Slow Travel, Traveling on a budget with family & what you actually save money on while traveling fulltime with kids. This article covers all of our traveling on a budget tips!
Following on from our previous Sky Surfers Family Blog Post – How we were able to travel fulltime for 1 year with our kids
We are here to now share with you, how we managed to make our ‘Family Gap Year’ actually last a year! I’m not going to lie, before we left for this trip around the world we joked about having to come home after a few months because we’d ran out of money or it was just going to be way to expensive for us and was not going to work or last the distance! But we quickly learnt a few things a long the way that did in fact see us Traveling for one year and visiting 21 Countries with our children.
How can you SAVE money while traveling? – First of all, you don’t actually realise but what you usually spend in a year towards things like; kids after school activities, private schooling, things you need around the house, cleaning products for your home or car, petrol/fuel/gas for your car, impulse buys, online shopping or even birthday parties for example, you SAVE on while traveling because it’s not needed or you’re not doing it! That same money can go towards your travels. Mind blowing right?
Slow Travel – So what is slow travel? Slow Travel to us was staying in the same Country for at least 3 weeks. This meant still moving around and visiting different cities etc but really embracing the Country and the Culture. This means you are not booking flights or trains every few days and constantly going from Country to Country. Not only is that exhausting with kids but you are also not having to worry about Visa requirements, Phone Networks, missing out on seeing other cities within the same country or even just the effort of the huge, tiring and expensive travel days with kids in tow.
SAVING on Slow Travel, Accommodation & Food – The main benefit of slow travel is most Airbnb’s, Hotels and Resorts offer discounts on stays longer than 7 nights. You can book accommodation with a kitchen which means you can do your own cooking and obviously then save big time on having to eat out or get takeaway. Another benefit of this type of accommodation is you can settle in a little, if the long term goal is to travel fulltime with your kids you are going to need somewhere comfortable for those downtime days. If you also plan on home schooling or doing distance education/online learning while traveling fulltime then that will take time away from sightseeing or doing tours etc so you will need to factor that in.
Traveling & Distance Education/Home Schooling
Budgeting Tips for traveling fulltime with a family? Our number one is Car Rental. We drove in almost every country, all you need is an international drivers license to be able to do this. This enabled us to get everywhere we wanted to without relying on tour companies. We were also then able to Road Trip a Country and not have to pay for internal flights. Yes, that meant a lot of driving but we got to see so much more of the Country this way and interact with so many locals. This was honestly one of the best parts about Road Triping! Just make sure you have loads of snacks and entertainment for your kids! We found the roads to all be in great conditions and my hubby’s tip was ‘just do as the locals do’ when driving 🙂
We recommend Auto Europe to compare car rental prices and select the best car hire deal first!
This doesn’t mean to say we never caught public transport or used Uber or Grab etc we just used car hire for the days we were moving from city to city or when we were staying in places where we had a lot of sigtseeing to do and places to visit that would have ended up costing a lot more had we have needed to book through a tour company. So do your research based on where you want to go.
Having a car also meant that we could stay out of the ‘touristy’ areas and book accommodation that was cheaper because we were a little further out. This again ended up being another highlight because we found ourselves at a lot of Airbnb’s in local neigbourhoods. Our kids absolutely loved this because they could play with the local kids and we really got to immerse ourselves into the culture. This was the best part and really let us see and embrace a country.
This may not be ideal for everyone but it made our fulltime traveling around the glob sustainable.
How much is car hire in South East Asia or Europe? Most car hire was reasonably afforable, Europe and South East Asia had us averaging $30 AUD per day for a car. The fees were a little more if you were to pick up and then drop off in a different location but we still found that cheaper than those long distance trips in an Uber and Taxi! Our most expensive Car Hire was Japan, but even then, it worked out cheaper for us to drive from Tokyo to the Snow Monkeys and from Tokyo to Mount Fuji rather than take the train.
eSIM – Have you ever received a huge roaming bill after a trip abroad? Have you ever lost phone service or connectivity while traveling – and found yourself desperately searching for free Wi-Fi? Have you wasted time anxiously looking for a SIM vendor at the airport? We experienced all of these things, this is why we use Airalo. Simply download and instal your digital data pack, depending on where you are in the world and you are good to go. This saved us so much time, effort and money when we arrived into a new country. We got off the plane and immediately had Internet! See more info here – Airalo ESIM
So in conclusion, try to live as similar as you would at home in your day to day life as you would if you were travelling fulltime or even just traveling on a budget.
Feeling inspired or up for a savings challenge? We’ve got you covered with Our viral – FREE 12 week savings challenge for your dream trip!! We guarentee you, you’ll be booking your next family holiday in no time if you follow our simple saving tips!
Don’t forget to follow along on our journey via our Instagram @sky_surfers_
