We were able to travel full-time for almost 7 years, without a full-time traditional job between us. we were loving our new non-conventional life. Raising the money to travel was hard work initially, we weren’t rich, didn’t win the lottery, and for the preceding 5 years we only had 1 income, my husband’s chef’s salary.
This post is about funding travel, with further info on how much money you need to fund long-term or full-time world travel.
I was a busy stay-at-home mum with babies and kids in those days and we had a mortgage, but no other debts. That put us in a good starting position to start our new travel lifestyle.
How To Fund Travel
We had to raise a lump sum to get the ball rolling and fund our first year but as we’ve travelled we’ve had time to figure out an online income and get everything in place to be self-sustaining.
The money now flows to us without having to save or scrimp. This is how we did it, how we funded our travel and learned to travel for a living, no woo, just hard graft.
How did we raise the money to travel as a lifestyle choice for years?
We had around $30,000 in the bank on the day we left to travel. US $ and Au $ were 1:1 back then.
We saved that sum in 12 months using every trick in the book to save, economise and sell unwanted possessions.
That money lasted for a full year, 4 continents, 12 countries, and 2 cruises.
Over the next few years, we supplemented our finances with a diverse patchwork of online and real-life income streams. We got to the point where we were making a very good income as we travelled.
We found a way to travel for a living. Our family has been living differently and loving it since 2012.
We have a lot to say about ways of changing your life, travel and living more for less. If you sign up to follow, our latest updates will be delivered roughly every Sunday, but I miss weeks sometimes.
Taking the jump to freedom and travel from a regular working lifestyle may look daunting, but the 2 things to remember are:
- Traveling is Cheaper than Staying at Home
- Own Less, Live More
That’s not to say that travel is the only way to make a lifestyle shift, but some mode of downsizing financial needs is necessary and for us, travel was the easiest and most fulfilling way.
The driving force behind our adventure was always giving the kids an amazing education and just enjoyment of life and family.
The new income and way of living was the gravy on the chips.
Help us by saving to Pinterest. Thanks!
Travel is Cheaper Than Staying Home
In our experience, travel is way cheaper than staying at home and the longer and slower you travel, the cheaper it gets and the more financial freedom you gain.
Your new life starts with making your decision to go and then sticking with it.
Mark a date on your calendar and tell the world so that there will be no going back on your dreams. You will feel different almost straight away.
My husband taught me that if you want to go to the moon, you buy a ticket.
You CAN find a way to get out of the rat race and live more for less.
How Much Does It Cost To Travel The World
The amount of money it takes to travel full-time varies from person to person. We spent $30,000 in year one for a family of 4.
As our income grew we spent a lot more, places like Bhutan or Singapore can’t be done on a tight budget.
To read cost comparisons on how much travel costs for various travellers, read our gap year cost comparison post.
Obviously, the post above covers gap years, but it gives you a good idea of year on year funding.
Lifestyle Design – Read More
We recommend this book, work less, live more, join the new rich. There are many more books, but this one is a classic on lifestyle design.
The First Time We Travelled for a Year, Second Time, Indefinitely
We’ve done this thing twice, the first time we saved enough money to travel for 12 months without working, pre-kids. It was an amazing year that we never forgot.
It’s not easy to save like that or everyone would do it.
You can’t just carry on with your normal lifestyle, you have to make sacrifices, cut your spending, work hard and adapt to the (conventional perception) of a lower standard of living.
That first time we didn’t have the vision to change our lifestyle completely so, sadly, we slotted back into normal when our year was up.
The second time around it was even harder to raise the cash. There were 4 of us and we needed a higher standard of transport and accommodation to make us comfortable with taking the children on our family lifestyle adventure.
No rooftop bus travel this time. Which is a shame, it was fun.
How We Raised The Money to Travel Full-Time
1. Work out how much you spend
Take your salary, take out the tax and any bills such as car repayments, mortgage, utility bills, school fees etc. See how much you actually spend in a month. It’s not that much, is it?
