expenses. Airbnb and other vacation rental platforms give significant discounts on long-term stays.
For instance, we rented a spacious three-bedroom house with an infinity pool in Colombia's coffee country for a month for about $40 nightly, as far as I recall, rather than $100+ nightly for less than a week's stay. Having a kitchen gave us the freedom to cook our own meals and save on food costs.
We funded our trip by renting out our home in the Chicago suburbs, which covered our home upkeep and nearly 40% of our travel expenses. We made up the rest working remotely one to two days a week as freelancers.
When we set out, we had put aside enough to fund the trip without any income. But we didn't end up dipping into those savings. We even came out slightly ahead.
We wouldn't trade our family sabbatical for anything
A few nights before we boarded that Amtrak train to kick off our family gap year, Matt and I stared across the dining room table and asked each other, "Is this really happening?" Quitting a job to schlep three young children around another continent felt like a leap in the dark. Where would we land?
On the trip, we didn't know where we'd be in two months or how much money we'd bring in. But instead of causing anxiety, those unknowns forced us focus on the present.
Spending less energy agonizing over how to make all the right moves for the future freed us to enjoy each moment in its own right, rather than as a stepping stone to something else. To our surprise, everything turned out just fine.
Today we are back to our "normal life" in Chicagoland, but we continue to move at a slower, more mindful pace. We work less. We linger at the breakfast table on weekends. We choose time with family over climbing the career ladder.
We laugh with our kids about all the seemingly impossible travel snafus we faced and figured out. And I like to think they'll draw from this repertoire of resilience and humor when dealing with other challenges life is sure to throw their way.
Liuan Huska is a freelance journalist and writer at the intersection of ecology, embodiment, and faith. She is the author of "Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness," a book weaving memoir, theology, and sociocultural critique. Liuan's reporting and essays have appeared in outlets including Chicago's WBEZ, Sojourners, Borderless, Grist, Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and NPR's Here and Now. Follow her on Instagram, X, and Facebook. Her family's travel blog is Slow Camino.
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