How it all Began...

I was asked by several people to tell my story and realized that if I started a blog it would be here for all to see and I wouldn't be stuck repeating myself every other day.

When my cousins left our house in the summer of 2012 I was heart broken.  I missed out on getting to know them when we were kids but the longing I'd felt for that opportunity had never gone away.  When I was still talking about it weeks later, π said, "So why don't we go to Australia?"  We both laughed at the absurdity of the thought.  With our budget?  With our 8 kids?  Yeah right!

A few days later, I looked up prices of airfare.  A few days after that, I looked up prices of "holiday houses" that would sleep 10.  And a bit after that I started estimating how much we would need for a trip.  The number was staggering!  So I put the idea away as a dream that would never be.

In January when I sat down to do our taxes, I found we'd made a mistake...a very fortunate mistake!  We had A LOT of taxes taken out of our checks that didn't need to be.  No wonder things had been so tight financially over the year! Our return was substantial--and I again thought of our dream trip.  That night I mentioned to π that if we just put it in the bank, we'd have enough to go to Australia in just 3-4 years.  I expected him to laugh it off, but he didn't. As he seriously considered it, I did too, for the first time.  If we could save that much by having it withheld from our check each month, what could we save if we were trying?

Our dream started to look like a reality.  I pulled up the file I'd called, "Financial Freak Out" with all the numbers I'd looked up before and started crunching.  The astronomical figure that was the amount we needed didn't look so drastic if it was spread out over two years, and if we subtracted our tax returns from the next two years from the number.  It was still a LOT of money, don't get me wrong, but it was a number we could come up with--if we really REALLY wanted it.

So we talked to the kids about the possibility--it was a very short talk.  It went something like this:

"So, we were thinking if we worked really hard maybe we could save up enough money to go to Australia."
"Okay.  Let's go."
"Well, it's going to be hard."
"We don't care, we'll do anything.  Let's go!"  Their enthusiasm bolstered ours and we really started going for it.  Now here we are, 70 days from our departure date, still a little ways from our financial goal but if all goes according to plans, we should hit it right on.

In later posts I'll talk about what the kids have done to earn $10,000 of our trip.
I'll talk about finding deals in other countries.
I'll talk about travel planning for big families.
I'll talk about motivating kids when the excitement wears off.

Oh the fun we'll have!