Hi, I’m Elaine. I’ve been married to my husband Mike for over 45 years.  I got the travel bug after watching own grown children take several trips to other countries I always dreamed of being able to explore someday.

I knew how they could afford to travel, but how could I?

My husband and I have taken a couple of RV trips across the United States, which we’ve both enjoyed together. But I still yearned to travel to far away lands to experience different cultures too.

It took me a very long time to wrap my head around the fact that it is actually possible for me, a married woman, to travel solo.

Perhaps it took me so long because I knew that my husband does not enjoy flying and I’m not the type of person to persuade anyone to do anything they don’t wholeheartedly want to do.

He’s happy with reveling in having a self-proclaimed PhD in T.V.  The older he gets, the more settled in he becomes. He prefers taking our dog for walks, playing golf, and having a place to call home.

I, on the other hand, wouldn’t think twice about selling all our belongings and taking off to travel the world long term.  

It makes no sense to me to continue to spend our retirement money continuing to pay for the comfort of walking in one door every night when we could instead open several more exciting doors every night around the world.  Respectfully, it has become the great divide, which we don’t spend much time talking about anymore.

I think it just became a matter of believing that we each have the right to do what makes us happy.  For me it’s more full time traveling. For him it seems to be maybe be part-time traveling, although he isn’t committing to what part-time exactly means yet.  Although we saved for and made plans to take a trip to Italy this year, it seems he has lost his enthusiasm to visit all the other places we used to talk about and really dream of visiting together, like Egypt to see the pyramids – you know, someday.  Well, all those someday promises haven’t materialized.

I finally came to the realization, “If not now, when?”

To be honest with you, once I really got the travel bug to go for it, it seemed pretty dismal.  I had no idea how I was going to pull it all off.  All I knew was that if I was ever going to do the kind of traveling I wanted to do, it was going to have to be (mostly) solo, and on my own dime.  No way did I think it was fair for him to have to fit the bill. 

Even though, while raising our children, I was an enterprising stay at home mom, the fact remained that I never really had a long term paying job, established business or a career.  All the money that I ever brought into our household went to pay for the extra curricular activities we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford for our kids.

Now, of retirement age, I receive a very small social security check each month from part time jobs I held at one time or another. But, you know the old saying, “Where there is a will there’s a way!”  And I found a way.  This is what this website is about. Sharing my way of being able to travel on a very low, fixed income.

Within the pages of this blog I share how I got started, and how I continued to keep myself eating, sleeping and traveling solo all around the world on less than $1000 a month.  After visiting eight different countries overseas, although I still plan to take more trips overseas, I purchased an RV and I’ll mostly be traveling throughout the USA now too.  As I journal my travels, through my experiences I hope to inspire other women who find themselves in a similar situation, to take the plunge.

If I can do it, you can too!

​I welcome your comments, your suggestions, and your friendship.