In Asia, Eastern Europe or Central and South America I can guarantee you will spend way less. That’s unless you go into holiday mode and dine out in the fanciest restaurants and buy heaps of souvenirs. But even then you’d struggle to spend more.
We once traveled around India for 3 months on $5/ day each. And that included accommodation, transport and beer. We’ll never be able to travel that cheap again but it gives you an idea doesn’t it?
Looking at what you spend, it suddenly becomes achievable to save up enough money to travel for a year. It does for us, anyway.
Obviously, you need to pay off any loans. If you are in debt you’ve got a problem, sell the car, find a way to pay your mortgage and bills while you are away (rent or sell).
If you are a renter it’s easy, move out. Then you just need to start saving.
2. Make money with your house
You could rent a room or section of your house to travelers through Airbnb or take in a lodger. It’s free to join and list your property, I listed a room and had a booking within 24 hours. Money in the bank!
You set your price and what facilities are available to your house guests.
Similar is Couch Surfing. You can’t make money out of this, but if you build up a reputation as a good Couch Surfing host now, you can get payback in free accommodation in other people’s homes when you travel. Families can couch surf too.
Move out of your house into a smaller apartment, or even a tent, for a few months while you rent out your whole house. You will pay much less on utilities this way too.
You could even move to a cheaper house in another country if you create a remote income.
You can rent your house while you travel, we do this and it’s worked out fine. We use a local agent and they take care of everything for us.
3. Sell your stuff
You could use E Bay, I prefer to use local Facebook buy and sell sites, that way you avoid postage costs and people are more likely to buy.
If there isn’t one in your area, start one, it’s easy.
Recruit all your friends and family and start listing all your stuff. Money exchange happens face to face, no need to set that up online.
Now there is Facebook Marketplace too, that didn’t exist when we were selling everything to travel as a lifestyle.
We had the mother of all garage sales, raised thousands and lived a simpler, more minimalist lifestyle. We’ve never missed anything we sold.
The more stuff you can get rid of the better, paid storage is expensive.
4. Maximise income
I switched to temping before we went on our first 12-month gap year trip, I found it paid better and came with tax breaks.
I was a hospital scientist so don’t think temping is just for office workers. Job security stops being a priority once you have decided to leave.
Make extra money through your hobbies, sell produce from your garden, make jewelry or fabric wotnots to sell at a local market.
How about face painting? It’s easy to teach yourself how to do it from the internet (I did). Offer your services as a handyman, seamstress or baby sitter.
Anything that brings in extra cash, it all adds up.
Sometimes I did a bit of face painting to help people out, there was no cash involved, but I received wine, chocolates and cinema tickets as gifts.
You can’t put them in the bank, but when you are working hard raising money to travel, treats make life so much happier!
Start a blog! ( find out how here) Be prepared for a long haul and hard work, but it pays off in the end if you have the drive. Read here How to make your first $1000 with Amazon Affiliates. Affiliate schemes, along with advertising, are basically how bloggers make a living.
A few years into this journey I was a 5 figures a month blogger, we were truly travelling for a living. Travel blogging became my job.
Read how to make money travel blogging here.
5. Minimise expenses
There are so many ways to economise. My favourite is to fix a weekly budget. Take that amount of cash out on a fixed day of the week and only spend what you have in your wallet.
I find it easier to stick to a weekly budget than a monthly one.
Charts, plans and spreadsheets help a lot. As you graph your progress and see the money building up it feels good.
The trick is, to not feel like you are suffering too much, if every day is a struggle you’ll soon get sick of going without.
I looked forward to getting that cash on a Thursday and having a mini splurge on wine and cake.
Don’t buy stuff. We all buy too much “stuff” in the perceived need to make our homes and ourselves more attractive. Just stop, completely. Then start selling all the non-essential items cluttering up your house. Once you start selling stuff you get a big kick out of it, it takes the place of the buzz you get from buying something new.
