Breaking the Ties

We move out of our house in less than a week.

• We’ve scheduled the disconnect of all utilities.
• We’ve sent change of address notices to everyone we can think of, and gone paperless with all the credit cards & bank accounts.
• We’ve watched most of our furniture get hauled away by craigslist bargain hunters, and filled the space with stacks of boxes.
• We’ve held one last garage sale to get rid of as much of the little things as we can.
• We’ve even sold one of the cars already.

You know, I’m starting to realize that we’re actually going to pull this off!

I’m glad I didn’t know how hard this would be, or I might’ve chickened out right at the beginning. Even when you give yourself almost a year’s notice, it’s hard work unplugging from the “real world”.

Selling all the stuff we really don’t need – and realizing how little it’s all worth – has been a brutal and discouraging process, but also enlightening (in more than one sense of the word). I don’t think we’ll ever look at material possessions the same way again. Mission accomplished!

By far the worst part has been selling the house in this vicious buyer’s market. After dozens of showings over many weeks, we finally agreed to sell it for about $10,000 less than we owe. Add closing costs and other expenses, and that’s a really big check we have to write just to get out from under this place we’ve called home for over 2 years. Ouch.

I think it’s worth all the trouble, though – selling nearly everything leaves us free to explore many options for what to do when we run out of money finish our travels. It also frees us to focus on what we’re doing rather than what we’re leaving behind or coming back to.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it?