If You Want to Know What It's Really like to Sell Everything You Own, Leave the US and Travel Indefinitely, Read This

Introducing Brent and Michael

Mar 17, 2023

Do I have a treat in store for you today.

Over the last few months I’ve gotten to know (via Substack) a couple called Brent and Michael who in 2017, sold everything they owned to travel the world. Seeing as this is exactly what my husband and I did nearly three years ago, it’s no surprise we clicked. They also write one of the best, most interesting - and informative - travel Substacks out there.

This week, we spent some time interviewing each other for our respective publications. I think their story is truly inspirational and I’m so pleased I have the chance to share it with you today.

If you’re interested in following Brent and Michael as they travel the world, you can subscribe to their Substack here.

Hey guys! So. Who are Brent and Michael and why do you do what you do?

Michael: We’ve been nomads for six years. Originally we’re from the United States and we lived in Seattle, Washington for many years.

We’ve both done a lot of different jobs, mainly as writers. I’ve written a couple of novels and I co-founded an entertainment website with Brent and a couple of friends. For the past two years, I have been primarily working as a travel writer on our Substack.

Brent: Our origin story, in a nutshell, is that on the night of the 2016 election when Donald Trump was elected, we were driving home from a sad, shell-shocked election party. And I turned to Michael and said, why don’t we leave the country? He thought about it for about five seconds and said OK.

Within three months we sold our house and then at the end of the year, we left the US.

I must say, I’m a sort of risk-averse, cautious person. I wonder sometimes, if Trump hadn’t been elected, if there hadn’t been that madness, would we have done this? I think it would have stayed as a daydream, at least for me. But my fear of what was happening in America suddenly exceeded my fear of the unknown and of the world. It was the kick in the butt that I needed to start our travels.

If there was a silver lining (to Trump) - even though it was terrible for the world - it was this.

We took to it like ducks to water. Michael had done it before and for him, it was like a homecoming. And to my surprise, I found that the world was much less scary than I thought.

Michael: I hadn't been a digital nomad before but I finished high school in Australia as an exchange student. And then after University, I went back and lived in Australia for about a year and a half and then New Zealand. I always wanted to live overseas again and that’s what we thought we would do. We never talked about moving around continuously. We didn’t even know that was a concept until we were in Miami when we realized we wanted to live in different cities, not just one.

So you decided very quickly you wanted to be nomadic and didn’t take long to execute your plan?

Brent: We left at the end of 2017. It took us a year but it could have been done much quicker. My father is elderly and he needed help moving into assisted living and we had lots of things like that to take care of.

Did you have any internal conflicts about leaving the US or was it full steam ahead?

Michael: No I didn’t conflicted at all because I had already lived overseas and I always felt like I had one foot out the door of the United States. So when Brent looked at me and said let’s sell the house, I never looked back.

The only hesitation was things like, are we going to be lonely? How do we make this work? Back then parts of the world seemed strange and scary. I mean, the idea of going to former Eastern Bloc countries was pretty much the furthest thing from our minds. Even Asia seemed so far away and so distant.

So the conflict was more about how do we make this work? How do we figure this out?

Brent: For me, I'm surprised there wasn’t more concern, looking back. It’s kind of crazy that I wasn't more freaked out that we were making this huge leap into the unknown and maybe because it was so unknown. We didn't even know what to be afraid of. Ultimately, I was more afraid of what was happening in America than what was going on in the outside world.

What do you think about simple living and minimalism?

Brent: I've always been an environmentalist and we've always been sort of minimalist - we’re certainly not materialists. We've always been put off by American consumerism and materialism.

But at the same time, I sort of rolled my eyes at the simple living movement. My aunt when she was alive, was a nun. She always talked about the simple life and how it was a life of richness and complexity. I didn't get it. We would visit her and I respected her choices but I didn’t think that was the life for me.

So when we started to travel, one of the things I discovered really quickly was how much I liked it. How liberating it was that we got rid of all of our stuff. I thought that stuff represented security and freedom but once it was gone, that’s what felt liberating.

Now I carry everything in my backpack and to get something new I have to get rid of something old. And there’s freedom in that.

Michael: As Brent said, we never thought of ourselves as particularly materialistic and I don't think we ever were. I’ve never owned a new car in my life. I don’t have a fancy phone, we don’t dress fancy. We are pretty simple people.

And yet when we got rid of our house and started getting rid of stuff, I was astonished by the volume of possessions, we'd accumulated. I really couldn't believe it. I read a statistic recently that the average American household owns 300,000 items. We thought we were this anti-materialist, anti-consumerist couple but that was only relative to America. We have this idea that the busier you are, the more special. It's cool to be busy in America.

Once we left we saw that America was just such a massive outlier. And we realized that we were just so much more in sync with places like Europe or Asia. Sure, people still work hard but there is a joie de vivre. They embrace both life and death - like in Mexico.

There are all these things out there that are more important than things like being busy. That’s just not really important anywhere else and discovering that was revelatory.

Do you have any possessions left in America?

Brent: We gave ourselves a year to decide if we were going to like this lifestyle or not so we decided to not get rid of absolutely everything. We had a nice bed we kept and some other pieces of furniture and a TV. We rented a storage locker for it all.

But after the first month, we realized that we were never coming back. But we still gave it a year and then we went into our storage locker. We were like, why did we keep all of this? So we got rid of almost everything in there.

Now it’s just a lot of tax documents and a few possessions we’re reluctant to let go of. There are some books we really enjoy having and some movie posters and things like that. We’re either going to get rid of them in the end, or ship them to wherever we end up.

