I might not answer super personal questions, but feel free to ask.
We travelled Aus full time for 2.5 years and are now travelling Europe, before heading to the US in November.
I have a lot of travel hints and tips to share, but it's better if people ask the questions for me to answer.
Haha. It's different to normal travel, but unless you are 5, no.
You only take 5 yr olds in your van? 🤨
No I think OP means on a hotness scale.
My wife says I act like a 5 yo, am I eligible ?
different to normal travel,
ELI5.
How do you fund your travels?
Probably our most asked question. A combination of a small disability payment and business income from my business (photography) and my wife's business, being " travel influencers". (YT channel, website, socials, affiliate sales from products we use.)
Saying that, travelling internationally is pretty expensive even when you do it cheapish like we do. We are going backwards into our savings slowly at the moment.
Are you making superannuation contributions or are you just living for the moment?
We have enough investments etc to not need to add to Super. Definitely could be a concern for others though.
Generally people doing this lifestyle will have 1 partner working full time/part time remotely.
Thanks for the info. Isn't there a limit to how long you can receive a disability payment (assuming Centrelink) for when you're overseas?
We don't receive any Centrelink payments.
It actually saves the gov money, as we don't receive Family Tax benefit or anything.
On a government disability pension alone you could not afford to travel. It's only a bit more than the dole. Plus if you a genuinely disable you would have a lot more health related expenditures compared to an able bodied individual. The gap fee to see a specialist just once is around $125.
@RefusdClassification: My sister in law gets ~65-70k which increases with inflation for life from a back injury being in the military. She is in her early 20 and it definitely doesn’t seem to slow her down…
@I like freestuff: What do you mean by doesn’t slow her? She’s exaggerating her injury and leeching tax payers for life?
@RefusdClassification: By government disability pension I assume you mean the disability support pension. If so, then that pays the exact same as the age pension. You definitely could afford to travel on DSP provided you were getting smashed every night. Also, "genuinely" disabled, at least for DSP, doesn't have any relation to medication. While I am sure there are people who have large medical expenses, I know there are an equal number if not more that have minimal to no medical expenses and are on DSP.
Only Fans
Only Vans
People asked, you answered and they don't like your answer so they downvote you. People are weird. Anyway congrats on living the life that a lot of people can only dream of.
What is the plan when you run out of savings? Or will you stop when you reach a certain level?
Cheers.
Yeah we will stop before then obviously.
The other thing we are going to try is HouseSitting to reduce costs.
What are you running from or towards?
Good thought. We broke the mould and took off 3 years ago to Caravan Australia. Neither of us could imagine moving back to a house in the burbs, although I was ready for a change after about 2 years in the Van.
The compromise was a trip internationally, spurred by a good deal I found on Ozbargain for Vietnam Air. We flew Melbourne to Frankfurt with them with a 3 week layover in Vietnam for $520 each one way.
How old are you and your family members that travel together? Are your family members school aged kids and if so what are the schooling arrangements?
Mid 30's and a 5 year old.
Informal homeschooling as my wife is a qualified Primary Teacher. Will move to formal as soon as legally required (6)
Haha you and your wife worked out the best reason to be a qualified teacher!
Yes!
What type of schooling are you looking into whilst travelling? What are the options?
Also, how is your child socialising with peers their own age? Do they miss kindy / child care?
H Hansi, I've answered this in other answers I think.
Who educates the kids and which countries curriculum /syllabus do you follow?
My wife is a teacher, and we follow Australian Curriculum, informally.
Reading Eggs is the best App ever made for travelling kids and is worth the subscription ten times over. (And that's a teacher's opinion.)
What age would you/your wife recommend starting reading eggs?
Reading eggs can start at 2ish from my memory. I'm sure they have a guide on their site.
@insane: Thanks - mine is close to 4 but other teacher friends have said to hold off for a bit so just looking for some more specific wisdom. Some people have told us they’re better off learning in context.
@morse: 4 is definitely a time to start it. It's a very very well researched program and we found it slingshotted our childs development as soon as she started regularly using it.
@morse: I have 4 kids and all of them started Reading Eggs around 3 or 4. It's a great program but you'll need to be there to help with it, especially early on. You'll probably have to have them repeat lessons as well until they get the hang of it.
@morse: Yeah 4 is fine - last year our eldest started using it through school and the 4yo wanted to do same, so setup our own account. The "Reading Eggs" part of Reading Eggs was difficult for them, but they loved the Mathseeds portion and were quite good with it. And even if it was difficult, it was setting them up ahead of the crowd!
@morse start with teaching SATPIN
Isn't too much screen time bad?
we do 1 x 15 minute block each of Reading Eggs/Fast Phonics/Mathseeds a day. So 45 Mins all up.
An hour of supervised learning programs in the iPad is probably much more beneficial than an hour of some commercial TV show.
From memory the UN guidelines are no screen time from 0-2yo, then 1 hour max from 2-5yo.
Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/no-screen-time-ba…
@Oneguyinmelb: kids these days are doing way more than that
but if screen time includes tv/pc oh boy kids of old did it far worse
What’s your YouTube channel handle? Always looking for new full time travellers to follow - any recommendations on other YouTubers who inspired you?
Let me guess op, your videos have your kid with the shocked face with their hands on the side of their checks (eg; the Mackauley Culkin Home Alone shaving look)?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyd8G-xqE37wlQOklKqfdg
Learning Brave had some good content but never took off on Youtube unfortunately.
Lockie and Ash are down to earth Aussies Motorhoming in Europe - Again not successful unfortunately.
WorldTowning are a larger channel who Motorhomed Europe with their 2 teenagers for 3 years, then moved to a boat. They are great for showing how kids higher education can work while travelling. (Kids now attending US university)
How much do you make from a channel with that many subscribers?
@Chandler: I'm not going into details, but yes affiliate sales are good.
We are lucky and with a lot of work we have grown a strong Aussie viewerbase who trust our honest opinions on things, and occasionally make purchases based on our advice.
Username checks out
How much baggage do you have?
.
How much baggage do you have?
Sounds like just a wife and a 5 year old…. :)
Haha. We tried to do just carryon, because it is cheaper and easier to get in and out of accommodation, but in the end we needed a suitcase. Now we are at 1 suitcase each adult plus a backpack each.
When travelling within a country with a hire car we also have a few bags of shopping with us when we move.
The suitcases do massively increase flight costs though on cheap carriers - $120 becomes $480 with 2 suitcases.
How long do you stay in a location? Isn't it mentally exhausting having to move and locate all your needs at the next place?
Sometimes, but also not if that makes sense. It gives you constant new challenges and stimulation.
WE sometimes travel fast (1-2 night stays) but we don't like that too much. We try to do more 1 week stays because it's cheaper through AirBNB usually (1 week discounts).
We have a few 1 month stays coming up next year which should be interesting, they get cheaper again when you stay for that long.
What is your family’s thoughts on the increasing Russian mercenary presence in Mail in place of UN peacekeeping forces?
I always thought it was the Czech that was in the Mail
Sorry autocroatia
Umm, Yes.
Are you the food blogger like mark wiens?
no
Im waiting for the day he says something he put in his mouth tasted like shit.
Maybe he's done it already? I haven't watched him since 2016.
I would say 50% of what youtubers put in their mouth tastes terrible but they have long mastered how to put on a surprised face for the camera and say how good it is.
eaten so spicy that his tastebuds are burnt off now thats why.
Do you have a place to call home/base, or are you fully on the road with everything you have?
Also, do you plan on doing this forever, or have plans in the future to return to "normal" living?
We have a storage unit in Australia with stuff we packed up from our house 3+ years ago. It's a bad financial decision to have that as an ongoing cost, but it just kind of happened.
We have plans to return to normal living, we are missing having a house a bit, and we think for kids education we will try normal school in a year or two for a period of time.
We kind of look at each other and don't really know what we would DO all day in a house with our kid in school.
What do you do all day in the van with the kid not in school?
Exploring! Daily routines and then exploring time.
Do you enjoy it ?
I travel for a job and find it meh. After a while, I stop caring about culture.
All i want is to find a bike and ride around in the day time then drink at night time.
Yes we definitely do.
Slow travel changes things, having a week in each location gives you a down day every second day where you only do small things, and a good experience day every few days.
Did you win lotto to have this lifestyle?
best country to visit?
Not sure yet! Every country is different and has different experiences to offer.
We really enjoyed France for a combo of cheap cost of living, culture, experiences and excellent bakeries (Boulangeries) on every corner.
Australia is the best country to long term explore so far, because you can do it so cheaply with a caravan.
How do you manage allocating time to social and intellectual development for your kid? Can't imagine being it easy to allow a kid to have time to explore on their own outside of a stable environment.
Given what's going on ,on the planet, (climate change,conflict OVERPOPULATION and all that it brings) OPs timing is pretty good.
Whether the planet will be livable in a another decade is almost settled the way we are not only ignoring the issue, but denying it.
Humans (especially the west) are more interested in Barbie dolls and pink shit
This is actually really easy. Intellectually our child is a solid 1.5 years ahead of peers, mostly because they get 1 on 1 tutoring time every day and self paced learning, combined with continual exposure to new cultures, experiences, history, nature, geography etc etc. (Like visiting the Natural History Museum in London for example.)
Socially it can be a challenge getting time with their Peers. We make time to head to a playground at least every other day, although in non english countries it can be a communication challenge for our child.
We are also exploring World Schooling Hubs, there are people who organise these for others to attend for a 1 - 3 month period.
how do you deal with child specific issues like weird eating habits in non-western countries? I.e. i cant see my young kid eating a lot of asian foods at that age. It could be a pain trying to feed him.
How much does family travel/health insurance cost for this kind of living?
