So what goes into planning a trip around the world? So far, the hard part has simply been making the commitment to go. The rest has been pretty much logistics and has been relatively easy--at least so far, anyway.

There are obviously many things that you'll be leaving when you take a year "off" to travel. Work is obviously one thing, but I would argue that it shouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind (even though it was for me). Your house, family, friends, pets, and all your material possessions... you won't be seeing them for a long while. Leaving these things can be tough, but I don't think that depends as much on how attached you are to them, but more on how you expect a year's absence will change the way you interact with them. Let's see how things will turn out for us, once we set off.

Many travelogues we've read talk about how things are exactly the same when they return as when they first left. They say people are the same, work is the same, and your dog will still recognize you when you get home. Well, if that's the case, then heck, we should have left a while ago!

What I think we're going to find interesting is how we change after doing this trip. Having travelled internationally a bit before, and as we do our research now, we've already started to think a little more globally. Some of the problems we complain about today seem rather petty compared to what we're sure happens outside North America every day. And we're thinking this without even having left yet. I'm sure we'll have more reflections on this later.

Getting back to planning though, there are probably many questions about what it takes financially to do a trip like this? Well, we'll post a column eventually that goes into detail about that, it's a lot more reasonable than you think. By our calculations, we're counting on living comfortably on a stipend of about $35 a day. Comfortable to us meaning hostels and guesthouses, not name-brand hotels or camping sites. We've been able to save what we need for the trip in less than a year; it's not really the cost of the trip itself that is the big dent, it's the absence of two incomes for a year that has the biggest financial impact.

In light of that though, I ask this familiar question: when you retire and you have your grandchildren on your lap, are you going to tell them how happy you were to have worked 40 years versus 39 years? If you found yourself standing at the pearly gates to heaven one day, would you comment on the wonderful professional career you had, or rather how fortunate you were to have seen the sun rise over the Tanzanian plains while sitting atop the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro?

With these kinds of questions, it surprises me that more people haven't taken the time to do the things that really mean the most to them. However, even with such liberated attitudes as these, we too have struggled with the dilemma of "should we go, or should we not?" Is this a good time to leave our careers? How are we going to cover our mortgage payments?

Well in truth, there probably are times that are better than others to take off for a year. In our case though, the timing fits pretty well. We definitely want to do this before starting a family, and that's something we'd like to do before we get too much older. I have been feeling a bit burned out with the travel aspects of my job for a little while; being a road warrior for six years is enough for me. With the continued downturn in the economy and increasing challenges that ERP consultants face in general, the time seems pretty ripe to make a change.