Nikki Levi and Jakob Celnik quit their well-paying corporate jobs, bought a minivan, and, together with their dog, drove 38,000 miles across the Americas, which took them 16 months.Levi worked at Citigroup in New York as a high-yield credit-research analyst for four years before moving to Apple, and Celnik worked at the Blackstone Group for about three years before he moved to Soros Fund Management. In their interview with Business Insider Levi admitted that they were terrified while leaving their jobs. “But in hindsight, we shouldn’t have been … We cannot buy time, so we try to enjoy the time we do have doing the things we love, with the people and animals we love,” she said. Let’s take a look at what their incredible adventure was like.
They bought a used 2008 Dodge Sprinter 2500 high-roof van, with a 144-inch wheelbase, and with about 90,000 miles on the clock.
It was completely empty when they bought it. With little carpentry, mechanics, or construction experience, it was a process of trial and error to figure out what exactly to build and how to build it. They figured out a budget and tried to learn as much as they could by reading guides like the Sprinter forum and the Sprinter conversion sourcebook.