HOW TO SPEND HALF THE YEAR IN PARADISE
When we tell people we spend half the year in Hawaii, the response is almost always, “Wow! You’re so lucky!” Or something along those lines.
But really, luck has nothing to do with it. Ok, maybe a little. We were lucky enough to be born in a wealthy country and receive a decent high school education. Our parents loved us, and somewhere along the way we learned to feed and clothe and bathe ourselves. Our world somehow shaped us to be comfortable with bending the rules a little. We refrained from going to grad school and from getting day jobs. Preston became a completely self taught photographer, and Liz sort of just started tagging along, and we both decided it was too cold to stay in Minnesota all winter. At some point we realized we were adults and we could purchase airline tickets…. To anywhere.
So we picked Hawaii. We saved up $2,500 each, and we flew out and…. Camped. On beaches, for four months straight.
That was the beginning of it. We bought bicycles and lived in a tent and ate lots of coconuts and swam in the ocean every. single. day. That was the first taste of not having to spend 8 months buried in snow. We could never go back. (And for 6 years now, we haven’t!)
Yes, our profession, wedding photography, allows us to travel a little more easily and still be able to work from wherever we are.
But it wasn’t always like that.
Liz was a preschool teacher and a nanny before we started leaving Minnesota for the winters. She had to quit those jobs.
She ended up getting another nanny job right away for the four months we were in Hawaii that year… And another one when we got back to Minnesota. Each was negotiated in advance as a short term gig. It took her less than a week to get those jobs on either side of the trip. She knew exactly what she was looking for, she was up front about it, and she found it.
As for the photography business… we built a whole new website for Hawaii, we advertised on Craigslist, we reduced our prices to get more clients, we offered family beach portraits, we accepted gigs we normally wouldn’t do back home during the busy wedding season. Anything to get work, to cover the costs of our trip and to keep all of our businesses up and running…
We made it work. We wanted to be out here, for our health, for our sanity… And for some nice tans. So we’ve been doing what we have to do to make it work every winter.
There are challenges, of course. It can be expensive to live out here. Flying commercially with four carry-ons filled with camera gear and hard drives is a bloody nightmare. We have to find a new apartment each time we get to Hawaii… One that will do a short-term lease. But it gets easier every year. We make more friends, we pack more efficiently, and now we have a reliable storage facility (our Toyota Land Cruiser) that we can leave things in when we go home, so we don’t have to pack/ship/buy as many creature comforts when we come out next year.
My point is that it is not “luck” that brings us to Hawaii every winter, but rather hard work, diligence, determination and plenty of stubbornness.
The other day I was thinking out the actual costs of coming to Maui every year. When we leave Minnesota, we turn down the thermostat in our condo, take the insurance off of our cars, put gym memberships on hold, etc. etc. So we’re not spending much on anything back home. Daily costs get transferred to our daily lives out here - food, gas, electricity… But we’re never paying for those things in both places. We could rent out our condo in MN while we’re gone, but we don’t, so aside from higher priced food and goods, the only REAL costs we encounter to live out here for 5 months a year are paying $900 a month for an extra apartment, and the cost of round trip airfare. Like I said, we COULD rent out our place back home, and then the only cost would really be airfare.
So what’s holding you back??
I know a lot of you might be saying “my kids”, “my job”, “school”, or whatever, but know this: whatever your reason, there ARE ways around it... whether it's homeschooling, online school, starting the business you've always wanted to, living more frugally, making more money, or finding a job that will allow this lifestyle.
Our best friend works for Delta Air Lines just so he can fly for free, and he lives on the cheap and works only part time so he has plenty of time to travel. I've often heard him say things like, "I think I'll go to Amsterdam this weekend." And then he does.
Another friend became a traveling nurse so she could pick a new country to work in every couple months. She even met someone in the profession and fell in love. Now they travel the world together, and get paid to do it!
If you desire this sort of lifestyle, if you'd like to escape to a tropical paradise for the winter (I'm talking to you, Minnesotans!), then do it.
If you want anything badly enough, you'll make it happen.
It's not a matter of luck.
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