Ramping up to take a year off for travel!

[stashy]

Currently down to 100K left on mortgage.  When its paid off we take off for a year to travel!  Here's how-
Saving 45% of my income and putting in a lending club account.  After about 2 years the mortgage (15 year 3.3%) will be down to about 84K.  The monthly investments in lending club account will meet the 84K in 2 years or a little more depending on the success of the investment.
House will be rented for $2500/month.  We'll use that to survive plus side account from dogsitting via dogvacay.com.  We hope to have 15-20K+ over the next two years from this side hustle.  First month we've made over 1K!  (although curious if we'll make as much after holiday travel ends).
We'l leverage the references from the dogsitting to get some housesitting gigs (mindmyhouse.com) that will take a big bite out of housing costs, goal is 30-50% of the time to housesit which will save a lot of $ and allow us to live in non tourist areas.  Combo of rent income, personal savings, and proceeds of side hustle we'll be able to travel for a year without racking up debt, and come home to a paid off house and savings in the bank!!

[rob in cal]

Stashy, this sounds really fun, and innovative.  I wonder though just how easy it is to find house sitting assignments, as on most sites it seems there are more people looking for houses than houses available.

[stashy]

I wondered that too.  My morning ritual is to make coffee and check out the available housesits, it seems like there are more all the time and most of them are folks that have pets who don't want them boarded.  Saves them $ too.  I think its somewhat competitive but not to the point where its impossible.

[expatartist]

Might want to get started house-sitting with an assignment or 2 during a quick holiday before launching into doing it for an entire year. This will get you building up ratings and experience before you go, and make clients more likely to choose you.