Chattanooga mom quits her job to travel the world rent-free with husband and toddler

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — How would you like to travel the world with a free place to stay? A Chattanooga family is getting that opportunity as a popular house-sharing company tries to cater to the nomadic lifestyle.

Stephanie Hays calls herself a Chattanoogan by way of New York, Amsterdam, Shanghai, London, and Mumbai. She met her husband Peter overseas.

So it makes sense that when a chance to travel the world rent-free came up, she was all in.

I think we've been to almost 50 countries together and about 70 if you count places we went before we knew each other

But it was a longshot. More than 300,000 people put their name in the hat for the "Live Anywhere on Airbnb" program. But Stephanie found out recently she is one of 12 people from around the world who made the adventurous cut.

They give us a budget for accommodations that we get to select on the platform for 10 months, and, and a travel stipend and in return, they want feedback on on certain listings.

So Stephanie quit her job at the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau and is packing her bags. But she isn't going alone. Her husband Peter Wolcott, the director of operations for the Chattanooga Football Club and Operation Get Active, and their 2-year-old son Hays are along for the ride.

"So Pete and I had planned on you know, traveling for a year before Hays was in kindergarten," Stephanie says. "It's always something we wanted to do. He just started kind of talking about it seriously when we saw this. So we thought, you know, why not?"

Launching this adventure during a pandemic has its challenges. But Stephanie says the payout is worth it, to expose Hays to the way of the life in other parts of the world.

He's learning new things every day, no matter where we are. So it's it's really exciting to think about what that's going to be like in other countries and totally new experiences. And to be able to see the world kind of through a two-year-old's eyes is a whole different way of traveling that we've never done before.

And on the subject of visitors, Stephanie says their guest room list is already filling up!

Watch Latricia's full interview with Stephanie, Peter and "Baby Hays" here...