After graduating college, my wife and I moved to Seattle with the intent of working until we had enough to travel for a year. She's an RN and I was a lumber trader. After 4 years, we had our student loans paid off and found ourselves with $200,000 in the bank and feeling good financially. My wife applied for a sabbatical and got it easily. Having that secured, we felt confident to that we'd have work upon return so we purchased our one-way tickets to Buenos Aires. Since trading lumber is a remarkably cut-throat and competitive industry, I figured I'd just quit my job the week before we flew out and they'd divvy up my accounts among the other traders.
So the week came and I asked to take the CEO out for coffee. We have always had a good rapport and he could tell something was up... I told him I needed to quit and he was like, "Why?, You moving to another trading house?" And I explained the situation and he was like, "Whoa whoa, don't do anything drastic here! We can work out out sabbatical. Shit man, I thought you getting divorced and moving away or had cancer or something..." I must have been on edge I guess.
They ended up assigning my accounts to other traders on a temporary basis and upon return my accounts would be given back to me. On top of that I was given a middling salary ($65,000) until I got my numbers back up.
After spending the South American summer months hiking, camping, and hitchhiking around Patagonia and the Andes, we shipped our camping gear to my parents' house and continued to travel North. My wife found a great volunteering opportunity in Bolivia with an NGO hospital for a month (I joined the grounds crew) and then we continued on through Colombia. From there we met my brother in Vietnam and continued around SE Asia for 6 weeks. All told we were gone for 9 months... and spent an additional several weeks on either end seeing family. We tracked every nickel and spent just over $24k including flights.
Once back trading lumber I discovered this lovely blog (2012) and we have been angling our finances toward FI ever since. My career has continued to angle upward... we've got a couple kids now and my wife is happily working part time. We'll probably ER here in Seattle in the next year or two... and take our girls on the road... at least in the summers.
I just thought it was an interesting story (it's about me after all...) but I also thought it could be inspiring for anyone else in a sales-type job. "The power of quitting," as they say, even in a cut-throat industry can result in favorable outcomes.