Why we don’t compromise when travelling
I recently had a lovely email from a couple asking how we travel the way that we do and saying that they were considering selling their house to travel the world as their kids had left home.
We obviously are in the same situation as empty nesters and maybe falling into that more mature bracket. Maturity really being a subjective point ?
This is my response on how we do it – our way.
Don’t Sell
Contents
In our opinion,
• Don’t sell the house if you don’t need to.
• Otherwise, downsize so that you have a base in a place that you are comfortable and familiar with. Downsizing will also give you extra money for your travels. Getting back into the property market is never easy, and property is a massive thing to have on your side both financially and mentally. We have recently done this and hard as it was to leave our home it was the right move at this stage.
Have a read of this, The Benefits of Downsizing your Home – When You Need To
Financing our travels
We have always, always, always allocated our money to the despair of our banks, into various accounts. This comes directly out of our pays or other money. We have accounts for housekeeping, utilities, domestic holidays and big holidays and a savings one for the rainy day stuff. Money is put into each and used solely for that purpose. We don’t touch it otherwise. It grows dramatically. We looked at where we were paying out dead money and stopped that.
I did go to the banks when they were having a nervous breakdown about how many accounts we had opened and explained that unless money were allocated before I saw it, I would not be a good bank customer. They then cut all of the fees on all of the accounts because they thought I was so pathetic.
Travelling Requires Organising:
• There are ways to travel that are both inexpensive and non compromising . We could let someone do it all for us and settle for something that is not exactly what we want. But we don’t compromise and therefore we do it ourselves.
• We don’t backpack, as we are not into that now.
• What we do however is to organise our own travels so that we get what we want.
• This is remarkably inexpensive if you do your homework
• We are currently in Japan and then off to Austria, Switzerland with a few days in Milan and a few days in Bangkok. For the 6 weeks, with airfares this will come in under $10,000. Airfare being ridiculously expensive from Australia.
• To put this into perspective, we generally ski in Australia for 2 weeks each year. Before we left home we got our confirmation for this. $8,000 for 2 weeks, no lift passes etc. Much as we love it and the people there, it has become absurd. Lift passes themselves are very expensive on top of this. Yes we do stay on snow and there are cheaper ways to do it. But for basically the same price we are getting nearly 6 weeks in Japan, Europe and Thailand. Go figure!
• We are off the England and France generic cialis 5mg online later in the year so that money will go there.
The key to travelling at will is to do a few things:
• Research, research, research
• Ask questions – of friends or of any social media outlet or travel forum. Travel twitter chat rooms are a source of not just invaluable information but they are also great fun. Use travel advice sites with some caution but they are a great tool also.
• Use travel agents to get some information and then do it yourself. I rang an airline once for prices of a flight and the girl and I got into a conversation about stuff. She told me straight out ‘don’t buy from us’ get it online it will be cheaper. In the main we do it online but do use an agent if the flight is complicated as this current trip is.
• The airfares are really a big financial concern and there are other travel sites that handle this better than us in giving advice on using frequent flyer points etc. We are learning from them too.
• The next big cost is accommodation. As you have read from our twitter handle and from our bio we mix it up totally. We are currently sleeping on tatami mats in a testosterone-ridden lodge in a remarkable farming village with some seriously good culture not to mention that it is a ski resort. The cost is seriously cheap coming in at about $50 a night for 2 with breakfast and lift passes and some very diverse, albeit smelly, company. The food in the village is also very reasonable priced and an upcoming post shows what we ate for 800 yen at lunchtime.
• As I said previously we mix it up. We are off to a castle that is not cheap but we did go for the half board, as we knew that Kitzbuhel is expensive to eat out. This includes our breakfast and a 7-course dinner by an award winning chef. I am thinking of changing one of our lines from “fit, financial and free” to “fat, financial and free”.
• From there we will go fairly reasonable priced and are utlilising airbnb for a few places as well as a couple of specials on booking.com.
• Utilise any of the myriad of tools that are available to you.
• We are now organizing some train trips to get us to and from places and working out the most effective way to do this. Again asking questions has reduced some prices by more than half.
• Don’t stop at one site, double check all information. Yes it is time consuming but what else can you do on a long haul flight or instead of doing chores or something else that you don’t really want to do. Research is fun as you can learn a lot.
Embrace the unexpected because “It’s all about serendipity“
At the end of the day we just enjoy travelling our way. We don’t squander our money but nor do we compromise. We enjoy writing about our travels and sharing what we know as seasoned and mature (sic) travellers.
What a great read, thanks for being so honest and sharing this! Not only did I enjoy reading your words but I enjoyed your photos of the monkeys! Are they from the monkey park in Nagano?? I want to swim with them!!
I will give you the link to the information about the snow monkeys of Japan https://contentedtraveller.com/the-snow-monkeys-of-japan/
We have a very similar travel philosophy. We put away travel money on a monthly basis straight from our paycheck so we don’t have to think about where the money will come from for our next trip, then we research research research until we find our perfect, uncompromising trip with all the things we want to do. It always works out and yet we still get to come “home”, too, which is comforting.