Use up all the stores in your cupboards. You could probably feed the family for a week on all the food sitting on the shelves. Get it used, you’ll save money and you’ll have a nice uncluttered kitchen. Same goes for clothes, use what you’ve got, if you can’t use it, sell it.
Use reward schemes, special offers and coupons wisely. If it’s something you use and need, buy in bulk when the price is right. If it’s a ploy to make you spend more, stay away.
A couple of times my weekly shop was totally covered by points on the supermarket reward card. The money I didn’t spend went in the bank.
I’ll also mention here that travel rewards (travel hacking, Airmiles and so on) can be your best friend. We recently had a week of free hotels in Thailand thanks to Agoda reward points ( see how here).
Slow Travel Is Cheaper Travel, and Other Ways to Travel for Less
Not overall, but in terms of time/dollar slow travel comes in at far better value. We can get months of travel out of one big flight and then we can overland using buses, trains and boats.
We are not huge fans of slow travel, in all honesty, it bores us. You get more time for your dollar but not more experiences and for us, it’s all about the latter.
We intersperse our travels with slow periods, sure, we need to or life would be too intense and we’d never get anything done, but long-term slow travel isn’t for us.
We certainly travel slower than the tourists and 2 week holidaymakers, but we don’t enjoy private rentals and months in one spot.
The usual arguments for slow travel are as follows:
If you turn up in a town ready to stay longer you can get a better room rate.
Self-catering becomes possible (self-catering is NOT cheaper in many parts of Asia where a meal costs $1), local markets are normally dirt cheap.
You really get a feel for a place, get to know it well, rather than rushing around tourist hot spots You can relax.
It may be possible for you to find work as you travel, if you are under 30, this is usually easy, we, over 30s, can’t get working holiday visas, so it may be tricky.
We have a post about travelling for free, including volunteering and working options. Some people do it this way, we don’t, we pay our way about 99% of the time.
It may seem like a huge task to save all that money, but it is possible. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.
When The Savings Ran Out How Did We Continue Travelling?
We still travel extensively in recent years we’ve enjoyed skiing in the Balkans, spent a month in Sri Lanka, 6 months in Hoi An,Vietnam, Christmas in Singapore (a very expensive destination!), 2 weeks in Dubai and a month trekking in Nepal along with long stints in a very special village in Romania and London with European road trips in between.
My husband has been temping occasionally over the years, at a lower position than normal because it pays better.
It’s all above-board, he pays tax and worked at a top London hotel for a few weeks at a time. He used to be an executive chef, these days he’s happy to be a casual.
Currently, he has no plans to work in kitchens again as our online income more than covers us.
UPDATE: The pandemic and lockdowns from 2020 to 2022 smashed our income and removed our freedom. My husband had to get a job once more. The income I thought would just continue to grow forever was reduced to just 20% of normal. These were tough times, but things are getting back to normal, slowly. Never take things for granted, and always have a backup plan. Those are the big takeaways here. Today you’ll find us living on a 5 acre farm, another move to side-step normal and cut our costs. It’s beautiful, we love it. There are income reports on this site documenting that disaster, we went from being comfortable to having no money in a matter of weeks.
How We Fund Travel
I’ve worked hard on the blogs, learning the trade and how to make them pay. We’re doing well now but it took time. That’s something I could help you with.
If you go to our blogging section (here) you can read more about that but it’s not something I’m trying to sell, everyone could do it, but not everyone has the drive and dedication to do it.
We owned our house in Australia to 2022 and had tenants covering all costs there plus a little extra. We overpay on that mortgage, we always have, so we have a cash buffer for any emergency or big purchases.
That is our pension plan.
We sold that house in 2022 and bought the farm.
We get more travel for our dollar because, as bloggers, we get free perks and stays, although you’d be surprised by how rarely we accept those.
I like to be up-front about that so that we all know that does happen and there’s no harm in it.
I love that my know-how, point of view, and the audience I reach is valuable to the travel industry.
So the homeschooling (some call it worldschooling) continued and worked out great. Everyone was and is happy, we’re supporting ourselves and life is good. Why would we stop?