Whats the best places you have traveled with kids?
if you could go back and do it all over again, what is the top 3 things you would do differently?
whats the hairiest moment you've experience whilst traveling with your kid?
I’m not OP but there’s some version of fried chicken, rice, noodles, bread, potatoes almost everywhere in the world. My kid is medium fussy/not fussy and this really doesn’t concern me re travel.
Great Questions!
They just eat it or they starve basically. We make some concessions sometimes, but our rule is our daughter has to try everything at least once (a proper try) and if she really doesn't like it, she doesn't have to finish it, and one of us will swap with her or something. Sometimes in Vietnam we just got her a bowl of plain rice because she didn't feel like anything else, but normally she will just eat anything now.
Great question, we are still running on CC insurance from Australia, but I've recently explored options and the best/cheapest I could find was SafetyWing which is about $1500/year for 2 Adults and 2 kids. I'll have a referral code for them soon heh.
Germany was excellent, there are lots and lots of families, and one of our best experiences was bumping into a family on a train, who spoke German and English, and our daughter chatter with their daughter, and they ended up inviting us out for the day to their house. We had a BBQ and they showed us their town and their nature based play Kindergarten. It was a really great day.
Not have anything in storage. It costs a small fortune ($520/month) for a single garage size storage unit. That's about it. We have recently applied for TrustedHouse Sitters, so we will hopefully be doing some house sitting to reduce our accommodation costs.
I almost got into a fight a few weeks ago in the UK, I desperately needed to do a wee while we were driving/travelling, saw a small pull off and went and did my business in a bush. Came back to a guy frothing at the mouth about it being his bush I wee'd on. If I was not a tall/big guy I think he would have taken a swing as he was absolutely ropeable even after I apologized. Luckily our daughter was in the car and didn't really know what was going on.
Wow, that's a lot to pay for storage. After about a year and a half of travel we were passing back through Melbourne so spent a couple of days going through our storage and got rid of half of it. We still pay around $160 a month, but even now it doesn't feel worth it.
Someone once said to me, you don't own your possessions! Your possessions own you - Very true
Yeah OP might benefit a lot from moving his stuff to a cheaper location, maybe in a more rural area, next time he's in Oz.
Could halve that amount, easy, I reckon.
@GandalfTheCheap: We thought about it last time, we rang and got quotes and there was nowhere within 300km that was any cheaper, in fact most said they had waitlists for storage units. We wanted to sell the lot but it's just too much work in the space of time we had unfortunately.
Q1> Hunger is a wonderful motive, especially when combined with appropriate parenting.
Also it would be pretty ordinary (though in no way surprising) to traverse countries /regions where food provision is a struggle for many households, while little Jimmy whines about wholesome local food.
We do see it a fair bit on Facebook travel groups etc, especially from Americans who have "neuro diverse" children, and they side with the kid to the point of even taking their own yoghurt from the US in a fridge bag when they travel to Central America….
Surprised the kid doesn't eat bullets. Staple US diet
What's the matter with you?
In January we finished 2 years of caravanning around Australia with our 4 kids. We're still in the van, just working for the year while we decide our next move. We are thinking about doing a big overseas trip as well, but we worry it will be too costly. Roughly how much has it cost you per person per day to travel around Europe and what kind of accommodation have you been using?
We are sitting at about $300/day with everything included, but that's with 1 child. (That's including flights etc)
The slower you travel the cheaper it is, especially in regards to splitting flight costs over time, weekly Airbnb is cheaper, but monthly is cheaper again.
We haven't done many low cost of living countries either, they can make a massive difference (UK in particular has been horrifically expensive for everything compared to France, and Spain Portugal Italy and eastern Europe are cheaper again)
We are doing a month in a low cost country for every month in a high cost country to try and balance it out, I estimate we can get as low as $220/day in Romania/Croatia/Slovenia.
Skyscanner is also great for car hire, can get some great deals, we are paying $40/day in the UK for a car at the moment. Car hire will definitely be cheaper than trains for your kids.
Also, Frankfurt is by far the cheapest place to hire a car for western Europe and one of the cheapest places to fly into.
Thanks for that. How doable do you think it is buying a motorhome or caravan over there and travelling around in that?
Sort of is sort of isnt. Purchasing, registration and insurance are very difficult. As for the travel aspect, yes it's very doable but there isn't anything like the free camping in Australia so you have to like camping with other people at Ayres or caravan parks or campgrounds. Also a lot of rain and the vehicles are of generally poor quality so if buying second hand there's a high chance of water damage that you need to have checked out.
When we ran all the numbers, for a year it was cheaper to do a hire car and week long Airbnbs than buy and sell a motorhome.
How much have you spent annually compared to how much you've made?
We are slowly eating into savings.
do you feel behind not owning or paying off a mortage for when you retire/old?
Nope, we are lucky to have significant investments. We will never own in Sydney or Melbourne, but that's fine.
Why are you on OzBargain? Getting all the deals shipped to your lock up storage?
Habit haha.
I luv travelling but not full time, my only question, can your family adopt me?