Hi guys – welcome to Monkey Mind Travel!

The leaders of this merry band are Cindy and Michele.

We’ve been friends for over 20+ years, meeting when Cindy sought out a new instructor to continue her flight lessons. That’s where Michele (flight-instructor-extraordinaire) comes in. Training aircraft are a small space where you spend a LOT of hours together with another human. We discovered that we share a deep love of traveling, immersing ourselves in new and different cultures,  and experiencing new things. We set out on a shared journey to make more room in our lives for travel. Whatever vacation time we had did not feel adequate to squash our wanderlust. We are both hard headed, very opinionated and competitive which sometimes leads to interesting misadventures and outtakes.

We were raised in an age where hard work and hustle were expected and consideration for your personal life was secondary, so we set out on a path to position ourselves to do the thing we love, exploring through travel. We thought the way out to more travel was through side hustles while maintaining our full time professional lives. Eventually we realized that being consumed with our professional careers and running a not-so-profitable real-estate business were driving us into an early grave and leading to financial instability. We were working twice as hard with no end game in sight. Note: Anyone who thinks they’ll become millionaires by being landlords is, we believe, mistaken.

So in 2016 we set out to prioritize our health and mental wellbeing, improve our physical and financial fitness, and take positive steps to get out of the hole we had dug for ourselves.

We started working with a fee-only financial advisor who could help us craft a strategic plan for our future goals. etc…….

And, most importantly, we started building opportunities for travel – planning and taking 2 or 3-week, yearly trips to try out our future selves. Compatibility, who is good in what roles, etc.

Achieving our ultimate goal, to travel full-time, was not instantaneous because frankly the adage “old habits die hard” is true. Plus, we had to quash the occasional moments of doubt and fear that seeped in. We agreed that “progress, not perfection” would be our new mantra, and with more wins, come more successes.