You know, except for a few sentimental keepsakes, I don’t ever think about these things and even when I lived with them, I didn’t ever really look at them. Owning them was part of my identity and now not owning them is my identity.

I always think if I need something, I can buy it again but I never do.

Do you ever feel deprived?

Brent: Being raised Catholic I was taught that depriving yourself is suffering and is not necessarily a bad thing. It builds character and all that. I don’t go that far but there is something to be said for it. Like we don’t have a bathtub for three months then you have one and it feels so much more special. You’re in a country where you can’t get a particular cuisine - like you can’t get good Italian food in Asia - then you go to Italy and the food tastes all the better for it.

Living on the road, there is an impermanency to everything. You know you’re not going to be able to eat this food forever so you appreciate it more. And that makes it better, in a way. Everything always feels fresh and new and different.

Michael: I’m not Catholic but it’s true what Brent says. In America, I had everything I wanted, any time I wanted. Like if I want Ben and Jerry’s vegan ice cream I have all three flavors at my disposal. I could get all food in one place and I enjoyed it.

But honestly, once we became nomads and I discovered, oh I can't get Ben and Jerry's in most places, when I’m back in the States and I get some, it makes it all the more special. It becomes a special thing.

It wasn’t like that before.

But I’m also trading that vegan ice cream for all these mangoes and fresh fruit here in Malaysia and it's well worth the trade. When we leave Malaysia and when we leave our next stop in South East Asia, I won’t have those fruits for a year. But when I come back, I’ll fall in love with them all over again.

I feel like my life has become richer with experiences than it was before. And I appreciate everything so much more than I ever did. There’s this constant process of discovery and re-discovery.

What about the challenges you face with this lifestyle? Any in particular that stand out?

Michael: For a long time, we have drunk the Kool-Aid and we are still all in.

But of course, there are always challenges. Today we are trying to get a 90-day visa for Thailand but it’s hard. We didn’t have all the documents we needed so we have to return tomorrow. We have to drop off our passports.

Sometimes I think wait a minute, why do we have to deal with these day-to-day annoyances now we’re nomads? But that’s just part of being human. Everybody has to deal with reality. You have to go grocery shopping there and there are always frustrations.

I think that in a way when you start to simplify your life, you can get annoyed that you can’t simplify all of life’s complications. You can resent them a little bit. It’s like wait a minute, I've simplified my life. Why do I have to do with getting a 90-day visa for Thailand? I want things to be simple!

You have to be careful to not make the same mistake you did with materialism in America, that you become obsessed. I don’t want to obsess over the idea that my life should be completely simple because I’m trying to simplify things.

What piece of advice would you give to people who want to start dabbling in a traveling lifestyle?

Brent: I speak from the point of view who somebody who’s more cautious - I’m not a risk taker and I don’t have an adventurous personality. The one thing I would say to people is that it’s so much easier to do this than you think.

It’s important of course that you can work remotely and for that you need to have some minimal experience with technology. And it helps if you have access to a Western income which opens up much more of the world to you. Although we have friends who come from less wealthy countries and still travel - they just tend to stay in more affordable places.

Michael: My advice would be that there is a whole world of information out there about this lifestyle. People are so willing to talk with you about it. I had no idea about that until I read a New York Times article about this thing called digital nomads. All of a sudden, I was plugged into that world. I understood that this is a thing. When we moved to Miami, I met digital nomads and that was it.

Start by going on Facebook groups. Read, ask questions, and learn.

Brent: One other piece of advice that worked really well for us was that we eased ourselves in gently. We have a British nomad friend whose first stop was Istanbul and I think that was a bad choice. It’s a fantastic city but it’s a culture shock, it’s very different.

We started in Miami, Florida. We didn’t particularly enjoy it but we got comfortable with the digital nomad lifestyle. We didn’t have language barriers for instance. Everything was very familiar and less scary.

Then we went to Malta, which was another English-speaking country - very different from Florida but still, easier. Then we went to Italy, still Western Europe but it’s more different again. Then we headed to Bulgaria.

We worked our way up. None of these countries are particularly challenging but still, we moved slowly to acclimatize.

I need to also acknowledge we are so privileged to be able to do what we do. We lead a modest life but it's such a rich life and we're so lucky to be able to do it. We are fully aware that most of the world is not able to do this. And we just thank our lucky stars because it was just the random chance luck of our birth being born in America at this moment in time.

My final question (and I think I know the answer). Is it worth it?

Michael: Other than marrying Brent I don't think I’ve ever made a decision in my life that has been more 100% worth it. It's one of the absolute best things I ever did and frankly, it kind of saved the second half of my life.

Brent: It’s not a lifestyle for everybody. I have a lot of friends who say they need their things and their place and my security and I totally respect that. But to my surprise, it really is the lifestyle for me.

A lot of people ask us when we are going to stop. and I usually say, at death. We plan to do this as long as we can. Some day we might have a landing pad where we can stay for three or five months of the year then travel the rest of it.

What has been great is that we are on the same page. And when it comes to Michael, it’s like watching a duck that I had never seen in water. Then he traveled the world. Now it’s like, oh this is what he’s supposed to be doing with his life.

That's great for me too because you know, if I'm nervous or anxious I just can look to him and he's unflappable. It’s made me appreciate our partnership even more, it’s like seeing another side of him. We’ve been together 30 years and it’s great when you can still surprise each other, and ourselves.

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