Hola and hello, I'm Suzy and welcome to the Wander World School and Slow Family Travel podcast, where we discuss the stories, logistics and finances of long-term traveling families and the multitude of ways to learn and educate along the way. This end of the month episode is our chance to look back on the fabulous episodes from this month by pulling out my favorite quotes and the best logistical and financial tips our guests shared. It was a great joy to chat with Danielle, Travis and Erin. So please go back and catch these episodes if you haven't yet. 

And then we'll move into our deep dive into one specific aspect of long-term or slow travel or moving abroad. This is your actionable advice and resources to make your family travel journey even easier and more fun. Today's topic is all things financial planning for long-term, slow travel and gap years. 

Before we jump in, how has your September been treating you? We have had a whirlwind month. We camped and welcomed an exchange student from Brazil, which was short notice, but also has been a great experience to get to know her and more about Brazil. She was so excited when we found a Brazilian grocery store to stock up on some of her culinary favorites. Then the grandma stepped in to help out while Mark and I zipped over to a fabulous winery wedding in Germany. This whole trip was on points and was super relaxing because we stayed at a sauna hotel, which also meant sharing space with lots of naked old people. Gotta love German spas. I then went the other direction to FinCon in Portland, Oregon to get lots of inspiration and ideas to grow my business helping traveling families financially plan for their travels, something that we're actually going to deep dive into more today. I met lots of wonderful money nerds from all different backgrounds and niches. We then celebrated my father-in-law's big birthday with our wonderful extended family and I worked in Florida for a week. So it was exhausting. While I do love to travel, see new things and meet awesome people, I am reminded why I really value slow travel and it's so much more enjoyable to take our time. I'm excited to slow down a bit now. We have some more birthdays this week and our Denver World Schoolers Picnic and October virtual meetup coming up soon too. This episode is coming out on my dad's birthday. So happy birthday to you, dad. 

Our podcast host stats show lots of new listeners recently, so welcome. The locations are not always correct. but in the last month, we have reached listeners in Suwon, South Korea, which is South of Seoul, Ząbki in central Poland, Inkster, Michigan in the US, and Ospitaletto, Italy. How cool is that? If you are the listener in any of these locations, will you click the send us a text link at the top of the show notes? Tell me your name and who's in your family. I'd love to give you a shout out on a future show. Speaking of, if you have any feedback on any episodes, questions for future episodes, or just wanna drop me a hello from wherever you are in the world, you too can send me a text via the link in the show notes, or an email at podd at suzymay.com for longer questions and notes. I'd love to feature your questions, travel stories, favorite hub experiences, et cetera. So please send me your contributions and feedback. 

