About Us

Shelley and Keith on a train in Kenya, 2012.

Shelley is a freelance writer, author, and self-professed vagabond. Her curiosity about the world and love of travel started early and runs deep, and she will rarely miss an opportunity to discover a new place, culture, people and way of life.

Keith has traveled throughout much of the United States and more than fifty different countries on five continents. As his friends and family will tell you, he loves to travel, and always focuses on getting the most out of his travel dollars so that he can explore just that much more.

Here are some examples of our wonderful travel experiences that were had for free or pretty damn near it!

In 2004 Keith said goodbye to his job and headed out for Asia. He wasn’t sure how long he would be gone – he figured until he got tired of traveling or ran out of money. By the time he came back home to Austin, it was 2006 and he had been gone for two years – on surprisingly little money, and without any trouble in picking up a new job just where he’d left off. In fact, he found potential employers to be impressed and envious of his two-year sabbatical.

In August 2007 Shelley took her daughter and mother to Europe, where we traveled for three weeks on dirt-cheap air tickets and stayed in Venice and Paris for free. This was after I had spent my own month in Prague, at almost no net cost as well.

In November 2008 Shelley took her mother to Hawaii, where we spent two weeks for about the same money it would have cost us to stay home. We used frequent flyer miles for the airplane tickets and stayed in a private two-bedroom condominium found through a home exchange.

In April 2009 Keith and Shelley spent several weeks in a studio apartment in Barcelona, steps from the famed Ramblas – completely free, courtesy of another home exchange. For almost the whole month of March 2010, we did the same thing in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

View from our apartment in Barcelona.

So how do we do it, personally? We tell you exactly how in this book. And we should also let you know, before we even get started, that neither of us are independently wealthy, or famous; we do not have a network of rich and famous friends or any other store of resources that the average person does not have. We are normal people with close family that live nearby; Shelley has a daughter and is a homeowner. And although she has been mostly self-employed for many years, Keith has had a regular 9-to-5 job for most of his working life until recently. And still, we have managed to travel extensively, often for no more than what we would spend by staying at home, or very little more. And if you travel a few months or more at a time you can actually do so while spending less than what you would spend had you stayed home.

Buy the book today, and make your travel dreams a reality!