We’re glad you found us and hope we can help you live your dreams and maybe travel more. We’ll help you if we can through this website, sign up to follow, stay in touch. This post has probably left you with unanswered questions, if you use the search function in the top menu, you should find answers. Or ask in the comments!
Related Posts:
If you'd like to hire a car during your stay, use this car rental comparison tool to find the best deal!
We also suggest you take a look at this company to get a quote for all kinds of the more tricky adventure or extended travel insurance.
Try Stayz / VRBO for an alternative way to find rentals on homes/apartments/condos in any country!
Sorry I meant on this blog 🫣 we are very interested in a world travel idea and would like to email you if possible! What is the best email? Or maybe you could email me on JSmith3317@aol.com
Have some ideas and thoughts to chat over with you if you don’t mind?
Regards
Jeff from London
Isn’t my business email appearing under my name in the comments?
@Alyson for World Travel Family,
Hi Alison, I can’t see it anywhere?
It’s on our contact page.
Hi Alyson, are you still on this email?
Which email? Yes, most likely
But a low income mom of 2 couldn’t do this do you think? I’ve been dreaming of travelling since I was little. I would set up chairs in a row and pretend it ass an airplane taking me to faraway lands.
I only have me, and j only make maybe 30 a year.
Thst said my kids live a great life…I know how to save, but I want more for them.
Once I homeschooled for two years and worked full time in the evenings.
.. what are your thoughts. What could I do to make this dream a reality ?
Work out what living at home is costing you, how much you’re spending on rent / mortgage / car / utilities food. Is that amout less than general estinated travel costs of say $50 / day? See where you can cut that back and start saving hard. You obviously need to figure out an online income of some sort to make this permanent. There are plenty of single mums out there, yes.
You mentioned that part of the funding for your ongoing travels came from blog income, especially after savings ran out. What would you say were the key points in your journey to find blogging success? How many posts had you published when you started getting traffic? Was there something you did that really pushed your blog to the next level? Thanks for all the info and ideas about funding a travelling life!
I got traffic from day 1 , but obviously how much traffic is the key. I got to 100,000 monthly page views on the back of Pinterest early on, then lost it again as Pinterest evolved. Now we’re on 300,000 monthly page views and anyone could make a full time living on that sort of volume. The sources of income change and evolve. Advertising, affiliate sales, sponsored posts, paid promotions, people do it differently. It’s best you go to our blogging section, you’ll see a link in the top menu. There are skills you need to aquire, once you have them it’s easy. But it is a lot of work. It’s not to do with numbber of posts. You could make a living with a website with 20 pages, so long as you get everything right. This site has around 700 currently published and because I started knowing nothing it’s far from perfect. Every day I work on updating and fixing early mistakes, so it’s not much to do with publishing more – although the new content is my investment in the future, its about perfecting the site .
Hello Ms. Alyson,
I have lots of questions, since I am willing to travel alike you, but worried since my kid is 3 & half years old and he get sick very often.
And because of it, we have a to cancel many plans on last minute.
how do you home school your kids while traveling?
Do they have to pass any Government or Private school examination at each year end? What about the school certification? How do you take care of health issues during travel?
Hi Mayura, Very briefly, no, in the UK kids are not required to sit exams or certificates. Should they need or want paper qualifications later in life, they can sit exams at any age. Health – we have travel insurance. My husband once had emergency surgery in Thailand, ( here https://worldtravelchef.com/emergency-medical-care-in-thailand/ ) insurance covered it, health care was superb. Home education can be whatever you and your child want it to be, but take a look at this post. ( https://worldtravelfamily.com/homeschool-and-travel/ ). 3 and a half is a bit young I think, they still touch everything, grub about on the floor and put their fingers in their mouths plus pick up every virus going. The viruses normall come from crowded places and planes. My kids were rarely sick really. We’ve seen doctors maybe 5 times in 6 years and nothing serious beyond coughs and colds, flu, once – all 4 of us went down with that but no doctors needed. There was some mild – moderate D & V, again no doctors needed. I always have paracetamol for fevers, and that’s about all we’ve needed. Because of my background in medical science I tend to stay away from doctors as much as possible. There is always a GP or dentist to be found and all that we’ve seen have been good and cheap.
