Sourced From: https://modernwahm.com/how-to-travel-full-time/
Do you ever wake up and forget where you are for a moment? That happens to me often because I’m always waking up in new places!
Hey, I’m Megan, and my family of six has been travelling full-time for the past two years. We work remotely, homeschool (or “road school”) our kids, and explore a new city every month!
Nope, we’re not “travel influencers”, and we sure aren’t rich. But we discovered how any regular family can afford to travel full-time, and today I’m sharing our secrets with you!
How regular families can afford to travel full time
Let’s back up. Two years ago, my husband and I reached our breaking point. He was working full-time, I was working part-time and taking care of our four children. We were both involved with numerous side projects and our kids had their activities as well. Our calendar was absolutely ridiculous — there wasn’t a single day without something significant on the schedule.
In theory, we had filled our lives with commitments and projects that we loved, but in reality, we were terribly depressed.
We dreamed of travelling the world but thought it was something we’d have to save for our retirement years — or if we suddenly won the lottery (which would have been surprising, considering we didn’t play the lottery…)
But at the end of a particularly challenging month, we decided we’d had enough. Originally we thought maybe we’d move across the country, but then we thought — why not take our time getting there?
It was a tough decision to sell our house, take our kids out of school, and for my husband to quit his job. But when the van was packed with our kids and our luggage, and we were about to step out of our house for the final time, I turned to my husband with tears in my eyes and said, “Everything that’s important is in that van.”
We drove off and haven’t regretted our decision one little bit.
Almost two years later, we’ve travelled all over the States and have plans to head to Europe next. Our family is closer than ever. We still work and do school and have lots of fun activities and adventures, but now everything is on our terms. We’re not bogged down with commitments that we resent, and we are having the time of our lives!
We’ve gone clamming and whale watching in Washington state, seen a sea turtle returned to the ocean off the shore of Texas, eaten a beignet in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and hiked part of the Appalachian Trail in West Virginia.
We’ve navigated the subway system in New York City, stood one mile above sea level in Denver, and walked among redwood trees in California.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’m guessing you are also a work-from-home mom, so you might just be perfectly positioned to give this full-time travel lifestyle a try!
So how do we afford it?
- We sold our house
Once we no longer had a mortgage and all the bills that come with owning or renting a home (HOA, water, electric, internet, etc), we could use those funds to pay for housing on the road! We usually stay in Airbnbs although we stay in hotels if we are going to be in a location for just a few nights.
We usually spend four weeks in each location we visit, because we’ve found that a lot of Airbnb owners heavily discount their prices when you stay the whole month. They don’t have to worry about getting their place booked or cleaning between guests.
Plus, spending a longer period of time in each place means that we get to really live like locals and fully experience that destination.
- We work!
Shocking, I know, but yes we have to have jobs! We just happen to have online, remote jobs that allow us to work from anywhere. So while we do feel like we’re on permanent vacation, most days we do our daily routine of getting up, working, homeschooling, doing chores, and other “normal” things. In the evenings and on the weekends, we get to explore our location!
We don’t plan to live this lifestyle forever — but we sure are enjoying it for now!
Like I said, anyone can do this!
I’ve just launched a course where I’m sharing absolutely everything we’ve learned over the past two years of traveling full-time with our family. If this sounds like an absolute dream to you, I invite you to check it out! Learn more here: Family Gap Year Guide Course.
The course is bursting with information, along with videos, checklists, and lots of resources. It covers everything you need to do to live out your travel dreams, including:
- How to budget for and afford full-time family travel
- Finding remote work opportunities
- How to handle the little details like what to do with your mail
- Decluttering your stuff, commitments, and relationships to design your dream life
- How to plan your trip: where to go, where to stay, and how to get there
- Living daily life on the road
- Finding hidden gems and experiencing the best each location has to offer
- EVERYTHING you need to know about how to homeschool on the road
- Plus some really fun bonuses!
And I want to share a coupon code for ModernWAHM readers to get 20% off! Just use code ‘MODERN20’ at checkout!
I hope to see you in the course! I love to talk about all things travel, especially full-time family travel, so feel free to ask me any questions you have. I want to see you living your best life, so I’ll leave you with just this one question…
Where do you want to go?
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