Do this as you begin to formulate a plan, because the dollars you begin saving once you know you have a greater purpose to be saving them will add up quickly. Conversely, the dollars you don’t save will end up being spent on needless things. Once you start paying attention to what you spend your money on, you’ll see how much money we spend on useless things with no objective.

You can do #2 or #3 in either order, depending on your circumstances. If you know you want to be back at a certain time or if you can’t leave until a certain time, that may help to (or have to) determine your itinerary. If you have – or are going to create – wide-open flexibility for the departure date and duration of your trip, your itinerary can determine the trip length and when you can or should go. Since this was our situation (we created the flexibility by leaving our jobs and paying off all debt before leaving), and find it preferable, we say itinerary dictating duration is better than the other way around because it gives you utmost freedom and say in your trip, and so we are listing this first.

When you plan your itinerary, you want to go from big to small: planet (if you’re doing a full Round the World trip!), then continent, then country, then cities. Plot them out as dots – tacks on a map on a wall that you look at on a regular basis is best! – and, with research, begin to connect them in the most logical way.

Once you have an idea of where you want to go, then you can look into what you want to see and do there. This will give you some notion of how long you want to spend in each city or region. Add in travel times between places, making sure you’re not underestimating how long it takes to travel in developing countries. It is vastly different than having your own car and going rather simply from Point A to Point B; even what seems like a short trip becomes an all-day affair. Along those lines, give yourself recovery time. In reality, you probably will not want to go sight-seeing after travelling for 6 hours, even if you do arrive at 2 in the afternoon. Be realistic and accommodating – both for yourself and for unforeseen events like train delays or strikes – in planning even a ballpark estimate of your timeframe.

Now that you have an idea of how long the trip will be, you can figure out how long you’ll need to save for it.  That will be the earliest you can leave. Then you’ll want to factor in whether that’s the right time of year to go to begin your itinerary, and/or tweak your itinerary to begin where it is climatically best for your start date. In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep you going.

Life wasn’t meant to be lived in a protective bubble, but there is no reason not to protect yourself where you can, especially when venturing to a new place with new rules and new hazards. Take all the safeguards you can, and then you can travel freely, knowing you did all you could to do it safely and responsibly.

Once you know your itinerary and have an idea when you’ll be where and for how long, a travel healthcare provider will be able to give you excellent guidance as to what precautions you can and should take, including itinerary-specific vaccinations. It is also worthwhile to discuss insurance options with your insurance provider. For a well-planned trip, this should be started approximately 7 months before your planned departure.

It’s what so many people long to do. You’ve probably said it for a long while yourself, and once you start telling people what you’re doing, you’re going to hear a seemingly endless chorus of, “Wow, that sounds amazing. I’d really like to do that.” Sadly, most of the time, it will be followed by a “but…” and then some reason why they never will.

You will get to know the flip side of that. You will get to know what it is like to NEVER live with a “but” after saying what you’d really like to do. You have just become a person who doesn’t just think idly about the things you want to happen in your life – you have just become a person who MAKES them happen.

Whether your departure date is now two years or a few months away, you have taken a mere dream to a bona fide plan of action, and soon you will be doing The Real Thing. Yes, you! YOU did it all – you had the thought, you planned the details, and you will get to live all the riches and learn all the lessons and make all the incredible, life-changing, lifelong memories.

So now read all the books you can get your hands on, watch all the films and documentaries, learn all the languages (or at least phrases) that you can. Plaster your walls with maps and photos of where you want to go and where you will be going. And get excited, because this is AMAZING! You will soon be standing there with your thumbs looped through the straps of your backpack, taking in the chaos and the wonder and the enchantment that is travel. Isn’t it exciting to think about?

Congratulations – it only gets better from here!