Wow what a fantastic family!
Thank you such for sharing all of your knowledge and inspiration. We live in New Zealand but are discussing extended travelling through the Pacific. I am a real gypsy and struggle to be anywhere ‘stuck’ for long periods of time, but my partner is more of a home body. He has traveler extensively but I don’t think he can see the opportunity or way forward just yet. Did you have any challenges like this with your family?
Thanks so much, Lisa xx
No, Chef and I are a match made in heaven really.
Hi Alyson
How are you able to stay out of Australia for so long as in visas to stay wherever you want for extended periods of time?
I don’t understand why you think we have to be in Australia Joanne? Your country doesn’t control free movement unless you’re very unlucky with where you were born. Visas for most countries are at least a month, some countries, like Vietnam or Mexico, 6 months is very easy and then easy to renew as you choose. We very rarely stay in one country more than a few weeks though because we are travelling not renting a house or whatever. We all also have UK passports, so until ( if) Brexit happens we can spend as much time as we like in Europe. Obviously we spend a lot of time in the UK and use it as a base between travels. It’s very unlikely that we will ever go back to Australia to live. Visas really aren’t hard, most are automatic, on arrival.
Thanks Alyson – helps that u all have UK passports, but doesn’t sound like its too hard to keep on top of.
So inspiring reading your blog. Really gave me the confidence of travel the world with my family. My kids Are now 3 & 5. Would you recommend an age that’s suitable for world travelling with them?
It’s up to you, your comfort levels. I’d wait a little longer because…fingers in mouths, getting sick, naps, unpredictableness around traffic, not the best yet for sitting in restaurants and airports for hours etc. Also if you’re looking for ” educational” they won’t get much out of it. But your call. I think 8-12 is the perfect age, but each child is different. I only have 2 of my own ( and each very different) to base that observation on so it’s not a very scientific survey.
my biggest pitfall … don’t buy stuff … hahaha! I am getting better at buying what I REALLY want. Like ONE good pair of sunglasses, ONE hat, but i haven’t figured out ONE pair of sandals or shoes! BUT I am getting better and cutting down my clothes! My Goal is to go Carry-on Only to Dubai next month! Wish me luck!
Thanks for another great and really helpful post Alyson. It’s also really inspirational for those of us slowly making the move to do similar.
Cheers Andy. You’re sorted, off you go on your adventure, be awesome!
I loooove your site! I am always refering back to it for tips and ideas for planned long term travel with my family! I do wonder (living in the U.S) how homeschooling or worldschooling will impact my childrens future. I have homeschooled in the past but have enrolled my two oldest into high school for that diploma. Diplomas are almost a necessity in the U.S to be considered for anything (college, jobs, etc) I fear that though my kids would learn way more traveling than they would sitting at a desk at school, at the end of the adventures it might actually set them back. Do you have some insight on this fear?
Thanks!
My feeling is that I never want them to have a “job” I’m hoping they have enough get up and go and know how to work for themselves. But if that’s not what they want to do and they want to follow the “normal” path, then they can do the exams or go to university as normal. No problem. I really won’t be pushing them towards that though.
This was so useful! These are all things that we’ve been working on and it’s nice to hear success stories in which they’ve worked. My biggest problem is, in the process of getting ready for long travel, my hubby started a new job that he loves. I have given him a couple years to enjoy it, as long as we keep taking some trips, before we leave and travel indefinitely. In the meantime, we keep putting more in savings and have been exploring our own backyard more. Ibstarted a blog last month and am excited to see where that will lead. Thanks for the great content! I’m so glad I found your blog. I’ll definitely be following it from now on.
Thank you Melinda and good luck!