We are totally in sync, and I do advocate this as a way to ‘have it all’.
Hey! Cool post but the coolest is the box where you link to the different sections. Is that a plugin or comes with the theme? Thanks!
It is a plugin, called Table of Contents. We have been deciding whether we like it or not but think that it actually works well.
“fat, financial and free” haha that made me laugh so hard. I actually eat watermelon only when I am home and then eat out and et like crazy when I travel so I am constantly putting on two kilos, taking them off on watermelon only. Jokes aside, I agree with everything you said. Living in SG is expensive. I have a base cost of almost 2k just on rent and utilities, and I share with 3 people. My friends back home in Spain live an entire family for this amount. I always believed that you don’t need a fortune to travel and saved a lot to be able to live off the rent. I have a flat on Airbnb and this is bringing some nice revenue. I don’t have the courage to leave it all behind but I reckon I could travel permanently and spend less than living in Singapore. Lovely to read the honesty of how others do it, thanks Paula!
Thanks Mar. We love having our home base even if Australia is not the cheapest of countries. The trouble with this job is that when all bets are off re food, there is hardly an opportunity to go watermelon, but when we return in 2 months, it will be a big diet for us both.
We’re looking at long-time traveling but don’t want to sell the house. Instead we are going to see if we can rent it out. It will be nice to have a home to return to. It’s our home and I wouldn’t want to miss it!
I agree, either make some revenue from your home, or downsize and at least have a home base.
While not empty nesters, it sounds like we are quite similar in many other aspects! We decided to keep our house (and rent it out). We love knowing we can come back at anytime.
Financing trips can be the hardest part, which is why we travel hack almost all of our flights and hotels.
I think that is a great alternative. I often wonder whether we should do this when we are away for extended periods.
Nice article! I’m also a “mature” slow traveler and agree that planning and research are so important. We spent a long time trying to figure out how to make this lifestyle work for us. Finding ways to invest our money to give us multiple streams of income including passive income has been a part of the way we’ve been able to make this happen. And I also agree that doing the research can save you tons on airfare and accommodations. Anything is possible!
I agree, particularly with accommodation where you can get exactly what you want with some research. I still think that people should use all of the available resources to make their travels as easy, and as cost efficient as possible.
Great article, full of handy advice. I always think you can get so much more for your money without going through an agent (they do have a time and a place though!)
I still think, and we still use agents from time to time. I believe that travel agents have really picked up their game, and can offer some great international airfares. We have been told by agents to book domestic flights ourselves, that they can’t beat what we find. We still choose our own accommodation, and do trip details ourselves.
It’s actually an art to travel slowly and for longer – we’re not initially used to it because the holiday before was 2 weeks in a place cramming it all in and making the most of the time you have regardless of expense.
Travelling slowly in Asia has taught us many life lessons for budgeting – the most important is keeping a spread sheet of all expenses so you see where it all goes and if you need to compensate and by how much when you over spend.
I thin there is a case for both types of travel depending on the circumstances. Cramming it all in because that is the time you have, or the art of slow travel, where time is not critical but spending is. You practice of keeping a spreadsheet is an excellent idea to sustain this long and slow and very rewarding travel.
Thanks for being so transparent here. I love it when bloggers reveal HOW they fuel their adventured. People don’t seem to realise that we PRIORITISE to travel!
Thank you, I call it how it is for us.
What an informative post! There were so many points on here that I agreed completely with you on and even more that I’d not yet considered! So thanks so much for confining my previous ideas and giving me some new great ones 🙂
Thanks Dana
Nice post Paula! Wow, Australia expensive. Canada quite similar in that we don’t have the kind of budget airlines available in Europe – but not as expensive as Australia I don’t think.
Financing – I always believe in not putting all your eggs in one basket. In our case, we rented out our Montreal condo (to some great young professionals who always pay on time). The condo about half of our savings and real estate always a safe bet; won’t really depreciate where we are and the rent is risk-free and provides cash flow. Agree with you, don’t sell real estate if you don’t have to; chances are (depending on your market) that you won’t find a better place to park your money. On the other hand, if its just sitting there unrented it is basically an investment with no return.
The balance of our money in mutual funds which is always up and down but which over time produces a nice return.
I wish there were more resources for slow travelers now that we are in this category. We’ve been mostly renting on Airbnb but find that prices inflated over local markets. I guess its normal if you’re renting 1-2 months at a time. Maybe we’ll have to find a place to make home a little longer!
Frank (bbqboy)
We do believe like you that having a ‘home’ is important and you do have the ideal situation where it is producing income yet it is still all yours. Interesting point about slow travel and accommodation. Will ponder this for a bit. Take care
Hey Paula,
Great to meet you in nozawa, excellent article. I will be learning a lot from the way you travel. Super inspiring!
Cheers Sylvia
Great meeting you both as well. Take care and hope we see one another again 🙂 Paula