We’re Julie and Jason Buckley
And we’re based in Nottingham in the UK when we’re not travelling. Back in 2011 we made the decision to quit our corporate jobs, both of us aged 39 at the time, buy an old motorhome and travel Europe with our dog Charlie, a cavalier king charles spaniel. A somewhat banana’s decision perhaps, but we’ve not looked back.
Initially our plan was to spend a year on the road, to work out what our new priorities in life would be. It became clear well before those 12 months were up that we were having far too much fun to head back to work, and another year of freedom called. After two years of travelling the game was up, as our bank balance depleted to point we’d just enough money to ‘get back’ into life back in the UK.
Two years later, we headed home. Having met lots of inspirational folks on the road, we used some of the lessons learned from them to set up a plan to attain financial freedom. We set up an IT contracting business and Ju also went back to work as a full time employee. Alongside both of these we started renovating an old butchers shop to generate additional rental income alongside a small bungalow we already owned, and our old ‘family home’, which we’d let out while we travelled and was now far too big for us.
By revising down our yearly income figure, and frankly working ourselves into the ground, we cut a nine year plan down to two years, and effectively retired aged 43 (we wrote this book to explain how we did it). Having sold our old camper van we bought a newer version of the same van and took to the road again, over time racking up a total of over four years of travel.
These days we mix up motorhome tours in Europe and North Africa with life back home in the UK. We’ve visited over 30 countries, and stayed in over 1,000 places. Neither of us plan to return to full time work any time soon, although we do enjoy part-time jobs from time to time, done on our terms and without the dreaded commute. Life’s good, and we hope this blog and our books help you if you’re pondering doing something similar.
Discussing Early Retirement, Aged 43
More About Jason
I’m Jason and I’m determined to squeeze as much out of my life as I can. My father’s by far my biggest role model, having gradually worked his way out of poverty with the support of my mum, with nothing else but grit and determination. In my early days, Dad loved the open air and animals of farm work, giving it up for the darkness and danger of the coal face in England’s deep mines. Mum brought my sister and I up before moving into the clothes factories and then into home care. Both were eventually forced into retirement by ill health.
Ironic then, that I’ve retired in my early 40’s? Well, there’s been a good amount of hard work and determination to make that happen, but still I’m clearly stood on the shoulders of giants. My folks did the hardest of the work needed to get me here, and when I’ve asked them what they think about what we’re doing with our lives, they couldn’t be more encouraging. The same’s applied throughout my life: they supported me in getting a degree and travelling around the world afterwards (having laboured for 6 months on building sites to fund it). They’ve always been there for me as I built up a career in the UK, from a technical writer all the way up to an IT project manager, running multi-million pound projects for one of the Big 6 energy companies. They even supported me when I knocked that job on the head after ten years in the company, giving up a highly paid career to go travelling in my late 30’s, a decision which must have worried them more than a little!
The travel bug may well have come from my folks as well. Whenever Ju and I chat with ’em about where we’ve been, they always seem to have been there before us! For decades they’d take coach holidays to far flung places, unperturbed by the need to be sat upright on a bus for days on end. This ability I certainly didn’t inherit, as I recall the mild torture of travelling to the Austrian Tyrol one summer, desperate to lie down in the aisle during the overnight drive. These days their travels are limited to England’s east coast, constrained by a range of physical ailments, and I enjoy the massive privilege of being able to lie down in my own bed while we amble slowly on our circular tours (after we’ve parked up of course!).
One reason for setting ourtour.co.uk up back in 2011 was to help my folks vicariously come wandering with us. Since then the blog’s brought us into contact with loads of other wonderful people who’ve used it (alongside the other cracking blogs out there) to build confidence in, and enact their own escape plan. That’s a big thing for me, one of the biggest drivers for keeping this blog alive: to feel like we might be helping others to squeeze the most out of their lives too.
More About Julie
One of my earliest memories is lying in my tiny bedroom in our static caravan, listening to the rhythmic thrumming of the rain on the window. The caravan was in Silloth, on the Solway Firth in North West England, close to where my parents both came from. We would spend the school holidays there for most of my childhood. Both sets of Grand Parents also had caravans on the same site, so while my Dad would be away with work, Mum, my brother and I would stay at the van. I guess that’s why I find the sound of the rain on the roof of our motorhome so soothing these days – it’s a home from home.
Growing up in Nottinghamshire my parents instilled in me values and lessons that serve me well to this day. Work hard, treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, and from a young age I was taught the value of money. In later years jokingly our family adopted the motto ‘every penny’s a prisoner’, but in reality I was taught to look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. This meant that I would always save up for what I wanted. If I couldn’t afford it with my own money, I didn’t buy it until I could.
After successfully failing my A levels (my ever-positive Mum reassuring me with the words ‘well you didn’t need them anyway’) I went to college for a couple of years. At college I also worked in a nightclub and at Boots (a right of passage for anyone living in the Nottingham area) during the weekends to pay my way, sleep was mainly grabbed on the bus between jobs. After college I ‘temped’ doing office work until I found a full-time role. When half of the staff, me included, were made redundant one December morning my boyfriend at the time and I took the opportunity to tour Australia and New Zealand for a few months between jobs.
Post-travels and back in an office, I helped the marketing department while I worked on reception. I was promoted into the marketing department and the company offered to pay for me to attend night classes. Three years later I gained a Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing (not bad considering I failed my A Levels and never went to University!). I continued in various marketing roles for over a decade. When Jay and I got together we bought a camper and would trundle off in it for weekends and holidays. The longest we could be away for was two weeks, but it was always so tempting to see what was beyond that two week distance. In 2011 we quit work and set off travelling to find out.