Hi Alyson,
Just wondering is it hard to get into the field of Virtual assisting. I have two small children and would love to start travelling more with them in the coming years,. I travelled a lot prior to having children and miss it terribly.
As one of my children has special needs I am home with them and the budget is tight already so not alot of room for additional savings. Virtual assisting is something I have thought about previously as I could work from home, (I have an administrative and graphic design background) but I have never actually come across anyone who done it before, so I am intrigued to hear your thoughts. Thanks so much Amanda.
I’ve done a bit @Amanda, but clients have come to me, I’ve never gone out and chased them. I don’t think it’s hard, no, but you’d need to be good at it, have the right skills and some sort of reputation. You’d probably need to approach potential clients and sell yourself. People take courses in VA work and business, I know Nicole at Freedom Junkies has good courses ( tell her I sent you!). Personally I don’t much like it, I prefer to work for myself. Also, you can get an Asian VA at under $5/hour, so you’d really need to be a bit special. The Asians all speak English and seem experienced, I’ve used them, and a Russian guy. I’m always looking for someone physically with me, right here, I find training remotely is a big hassle unless you can just hand a task over and the person is so clued up or better, has more know how than the client, and can just run with it. A new team member who really cares about your business and is skilled and professional would be a dream come true for people like me.
Hello everyone I want to travel whole world as a travel journalists I’m still searching job for it I’m doing study of masters of journalism I love to travel and it’s my last year of study and I want to do job in travel pls help me someone because I don’t wanna do job like 10 to 5 if you have some job work for me so pls mail me
akshayusrethe@gmail.com
My no. +919770063396
Akshay, where are you based? Are you intersted in social media marketing and blogging?
hello! did Akshay get back to you? I’m interested in a remote position, if you have one. I’m in Singapore but I’m moving to Chiang Mai in Feb 2017. I did social media and online marketing (and video production) for a gov organisation here in Singapore for more than 4 years so I can definitely do the job 🙂
I’m in Chiang Mai now and it’s looking likely that we will also be here next year. I do need help, yes, but finding time to organise it……arrrrghhh!
I would love to travel non stop but my biggest concern is how to save for retirement.
Our answer to that is our property investment Itza. Plus, I’m 50 years old, I’ve paid into pensions for many years already. Hopefully the websites will continue to do well too. Good luck!
You are an inspiration! I would really love to travel far & wide – I’m still too far-away budget-wise, but I’ll persevere. This is a wonderful blog.
I found this on Pinterest this morning and I’m currently still sat in bed! I just got back from see a friend in Kefalonia and I’ve got the travel bug again. The place I’d like to travel to is South Korea, I’ve already been there but I’d love to live there for a few years. Your article has really helped me realise that I don’t need to spend all the time and that it can contribute to my goal of moving there. It is possible! 🙂
Well I’m sitting in a caravan in Greece. Hi and good luck!
Another wonderful post! We too have made major life changes to enable us to travel with our kids. It all comes down to priorities. We think about absolutely everything we buy – including food, clothing, nappies etc. We save up and pay cash for anything we need – such as when we bought our car. We budget everything and also meal plan. This does not mean we spend our time sitting around not doing anything, but instead we find fun, free family activities and save for the things we really want to spend our money on – like experiences. I also think you never need as much money for travel as you think you need. It is wonderful and so much fun! We love it.. though we do tend to find places to work for 4-6 months of the year, we make sure it is somewhere we actually want to be, not just for the pay cheque. Our next purchase is a small trailer and truck for when we are working in Canada so we don’t have to pay the expensive rents while we are working. Fantastic blog and great tips to help people! Thanks so much!
Thanks so much!
so informative…thanks for the tips!
I have four children. Ive been thinking about traveling around for a while. How does it work with the system…taking the kids out of school and moving around. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most intellectual person but I adore my family and the thought of world travel educating along the way fills me with excitement. Any advice is much appreciated.
That depends which country you’re from. Which Mrs C?
