Nine-year-old Alyssa Chiang stood on the back porch of her home. All her family’s belongings covered the yard.

The voice of an auctioneer on a loud speaker could be heard selling off the contents of the family’s shed.

“Nine, do I hear nine, can I get nine? Nine! Ten, do I hear 10, can I get 10?” he said. Some variation of that continued during the eight-hour auction, which is exactly how long it took to sell all the contents of a 3,500-square-foot home.

“I just hope my bike doesn’t sell,” Alyssa said. “And my Legos. I’d like to have those when we come back. If we come back.”

Five weeks before the auction, Alyssa’s father, Jimmy Chiang, decided it was time for a change. He wanted to sell his business, sell his possessions, rent out their home and travel the world with his wife and two kids. He said he was looking to get rid of some business and financial pressures in his life.

“As a business owner, there are a lot of stresses and a lot of noise that come with that. When I’m putting so much effort into things that don’t fulfill me, that’s when I need to move on,” Jimmy Chiang said.

When he told his wife Carol-Ann Chiang about his idea, she said it wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned a “reset.”

“I think it’s all been building to this point for a long time for Jimmy,” Carol-Ann Chiang said. “I was kind of overwhelmed by the ‘let’s sell it all’ thought. But the more we thought about it the more we realized it’s not that difficult to do. You just have to make a decision to do it and do it.”

And they did. Nine days after listing his business, a CrossFit™ gym, it sold. A month after listing his house, it was rented. And five weeks after deciding to sell it all, it all sold at auction.

THE FAMILY

Carol-Ann Chiang said she looks forward to focusing on spending time with family and not being distracted by things pulling her in different directions.

“They seem like they are what’s important to do at the time, but in reality when you look back, you’re not going to wish you spent more time in front of the computer paying bills. You’re going to wish you’d done more stuff with your family,” she said.

Their daughters, Lana Chiang, 11, and Alyssa were not as enthusiastic as their parents.

“At first I said no. I didn’t want to leave our dogs and everything. Now, I’m yes and no. I want to travel but I also don’t want to leave my dogs,” Lana said.

Both girls said the hardest part was finding new homes for their four dogs. Each dog went to live with a family friend and will be available for visits when the Chiangs are in town.

THE PLAN

The logistics are a work in progress. Through a housesitting website, the Chiangs were able to exchange petsitting services for free lodging. They’ll petsit in South Carolina, Colorado, Utah and California before selling their car and heading to Greece in July. Their path after Greece is still up in the air, though they hope to be in Scotland during the holidays and then on to Asia, Carol-Ann Chiang said.

“A big push is to get to southeast Asia. The cost of living there is so much cheaper and we’ll really be able to stretch our dollar there,” Jimmy Chiang said. 

The Chiangs own three homes in the Carolinas, all of which are rented. Using the income from their rental properties and from the sale of the gym, the family could feasibly travel for up to a year. But their end date is still up for discussion.

“It’s for a year,” Alyssa said.

“It’s for the rest of our lives,” Jimmy Chiang said.

“If we just have a great experience as a family doing it, if we just do it for two months and settle down somewhere, I’d still be quite happy,” Carol-Ann Chiang said.

THE GEAR

Each member of the family will have one backpack for their belongings. They chose backpacks over rolling luggage for when they are in more remote areas. The backpacks hold four to five outfits, toiletries and small electronics.

They’ll also have some camera equipment so they can document their travels on their website and social media accounts where they’re known as The Chiang Gang. They’ll rely mainly on their GoPro, a small point-of-view camera that can be worn.

The Chiangs will also have a laptop so the girls can do school work on the road. 

“We’ll be homeschooling. We know we’re going to be following something that is online-based, most likely a few different things that are online-based to get a mix of everything that we want to do,” said Carol-Ann Chiang. “Other people have told us, ‘Don’t fret about the schooling stuff. Your kids are going to learn from what they’re doing and get an education in that.’”

JIMMY CHIANG

This isn’t the first time Jimmy Chiang has made abrupt life changes. 

The former special operations Marine left the Corps after 14 years of service, a move he said surprised some since he was so close to retirement. But after progressing through the ranks, as a gunnery sergeant, he was no longer fulfilled with his job.

“I wanted to be the guy kicking in the door. I didn’t want to be the guy filling out the paperwork,” he said.

After leaving the Marine Corps, he began unknowingly chasing the feeling of excitement he had as a special operator, he said. He opened Sneads Ferry Armory, a buy-and-sell gun shop in 2013. He sold that business in 2015 to open a new business, Sneads Ferry CrossFit.

“I started running ultramarathons and keeping myself busy with business,” he said. “But as things became successful and less challenging I’d move on to something else.”

He doesn’t think his latest “something else,” will end in boredom like his previous endeavors. The constant change and newness of every location should keep him fulfilled, he said. 

“It’s a success already because we took the step to do it,” Jimmy Chiang said. “A lot of people always say, ‘I want to do this, I want to do that.’ I’m going to do what I say. Succeed or fail, at least we’re doing it and the experience is irreplaceable.”

Sunday morning the family locked their door for the last time, loaded up their Prius and set off.

“This isn’t just traveling,” Jimmy Chiang said. “This is an adventure.”