WHO WE ARE
from 9 to 6 new york office life, to full time travelers…
Hello! Merhaba! 🙂
We are Gökçe and Steve, and at the end of February 2020 we left behind our office jobs in New York City to chase our dream to become full time travelers. Of course, when we planned all of this out, we could have never predicted the global pandemic which would affect the world in March 2020. Our plans are temporarily on hold, but from what we have seen so far, we cannot wait to get back on the road!
Gökçe grew up in a small town on the Aegean coast of Turkey and did not start learning English until she was 11 years old. At 18, she wound up spending 4 months living in Cambridge, England to improve on it before starting university. She was accepted into a dual diploma program, studying 2 years at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul and 2 years at Binghamton University in New York. She made the decision to stay in the United States to pursue her masters and then ultimately start her career, but she had a growing desire to not be stuck to one place just yet.
Steve grew up a history nerd in Staten Island, New York, the forgotten borough of New York City. Some of his fondest childhood memories were staring at his world map place mat and wondering what was out there in the world (ok, and maybe laughing a bit that there was a country called Turkey… little did he know). While he did not travel internationally much during his childhood, that desire grew during his time in law school and one of his biggest regrets was not studying abroad during university, we hope to make up for that now.
We met in New York City in 2014, and quickly discovered we attended that same university in upstate New York for 2 years and had many mutual friends, including one who gave his seal of approval for Steve. After getting married in 2017, we began to realize office life may not be for us right now now and started to discuss the possibility of traveling for an extended period of time and slowly this plan was born.
It was around the time we met that Steve discovered travel credit card rewards and he was pretty much instantly hooked. Gökçe was skeptical at first, jokingly calling him Super Mario, but we have since amassed nearly 3 million credit card points, using some of them to travel in business class a few times now back to Turkey visit her family, and book multiple winter escapes from New York City to the Caribbean when hotel room rates were over $500 per night all for free or cheap with credit card points! Needless to say she’s now hooked and we saved nearly 2 million credit card points to help keep us traveling.
We are very much new to the whole idea of being a content creator, but thoroughly are enjoying learning on the job. We invite you to come along and learn, and experience with us! Along the way we hope to share our adventures and show you how you too can travel like we do through tips and credit card rewards and more importantly how you can chase your own dreams!