Didn’t mean to sound rude. I was just curious actually. I would love to do what you’ll do and believe it or not Romania has always been one of my dream places to visit ever since reading Dracula as a kid and then later falling in love with Andreea Raducan at the Sydney Olympics 🙂
Sorry, I’ve had a few idiots commenting lately.
How did you afford to buy a house in Romania for cash without a full-time job and spending what money you have on travel?
We have an almost finished mortgage that we’ve always over-paid on, money in reserve in the bank ( we don’t spend all our money on travel, that would be crazy) plus my husband worked damn hard for a couple of extra months. Easy. Why?
Wow!!! Coming across your blog really made my night. I am a young single mother who has been dreaming of traveling for the longest. My daughter is 6 and I am 26. I have worked hard putting myself through graduate school, securing a good position in my field working for the state, and giving my little one a good life. However, we are miserable in our daily routine and spend a great deal of time talking about what we would be doing if we were elsewhere. I have been putting things in order and preparing for us to make the change and go traveling and I pray it works out. You have definitely given me inspiration and I plan to continue following your journey. Thank you so much.
Good luck Tanisha. I can’t even imagine spending my life in the work/school cycle now. Hope it works out for you.
you guys aren’t that beggar family in Hong kong are you?
Ummm..no. No idea what you mean by that.
Thank you for Brilliant ideas. This blog realy inspired me!!!!
I accidentally found your blog tonight and I’m so glad I did. I am desperate to arrange my life so that I can travel with my 2 children who are 8yrs and 9yrs old, with education and money being 2 of my biggest concerns. You’ve addressed both of these so well, thank you. Best get saving..!! 🙂
Awesome Rachel! Thanks and good luck.
Great read guys you are so lucky to be living the dream
It’s not luck Mark, but yes, we are having a wonderful time living life differently.
I’m always intrigued to hear how other bloggers have made travel their living. I’m working on it right now, and although I have a small following and amount of readers, I hope it will turn into something, but it definitely takes time and that’s something I think people don’t expect. I also think that if you save up enough and cut back on expenses, you’ll go further than you expected. It’s possible, you just have to commit to it if you want it.
It takes time and a lot of Blogging know how Brooke, I’m getting there through trial and error. This world is totally new to me and I’m teaching myself slowly, as we go. Good luck!
Love that you are making this lifestyle work with kids! And people say it isn’t possible… silly them! Keep it up 🙂
Yep, silly them! Thanks Katie.
marvelous article alyson. just writing something financial on the nomadic family and absolutely must include a link to this one. you dun good, girl. super proud of you.
Aww, thanks Gabi!
Well said Alyson
We totally agree……. we have been travelling full time for 3 years. We now spend less than 50% of what we spent at home. Like you we had some savings before we left, that plus a regular income from our renters, allows us to travel sustainably.
One thing you may want to consider is housesitting. Free accommodation in return for caring for a few pets, watering some plants and in house security. Its a win win for all.
Do you mind if we share this on our blog?
Thanks
Hi Yvonne,
We’ve house sat before, we really don’t enjoy it. It’s not travel, it’s sitting still, not what we want to do and you have no contact with other travellers, we enjoy the whole backpacker scene and being in guest houses rather than self catering. I hate cooking and cleaning!
Hi Alyson and fam,
Been following you all for a while, and just wanted to say that your family is in inspiration for my wife and I. Our two girls, 4 &2, are too young to know whats good for them yet haha. I feel like I could read an endless stream of how to save money and make travel work posts. Anyway, I made a very strict decision to get our debt paid off, and on our way to financial independence just this past November. Since then my wife and I have paid off nearly $15,000 in Student loan and credit card debt, and at this pace we are on course to hit net zero, and begin actually saving in approximately 18 months. We’ve started this pay down on a combined income of around 60,000. This is all to say to anyone out there that is holding back bc of debt or bills or whatever that it can be done! And not to divert traffic away from your site, but I don’t think that I’d be in this mind frame right now if I hadn’t stumbled across this guys site: Mr Money Mustache. Reading that site from the beginning totally realigned my way of thinking about spending.
