Hello! I met Dan and Lindsay McKenzie at Glacier National Park. When I learned about their new budgeting program I asked permission to share their story with you.
Dan and Lindsay McKenzie are full-time RV travelers from Colorado. For the past decade they’ve chased adventure together — living abroad in Costa Rica, backpacking through Europe, and taking big trips like Thailand. Before launching their blog, Follow Your Detour, and stepping into a mobile lifestyle, they made it a priority to get out of debt and build savings. Their experiences inspired them to create a budgeting program called Finance Your Detour to help others reach their goals. They love that RVing lets them bring their two dogs and spend as much time in nature as possible—often found fly fishing, hiking to sunset spots, or visiting local breweries. Below is their story.
It’s amazing how a single word can change a life. Three years ago we lived in a Denver suburb, pursuing what looked like the “American dream.” We bought a three-bedroom house, leased a new car, and accumulated nicer things than we had after college. Our careers were advancing, we had master’s degrees, and we finally felt “established.”
We still traveled a bit — more than many people we knew — but it never quite matched the amount we dreamed of. We had lived abroad in Costa Rica, backpacked parts of Europe, and splurged on a bucket-list trip to Thailand. Yet something felt missing. At the same time, we were getting older and felt pressure to “settle down.”
So we did what seemed like the next step…
We tried to start a family. We were told it would happen when we stopped trying. After two years of testing, hoping, and stress, the biopsy results confirmed what the doctors feared: Dan could not reproduce. The life we’d been working toward — a home selected for kids to run around in, careers chosen for stability — suddenly felt irrelevant. For a while it seemed like everything had come to a screeching halt.
Then it hit us…
We realized this was simply a detour, not a dead end. Reframing that moment as a detour changed everything. It opened the possibility that a different path could lead to growth and fulfillment. That insight led us to start our blog, Follow Your Detour. We learned detours come in many forms — some painful, some intentional — but they often guide us toward unexpected and meaningful destinations.
Let’s talk about money
Once we embraced the detour, we began taking risks we hadn’t imagined: moving across the country, changing jobs, and even quitting what seemed like a dream job to pursue new passions. Ultimately we transitioned to full-time travel.
Before any of that was possible, we had to address our finances. We were carrying more than $300,000 in debt — mortgage, car loan, about $75,000 in student loans, credit card balances — plus roughly $20,000 in medical bills from fertility care. Even though our income had increased, we never felt ahead; each month we wondered where the money went. We weren’t saving meaningfully, and progress on debt felt nonexistent. In hindsight, much of those expenses bought status and stuff that didn’t bring lasting happiness.
We realized to follow our detour we needed to make major changes to how we managed money.
Our financial detour
The first concrete step was a finance and budgeting class. It taught us the importance of working together on money. Initially Dan knew most of the financial details, so bringing Lindsay fully into the process became a priority. We started monthly budgeting meetings and committed to honest conversations about income, expenses, and goals. Together we created clear financial objectives and a plan to reach them.
Our primary goal: eliminate debt as quickly as possible and avoid taking on new debt. To achieve that we tracked every expense, identified areas to cut, and redirected those savings toward debt. We canceled cable and Netflix, lowered our phone bill, and cooked at home more often. At each monthly meeting we planned the month using specific spending categories so savings and debt payments remained consistent. We tackled smaller balances first and worked up to larger ones.
At first the process was rough. We made mistakes. But with persistence we improved, saw real progress, and experienced benefits beyond money: our marriage grew stronger and we felt less guilt and uncertainty about spending. After three years of diligent budgeting, plus the proceeds from selling our home and choosing to rent instead, we paid off all that debt. It required sacrifices — unexpected income went straight to debt instead of wants — but being debt-free proved far more satisfying than any purchase.
Our tool for success
We struggled to find a budgeting tool that matched our meeting-driven process. Many apps were either too complex or too automated, which removed the hands-on conversations that make budgeting effective. Dan, an Excel enthusiast, built a simple spreadsheet that fit our workflow. That basic spreadsheet, used consistently, helped us eliminate debt and build a safety nest.
Where we are now
Today we live full-time on the road in our RV, even though our income is lower than before. Because we budget intentionally, we had the confidence for Lindsay to leave her job and start the blog. The most common question we get is “how do you afford to travel full-time?” Many friends and family have asked for the spreadsheet, and after seeing how transformative it was for us we decided to share it more broadly.
We evolved the spreadsheet into a user-friendly tool and packaged it into a four-part program called Finance Your Detour. The program includes the budgeting tool, step-by-step tutorials, video lessons, and worksheets to help you implement monthly budget meetings and the mindset that supports lasting change. The tool alone won’t produce results — the mindset, intentionality, and commitment matter most — but the tool makes the process straightforward and repeatable.
Finance YOUR detour
If money is holding you back from the life you want, or you find yourself in the same place we were, it may be time to take control. A budget can feel restrictive at first, but for us it became the freedom that enabled risk-taking and adventure. We created Finance Your Detour to help others experience the same peace and independence that come from managing money intentionally.
We don’t know exactly where our detour will lead next, but getting our finances in order gave us the freedom to explore opportunities without fear. Eliminating debt, building savings, and managing spending created the space to pursue a life aligned with our values.
What do you think about budgets? Do you have debt?