Cars, a nice home, an investment property and decent salaries - Australian couple Sarah Chamberlain and Tyrhone Tubbs were living a successful, conventional life.
But they weren't happy.
"I wondered if there was something wrong with us, if maybe we were unhappy because we weren't right for each other. But we did love each other, we just didn't love the life we were living together," Ms Chamberlain said.
"The idea of continuing on the path we were on, just going through the motions to pay the mortgages and the bills, working in jobs we no longer enjoyed, didn't seem very enticing."
The couple dreamt of travelling indefinitely.
It seemed impossible, until they discovered blogs by people who were already doing it and making an income online.
They sold their properties, cars and possessions.
For three years, they worked multiple jobs and lived as frugally as possible, putting their money into a high interest savings account.
It was a terrifying time, Ms Chamberlain said.
But having now spent two years on the road, from Cambodia to Mexico - where they settled for a year at Playa del Carmen - the couple say they've never been happier.
They get by on the interest from their savings account.
"On the interest alone, we can survive in cheap countries like Thailand, where apartments are as little as $300 per month to rent," Ms Chamberlain said.
"We earn enough from our online pursuits like writing, blogging and web design to support our travels, and our income is growing."
Mr Tubbs does freelance web and graphic design work and they both write about their travels in their blogs Sarah Somewhere and Tell Them I Said Something.
"We feel like we are finally living the life we were meant to," Ms Chamberlain said.
"We know we can always go out and get jobs if we need to, but we doubt we will.
"We simply don't want to work in jobs we don't love to pay for a lifestyle that no longer suits us."
Darren Lloyd, general manager at Student Flights Australia, says `career breakers' are growing in number - up 111 per cent in the last financial year, with 7,000 `career breakers' headed overseas.
They're generally aged in their mid 20s, and head mainly to the UK and Canada (because of visa restrictions elsewhere).
They get by financially through temp office work, hospitality, child care and teaching, Mr Lloyd said.
"These customers traditionally have done a bit of travelling, come back, worked a couple of years and then thrown it in to travel," he said.
"We're doing lots of marketing campaigning with this now and we're also getting feedback about employers becoming more open to letting people go and travel and keeping a job for them when they get back.
"It's a growing customer, it's a growing market, so we're very keen on that market."
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