It’s Official: I’m Going to Europe for a Month

Having a large financial cushion does amazing things. Once you hit your ultimate financial goal (mine’s a million!) you don’t have to work for money ever again. All of your expenses are covered by the index funds you’re invested in. You can quit your job or get a new one overseas. If you’re into travel, you can simply begin traveling the world for free. Leisure, here you come.

What’s also important is knowing you don’t have to hit your ultimate financial goal to have it do amazing things for you. The power of some isn’t just for doing some of the work you need to do; the “power of some” similarly applies when you’re referencing your current net worth as well. All of which leads into the announcement I have that I’ve already spoiled with the headline. I’ll be going to Europe for a month around May 20^th and staying over there until around June 20^th. While there I plan on visiting Iceland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, England, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

And no, I didn’t have to publish this on a Monday and stoke the jealousy of the tired masses. But I did anyways because I couldn’t wait to blab to the world about something I’ve wanted to do for years 😊

How I’ll Pay for It

Traveling at all is a hefty privilege in and of itself, let alone travel overseas to Europe for a month.

Lots of people would love a trip like that. And one of the biggest hurdles to fulfilling that want is having the means to actually do it. Sure, you need stuff like a passport and a suitcase. But most importantly, you need the money to pay for the flights and accommodations. Also needed is food, admissions tickets, any souvenirs, and whatever else you choose to spend on.

Most often, a trip like this is something savings will cover. In my case, I’ve got about three ways to pay for this trip. For one, I got a huge bonus at work this year for the second year in a row. A sizeable chunk of that five-figure bonus went into my investment accounts, but the rest is earmarked for this trip.

For everything else, I have ChooseFI to thank for getting me on credit card rewards. I nervously signed up for my first credit card with an annual fee back in 2021. That was when the holy grail of cards – Chase Sapphire Preferred – was offering 100,000 points if you signed up and spent enough in the first few months to qualify.

What got me was the actual worth of those points once you hack it.

Last June, ChooseFI’s Brad and Jonathan sent me an email detailing exactly how valuable those points become. This is the exact section that got me on board.

Here are the 3 main redemption options (plus Chase is offering a new 4th option for "Pay Yourself Back" on certain categories, but the details are still coming through on this):

-Cash Back at 1 cent per point, so your 100k points are worth $1,000
-Chase Travel Portal bookings at 1.25 cents per point. 100k points = $1,250 of value when booked through the portal
-Transfer to airline and hotel rewards programs including our favorites: Hyatt, Southwest, United and British Airways. We aim for 2 cents per point, so 100k points can be worth in excess of $2,000 when redeemed this way.

So of course, I’m more than happy to pay $95 if it means I’m getting $1,000-$2,000 back. It’s another type of churning, which I’m already used to from bank account churning. That 100k doesn’t include the points you earn automatically on purchases, so when I logged in to the Chase portal last night I was greeted with this very exciting banner:

They’re no longer offering that many bonus points for the card, but the current 60,000 points offered ain’t nothing to scoff at. The flights to go to Europe for a month and back will cost me about 85,000 points, which still leaves me with tens of thousands left over for other flights while I’m there.

For the rest, I’ll be using a different credit card to earn rewards. As of this Sunday I’ve been approved for the Capital One Venture Rewards card, another suggestion from the ChooseFI Resource Center. Once you qualify for the card bonus you collect 60,000 bonus miles to any airline, which always comes in clutch while traveling. So between all of these three, I’ve got it covered without dipping into savings whatsoever.

How My Work is Cool With It

No, my work doesn’t offer 4 weeks’ paid vacation. (If yours does, please tell me where you work so I can beg for a job there.) I freaking wish the United States can gets its act together on this like the European Union; the EU has legislation mandating every employee gets a minimum of 4 weeks’ paid vacation. Some EU countries mandate more days than that. And no, this doesn’t count paid holidays.

I can’t even joke at how deeply frustrated I am that the United States has ZERO legislation concerning paid vacation days. They leave it up to states, who mostly leave it up to businesses. Which is how you get the substandard averages of 2 weeks’ paid vacation.

Mine is a little better than that at 3 weeks’ paid vacation, with room to take additional PTO. With that said, it would be a very hard sell to get them to let me off the hook for four weeks when different projects are ramping up.

So instead, I took the confidence having a solid financial cushion gives me and asked if I could work abroad for two weeks.

You’d think this would be an easy sell.

We’ve been working remotely anyways for the last two years, so why not? For my team specifically, we’ve been WFH before the pandemic hit; we had to wait until our company actually had an office space for the marketing team. So, y’know, I’m a sure bet! Right?

Well, not quite. I’ll write about how I made the ask in a dedicated post so others might benefit, but this was not an automatic guarantee. Once I reassured my bosses it was viable and had a Zoom meeting to discuss, I got the green light to work abroad for 10 days.

Because of that, not all of that time will be spent gallivanting around Europe for a month. I’m taking 9 days’ vacation for the first two weeks (not including Memorial Day) then working abroad for the other 2 weeks into June. While I’m not yet able to leave anything relating to “work” behind, I still got a screaming deal out of this. I’ll be working East Coast hours while abroad, which translates to 3pm-11pm local time. Those hours are actually preferable, leaving me with the mornings and the early afternoon to go explore everything. I’m a bit of a night owl to boot, so this will also be a great experiment on whether I like working later hours.

I’ll update you all here on how that works out when the time actually comes. But now that I’ve got my bosses’ awareness and approval, it’s full steam ahead.

I’m So Excited!

I won’t be able to join folks like Purple, Jess, and Kristy and Bryce embracing long-term changes juuuuuuuust yet. (The first paragraph of this article links to their stories.) But that doesn’t mean I need to wait to start doing what I want to do. This trip to Europe for a month will be great to balance living the way I want to now while still investing for the future.

Now that I got approval from my job and have funding more than covered, all I need to do now is plan and book everything. (And hopefully remember to update the We Want Guac Instagram in the process.) Wish me luck, my loves!

Cover image credit: Lukas Souza via Unsplash