Ever dreamt of packing up and leaving it all behind? Here’s some of our top tips for things to consider before setting off.
Background
If, like us, you’ve always had wanderlust in your veins, then starting a family doesn’t change any of that. We’ve always been determined to continue with our travels, bringing our children along with us. Being able to show them more of the world has brought about so many amazing experiences for us to share.
Having taken a gap year pre-children, as well as long summer holidays since, we are no strangers to planning adventures and extended periods of travel. We have rarely ever taken a ‘package holiday’. I think we’ve only ever once stayed in an all-inclusive, when visiting The Gambia many years ago. We found that (unsurprisingly) it wasn’t really our thing. Fortunately, we did befriend a local who took us on some crazy adventures around all the local haunts and reggae bars – but that’s another story for another day!
Judging by all of our previous fantastic experiences, it always seemed inevitable that one day we would want to take our kids with us on a full-time travel adventure all of our own, as a family. Prior to the lock-down stopping us in our tracks, we had spent much of the last year with our 3 small children, travelling around Europe and Morocco full-time in our beloved classic Hymer motorhome, from 1991.
Coming from the UK, we are perhaps writing with more of a European point of view. For a better North American perspective, check out some of these questions and answers for full-time RV living.
It’s not just us doing it either. To read more experiences from other long term travellers who are living in the same way, take a look at these other top tips for taking an extended trip with your family, or these alternative tips for living in a motorhome.
Of course there will also be people with the budget to be able to travel in style. If that’s you, consider the cost to rent a private jet.
So, whatever your plans, here are some of our main points to consider before embarking on a full-time travel lifestyle of your own:
Financing
It may sound obvious, but undoubtedly the most important thing to think about before embarking on a year of travel, is to make sure you’ll have enough money to allow you to travel in the way you plan. I personally think it’s better to only travel for a shorter period of time if it means you can afford to have all the experiences you want along the way, rather than having longer and not seeing or doing anything. There seems little point to me in travelling for hundreds of miles to just sit for weeks on a campsite. For us, travel is always about going to new places and experiencing all that any area has to offer. As much as we can, anyway. Noone can get everything right!
However you plan to finance your trip, be it savings (check out this neat 30 day money saving challenge that could help with this), working remotely, renting your house back home etc., be sure that everything is solid and in place before you set off. Think about it, you wouldn’t want to go all the way to Morocco, for example, and then have to miss out on something like a trip into the desert on camels, just because your finances wouldn’t allow it.
We don’t actually tend to properly budget each day as we go (too lazy more than anything), but I think it’s a great idea if you know you are going to be very limited on funds. Plan ahead the places you want to visit and what you want to do there. For our current trip, we had a broad idea of how much individual countries were likely to cost us and then planned a vague route around the places that we wanted to go and where we would likely be able to afford to stay. Many years ago, when travelling we used to plan more. We even went as far as to have an epic spreadsheet for our honeymoon that had everything in it that we planned to do. That was only for 5 weeks though. It’s totally impossible to do it for a year. After all, you never know what’s going to happen!!
So, how is it possible to travel full-time??
This is the question that all ‘wanderlusters’ want answering. Some people who love to travel will try to plan a career that will enable them to do so. Choosing modern, digital jobs that enable you to work from anywhere can be a good place to start. Even in remote places there are some great options now for satellite internet for rv. Many also choose jobs with flexible working patterns, often with the chance to work extra hours for a period of time in order to save up extended holidays to use later. Or, like us, some have jobs which allow a sabbatical.
Personally, I’m a secondary school teacher, meaning extended summer holidays for me anyway. This has helped enable our previous summer mini-adventures. I also have several friends who have used their teaching qualifications to get themselves jobs around the world. Science teachers (that includes me) are always in high demand, so there’s always good job security wherever in the world you choose to go.
Lots of people choose to save money to travel. This can be achieved by cutting out as many unnecessary materialistic objects as possible and instead trying to live a more minimal life. Other than important things like children’s car seats, once away on your travels it’s amazing how quickly it becomes apparent that you really don’t need all that stuff you have back at home anyway. You see what’s really important in life. We want our children to value these experiences over possessions too. To see what we decided that we did need to take along with us, see our ultimate essential packing list for van living.
Another option is to try and invest to allow any saved money to provide you with an income while travelling. We have been lucky enough to have been able to invest some inheritance money into rental properties, allowing us some financial security while we’re away (also a fair few headaches too!). These things take time to set up, so a good degree of planning and organisation is required here as well.
Many travellers dream of writing a blog or running a Youtube channel that can provide them with a regular income. There is no doubt that some people are achieving this dream very successfully. I can say from experience though, that building a blog (and then trying to grow interest in it) is actually really quite time consuming and definitely not straightforward. For every one person who is making good money, there are countless others fighting at the bottom to try and join them. We’ve only quite recently started work in earnest on our blog, as the forced restrictions on movement due to Covid-19 have given us more time than usual. Anyone with multiple small children will know that time is precious! Previously, while on the road, we wanted to spend as long as possible on family time and adventures (the whole reason for full-time travel in the first place), not endless writing. Don’t get me wrong, our blog is growing and I love that we have a space to share and record our adventures, but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s paying any bills!
Where to go??
