HOW SHE DID IT
By Jason Jourdan
A little over a week ago, we introduced Cassie Stockamp, the newest addition to Triptime Insurance’s roster of social media influencers (she joins a lively group, currently featuring such excellent follows as: Jerre Stead, Pema Chinyam, Jonny Melon and Jorden Tually. Cassie had always dreamt of traveling around the world, but the usual roadblocks—career, family, cost and just life in general—stood in the way of her realizing that dream.
Cassie Stockamp (center, white shirt), world traveler and Triptime’s newest social media influencer, makes some new friends in India.
In 2018, Stockamp, 58, decided to dismantle the roadblocks.
She quit a very rewarding job as president of Indianapolis’s Athenaeum Foundation, informed her daughters (Sydney, 22 and Audrey, 20, both long since nest departees) of her decision to ramble, and got down to the business of arranging financing for her round-the-world jaunt. Rather than rob a Brinks truck, a practice frowned upon by authorities, Cassie got creative.
Pulling from several online resources, Stockamp designed a solo trip around the world that would utilize her many talents and passions to help defray some of the costs. Touristy travel held little allure; she wanted to do this right, preferring to experience the people in the places she’d be visiting: how they lived and thrived. She’d do a job in a community for about a month, working and mingling with locals and fellow travelers, before moving on to the next. As a licensed yogi, she’d be able to supplement her income by teaching the odd yoga class here and there at different stops around the planet.
Climbing her way to global internet fame, Cassie Stockamp takes it one handhold at a time.
She found everything she needed on the internet, utilizing many different resources to make her dream a reality:
www.workaway.info – A well-maintained platform that’s a depository of businesses/non-profits/families that need volunteers all over the world.
www.TrustedHouseSitters.com – Travel to a destination and live in someone’s home while the owners are on vacation …house-sit and maybe pet-sit. That’s it. Free lodging.
www.woofing.com – An older site that connects volunteers to farms around the world.
www.yogatrade.com – Cassie was able to utilize her experience as a yoga instructor through this site, which connects yogis to teaching opportunities around the world.
www.skiplagged.com – Say you want to travel from NYC to Denver, and the price is $500. This site may find a $400 flight from NYC to LAX with a layover in Denver. Voila. $100 saved.
www.kiwi.com – A great search engine for cheap international flights.
https://scottscheapflights.com/ – This site will send you email alerts notifying you of really cheap flights that must be booked in 24 hours. Great for the spontaneous traveler.
www.triptimeinsurance.com – Hey, that’s us! We’re an international travel medical insurance company that allows you to secure coverage while traveling abroad for as low as $0.70 per day. Headquartered in Cassie’s adoptive hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, we jumped at the chance to sponsor her journey. We think she’s a pretty amazing person, with a fascinating story that people ought to hear.
Since departing in mid-November, Cassie’s travels have already led her through stops in Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and India. Back home in the States, her fans track her travels through her blog site, www.cassiestockamp.com, as well as on Facebook and Instagram. One of her biggest supporters, daughter Sydney, pays tribute: “Without a doubt, my mother is the strongest woman I know. Sure, Mom being gone is tough, but it’s empowering to bear witness to her journey. She’s accomplished so much, and I’m proud to call her my mom!”
According to Cassie Stockamp, this helpful gadget can be used to book a trip around the planet that defrays much of its own cost. Who knew?
Many people dream of taking a year and traveling the world …and then never get around to it. Does that strike a chord with you? Feel like it’s already too late to act, that the opportunity’s already slipped past? Cassie Stockamp knows better, and offers this advice: “Do it. NOW! You will never have any regrets for having done it …but maybe a few if this is a dream of yours and you don’t.”
And now you have a template for how you can actually pull it off. People have been saying “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” for eons. In the Information Age, that old adage has never been more true.
