Real estate can be all-consuming. It’s easy to get trapped into working days, nights, and weekends, which pretty much takes the fun out of nights and weekends. I’ve been there. A few years ago I found myself completely burned out from working so hard to make my business work and not seeing the results I was striving for. At the same time my wife was burned out from trying to start her own career (she’s writer, more on that below) while taking care of the kids and getting little support from me.

We realized that raising kids, while growing our businesses, was not working, at least not the way we were trying to do it. We need to change course. We needed a RESTART button.

So we did something crazy.

We decided to go on an epic adventure with our kids. We left the country for 3 months on a shoestring budget and with no clear vision of how our vagabonding would go. We enrolled our kids in a foreign school, attempted to run our businesses remotely, and basically figured it out along the way. The trip was so amazing (for us and for our kids) that we’ve made it a priority to leave home for months at a time every year. It has helped us in more ways than I could express in a single article. (In fact, my wife is writing a book series about it; you can see more about what she is doing and our adventures at VagabondingWithKids.com.)

Of course, when we are not vagabonding with our kids, we are finding mini-adventures around home. The reason is that we have learned having adventures with our kids makes us feel wealthy, very wealthy.

FACT: Traveling (or just going anywhere) with your kids, can be hard. But it also makes your experiences that much richer, more meaningful, and more memorable.

When we are busy in the game of life we often let precious moments go by without noticing them. When you do notice them, you get a happiness you can’t buy with money.

We are in between trips at the moment, but still enjoying adventures with our kids to capture those moments and experiences that result in a prosperity you can’t equal with any dollar amount. And we don’t always need to leave the country, either.

Sometimes it’s camping in the backyard or on the deck…

Taking them swimming with a ridiculously large pool toy…

Learning how to make pizza from scratch…

Or just taking one daughter and one pirate out for chocolate chip pancakes…

Having a passion for the work you do is an amazing thing. But finding a way to keep your passions for work while still creating time to have amazing adventures with your kids is an unrivaled feeling. I don’t know how to describe it other than I feel wealthy. Some of the wealthiest people I know in the traditional sense don’t have any time, in fact their days are so scripted and full that I don’t desire to be them. I’ve been there, and could go back there, but instead I’m aiming for success in my work and in my personal life, because that balance is true wealth. And I can’t help feeling like I hit the jackpot.

Success in work  +  Adventures with Kids = Prosperity and Riches