And by here, I mean vacation planning, not on Earth.

I grew up in a family that didn’t travel a lot. And when we did, it was always to visit family. We lived in the Midwest, but my mom grew up in Arizona, so most of my vacations as a kid were to the Phoenix area. I won’t lie, I kind of resented it. I just wanted to see the beach or Disneyland!

I knew I wanted to see other places when I “grew up”, but didn’t fully realize my wanderlust until I came face-to-face with it as a sophomore in college on a semester abroad in London. That semester changed everything. I knew that wherever life took me, I would always budget for and prioritize travel.

I graduated from college with a BA in American Studies, struggled a bit to find a career I enjoyed, and ultimately found joy in teaching. After a year as an elementary drama teacher (long story), I decided to pursue an MA in history to strengthen my secondary teaching application and jumped at the opportunity to earn my Master’s in the UK. This time, I got to live in London for almost a year.

I got lucky that my second term classes were all on Wednesday and Thursday, effectively giving me a 5-day weekend every week. I also had extra student loan money because I was living on a smaller budget than the UK government calculated I needed in savings to get a visa. So I did a lot of traveling around Europe with my new friends and my friends and family from home who came to visit.

I created a Google Sheets document before every trip to organize information and plan the itineraries. I realized I was good at it! My former experiences as a Type A eldest daughter, in lesson planning, and working at a Girl Scout camp for five summers, translated easily to trip planning. I understood the importance of scheduling in transition times, how long activities could take, and what is realistic to fit in a day.

I moved back to the US a few months before finishing my program so I could start teaching that school year. I finished my dissertation and graduated with my MA while teaching 6th-grade World History, and got married all in the same school year. I taught another year before stepping back to be a stay-at-home mom after my oldest was born in 2020.

I am fortunate to have married someone who enjoys travel, and we have been able to convince our 3 young kids to love taking trips as well. As I became known in my social circle as someone who vacations frequently and is good at planning trips, I started getting a lot of questions. Most of the time, my friends wanted my advice on accumulating credit card points (I play the credit card point game HARD) or on planning trips to Disneyland.

I decided to shape my friendly advice-giving into a business for those I know and those I don’t know yet. And here we are!