So this will be dictated by the amount of money you have to finance your trip, along with what you have on your bucket list.
For us, we’d already had a gap year after university in Southeast Asia. We then spent our extended honeymoon in South America. We’d always talked about road-tripping around Europe someday when we had a family, so for us, the decision was easy.
Your chosen destination will also depend on how old your children are, and the method by which you want to travel. We had a motorhome already and we knew that with three small children it would be perfect for us to be able to take everything we needed with us. Having said that, we’re hoping to be able to travel in Central America next year with what will, by then, be four small children (with a new baby due this week!!). So, for that we will be doing things completely differently and backpacking, or ‘flashpacking’, as is the new term. We will probably have a mixture of suitcases and backpacks, but always with the aim of travelling light!
Asia is further away, but living is much cheaper when you get there, so provides a great lower-cost option, packed full of so much to see and do.
Make use of all the great travel blogs out there to research your destinations. You can save any worthwhile ones you find in a well-organised Pinterest account. This is also a great resource for packing list ideas. If you’re anything like us, then the more we see of the world, the more it makes us want to travel – so our bucket list just keeps on growing!
What to do with your house and possessions??
As already mentioned, one appeal of travel for lots of people is to be able to shed some attachment to material things and live a more minimal lifestyle. With this in mind, lots of people choose to sell their possessions. For some, this includes their house. This can help to fund their trip. We chose to keep our house and rent it out. We just about cover our mortgage and house costs by doing this. We also chose to rent the house minus one bedroom that we kept to store all our personal belongings, loaded up to the ceiling and locked away. We wanted to have a place to return to, without the stress of having to find somewhere new and set up home again on our return.
One upside for us of having another child on the way, is that the upcoming maternity leave means we can extend our year away into two. We know we won’t be travelling forever though, so it was important for us to keep our house as an investment.
What about children’s education??
This was undoubtedly the question asked the most by our parents about their grandchildren, despite the fact that a) I’m a teacher, and b) they are still mostly too young (only our eldest, Savannah, should have just started school in September).
In the U.K. we are fortunate to be entitled to opt for home education of our children. This needn’t be as hard as it sounds. Remember, some studies have shown that most children only actively engage in around 50 min a day at school. It is easy enough to keep pace with those levels of formal learning. I understand the importance of the role school plays, along with all the other social development that it brings, but also feel that a short break from it is also fine, providing it is replaced by adequate home-schooling. Learning can occur anywhere. If approached sensibly, school shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a barrier to travel. To share some of my experiences of school on the road with others during lock-down, I put together some resources for home-schooling, as well as my 5 best educational apps.
In Summary
With or without a family, you shouldn’t allow any perceived barriers to keep you from full-time travel. Suitable solutions can usually be found for most problems, by using a good dose of creative thinking. There really should be nothing that holds you back from your wanderlust. I think anyone who sits around making excuses all day for why they can’t go, just doesn’t really want it enough! If you feel inspired to travel, then you should do it. If you’re worried about your kids, don’t be. They’ll have a blast! I reckon if the last few months have taught us anything, it is that we should never take for granted and should make full use of our privilege to be able to travel freely.
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I enjoyed reading this and you are so right about budgeting and planning ahead. We travel for 13 weeks a year as a family of 5 and maximise every school holiday. We use the school holidays as an escape from our busy schedules, we work full-time and our children are in full-time education too. These tips are so helpful for us if we ever decide to go full-time.
This is absolutely amazing – what a goal! Your children are going to have awesome memories and learn so many life lessons throughout your travels. So exciting!
This is so interesting to see from a different perspective. I really want to travel full time and make it a career, however I don’t have any children even though I’m 42 already. It’s just my husband and I, plus 4 little dogs. I guess they are our children. HAHA And we definitely can’t travel much with them unless we haul them around in an RV.
Dogs or kids, an RV is a great way to travel. Sadly, I’m sure you’ll have longer journeys between places over in North America though, than we have here in Europe.
This is a really helpful and inspiring article. I’m a full-time traveler myself and my partner wants to start a family. I’ve had such a fear of having children because (while I want them)…I don’t want to completely change my traveling lifestyle! I actually bookmarked this and might come back to it from time to time. Thanks so much for sharing your insight!
Having kids will obviously change your life in some ways but it needn’t change everything. They’re surprisingly adaptable and enjoy all the new experiences that a life of travel brings. Good luck!
Love this! Saving these tips for when I travel with me future family 🙂
Thanks for sharing your experiences and recommendations, it was a very interesting read!
I looove this idea of doing this if we ever are lucky enough to have kids. It sounds like you guys made some smart investments to allow you do have epic experiences with your children. Are they growing up to love travel as much as their parents obviously do? 🙂
If I can’t travel long term, i’d at least like to have mini adventures with children. I always see hikers with babies out here in Canada. I hope i’ll be like that one day!
Yeah they do seem to like the travelling life too. They still miss their friends back home sometimes though. Definitely keep doing the same things when you have kids though – they’re surprisingly adaptable – the worst thing you can do is sit around at home with them the whole time – it sends them crazy!
This is such a great blog post to encourage and advise us on how we can transition to making travelling our full-time job! Can’t wait to put these tips into practice 🙂