Our long term goal after our debt is paid off is to pay off our house, and then turn it into a rental, and in addition to savings, try to live off of the collected rent from month to month. We’re hoping to approach this scenario by the time our eldest turns 10, so around 6 years. Some think it’s crazy or impossible to look that far ahead, but sometimes you have no choice. I’m tired of giving over a full 1/3 or more of my life to the Man!
Hello! Thank you, I love this comment so much. You can do it if you want it bad enough. Stay focused and enjoy!
This is partly why I’m not focussing on university for my boys. I went when it was free, but these days, is it worth it?
Wow. Good blog! We are a family of 4, from Canada, travelling for a year. (We left after school finished, on July 1, 2014)
It is interesting to read from people of similar mindsets; we stepped out of our ordinary suburban life, corporate jobs and mainstream routines, with admiration from a few, but most questioning the intent of “voyage and escape” and, yes, wondering how we afford it.
We track spending closely – strangely, we rarely tracked our spending at home, but I agree if you are frugal, live simply, plan, a family can live quite comfortably on a reasonably small budget and not feel deprived.
In my experience, most people with a lot of money have no time, and people with a lot of time have no money. The trick is to have both. “Time is money”, so I consider our family, on this kind of ventures, as quite wealthy.
I’m constantly thinking of how our family could afford to do it. When we lived in London it would have been a sinch. Now we’re in Oz, where we’ve added to kids to the mix and the hubby’s salary is much, much less, we wonder how people save at all!
This post has given me a bit of a boost – and I’m not even planning to go travelling long term for a few years yet, but am trying to figure out how I can, eventually 🙂 Can you tell I think about it a little?
That’s a looong way off then, it’s going to be tough, I’m mentally struggling with saving money after only 6 months but the numbers are getting bigger and bigger all the time. Stick with it Tiffany, it’ll be worth it!
I’m catching up on some of your many posts – the money thing is big for us right now too. We’re aiming to have quite a bit saved before I make a job change, and we hit the road.
“Once you start selling stuff you get a big kick out of it, it takes the place of the buzz you get from buying something new.”
This is SO true for me. I am so jazzed when I sell a bunch of stuff. And, I’ve made most of the sales through a local Facebook group which has been a great resource. I even wrote a whole post about it! I love selling something to someone and seeing how delighted they are by the purchase. So gratifying! (even more so than donating the items to a charity, oddly enough…and not because of the money).
This week we’re challenging ourselves to go a week with NO spending. We’re completing day 4 and have done well so far. It’s allowing me to eat through all of the food in our pantry, as you mention. 🙂
We’re in exactly the same boat really aren’t we Tiffany! We’ve been saving now for 6 months and it is starting to get hard, the food is easy, the not buying “stuff” is easy, it’s the not having money to spend on outings and adventures that is hard. I have a terrible case of frugality induced boredom! But, fingers crossed, it will all be worth it in the end. When are you aiming to start travelling? We are hoping to be gone within 6 months.
We’re targeting a “launch” date of January, 2014 (for 4-6 months, at first). This will allow us to sell the house and, presumably, save more money next year and collect any last employment bonuses, if earned, in 2013. We’ll see!
I’ve started learning Esperanto, and found there is a strong international community for Esperanto speakers. It’s possible to stay for free with Esperanto speaking families in over 30 countries, and it’s a fun and cool thing to do anyway. Here’s a link to a good site http://en.lernu.net/
Great blog and thanks for all the info!
What a fantastic idea, we’ve been learning Spanish, I guess the transition would be fairly simple?
Someinteresting budgeting ideas here to help save some money. I find i can save money by going to charity shops to buy clothes when they are needed, so much cheaper it’s unbelievable. Also we never go out to restaurants or buy take aways. I also try to buy reduced items at the supermarket. Today I bought 3 trout fillets for £1.80 and they were beautiful. We had them with some par cooked green and orange vegetables and a bread roll so the whole meal for 2 people must have cost about £3. Pretty good going.