Okay, let's get started with our recap of episodes 16, 17, and 18. Danielle VanderHuy in episode 16, shared her family's four-year journey as nomads, which recently transitioned to full-time boat life. This is with her husband and six-year-old. A simple sunset tour and a cheap boat led to a deep love of sailing. They now use this as a way to explore around Panama. She explains her family's financial strategies, which involve living cheaply, selling their home, and working online, as well as their educational focus, such as entrepreneurship. Danielle's experiences have inspired her to create the Water is Life Hub, aiming to teach families sustainable marine life, sailing, and health. Her tips and tricks for boat life include starting small with an inexpensive boat, being prepared for unexpected challenges such as when things break, which they definitely will on a sailing boat, doing your research on the costs of boat ownership, as those can vary significantly based on the location of the boat and your dock preferences. She also recommends starting out with a charter boat experience. to see if it's a good fit for you and your family. And there's lots of community options like sailing groups, Kids for Sail was one of those. Her memorable quotes about their sailing adventures include, The ocean is, it can be rough. We always say with other sailors, there's always a list. Like there's, it's a never ending list. Always something to do, but it's the prioritizing what is important and what's not important and. what's going to come in the time where you need it to. And then sometimes you might just put it off because I'm not going to worry about that till later. Thank you, Danielle. In episode 17, Dr. Travis Perry, a father of eight, spoke about how a trip to Denmark and his youth sparked a love for travel. The financial and logistical details of a five week trip to Costa Rica for a large family like his compared to that family road trip they took in the U.S. This highlights the added considerations that large families may need to take. But basically it is definitely possible to slow travel even as a large family. The bonus is built in friendships for all the kids. He also highlighted the immense value of exposing their children to different cultures and memorable experiences like climbing trees for coconuts. His financial advice centered around aligning spending with values and prioritizing parent only trips to strengthen your partnership. Families can also embrace travel as education, the whole ethos of world schooling, as well as encouraging families to be resourceful. Utilizing your resources can look like asking other traveling families for advice, seeking support from friends, family, or vetted nanny services so that you can get away on that parent-only time, as well as how large families may often pursue trips with different kid combinations, such as just the older kids instead of also with the younger kids. This can allow for more independence for those older kids particularly. Memorable quotes that Dr. Travis Perry shared include, You just have to decide where your values are. I believe balance is actually not doing everything at the same time. It is focusing on your highest priorities in life and what you really value. That's how you feel psychological balance. The truth of the matter is when you're doing the things that are really most important to you, you will feel fulfilled. You will feel balanced. Thank you, Travis, for your highlights. Check out his episode, Show Notes, for more information about the couple's retreat he's running to Costa Rica next February. And last but not least, in episode 18, Erin Riska explains how her family turned layoffs into five years of slow travel across Europe and Mexico with her husband, two sons, and two cats. They have mastered the logistics of international travel with pets. Erin describes their evolving approach to education, which combines both structured curriculum for core subjects like math, and a more unschooling style for other topics like history and culture. She also details her career pivot from a corporate human resources professional to a self-employed one, which helps fund their travels. This journey has inspired her to create RoamBase, a community-based world-schooling hub specifically for families with tweens to provide them with a stable peer group and an immersive cultural experience. The resources and tips that she shared include being open to places you might not always think you'll love as those spaces might just end up being your favorite ones. In addition to avoiding crowds to save money, traveling during the off season and staying in inexpensive locations for longer can actually increase the affordability. Lastly, it's all about community. Their 11-week tween hub, which gives the kids a lot of time together, is taking place right now in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. So check out RoamBase and all of Erin's resources in her show notes. The quote that she shared that sticks out to me is, when our cats, it's been very straightforward. It adds expense for sure. It adds paperwork. We have to be incredibly mindful of which airlines allow pets in the cabin, which airlines do not, what countries require when entering, exiting and that sort of thing. So there's just more research to do. But at this point, we've been doing it long enough. We know. what the deal is. And we long ago just got our heads right with the fact that it does make things more expensive, but it's the price that we pay to have gone ahead and started living this lifestyle now rather than like delaying this dream until some point in the future when we don't have pets. Thank you, Danielle, Travis and Erin for opening up your hearts to our Wander community so we can all learn and be inspired by the many different yet beautiful paths we're all wandering. 

I'm introducing a new segment where I feature one world school opportunity or resource that I found useful recently. The one I'm sharing today is all about Substack. There are many different newsletters on there. It's a really convenient way to get your posts out into the world and connect with other writers. And it extends through multiple different niches and topics, but world schooling specifically shows up in many of them, including the one that I publish that features all of these episodes as well as more deep dives. So. Go ahead and subscribe to mine in the show notes. Also, there is The Flow Journey by Connie Peter, Nomad Transformations, also World's Fooling Quest by Jess Marsh and Rebel Parent by Amy Ruth Curtis and The Dwight Matters, which is all about the World Towners family. They have been traveling for over 10 years and I really hope to connect with them someday on this podcast, but there are lots of other wonderful families. So if you have a favorite sub stack that you follow, from someone in the world's schooling community, go ahead and share that with me on Instagram at suzimay.wander. 

Okay, now for this month's deep dive. All about financial planning for long-term, slow travel, gap years, basically anything beyond your typical one to two week vacation. So especially fresh off of FinCon, this is that conference I went to for Money Nerds, I am excited to share more about the framework that I've been developing. over the last three years of longer-term travel that our family has endeavored upon. As you've heard in many family stories, the pandemic reverberated throughout the economy, healthcare, and education system in ways that I hope to never experience again, but it also created opportunity. While many were working remotely and slow-traveling even before 2020, for others, the chance to earn money, lower expenses, and see the world on their own terms really expanded over the last five years. The number of families in the world schooling Facebook groups is growing daily. One of them I last checked has over 73,000 people. And the ways to plan, prepare, and fund those travels are as unique as every family. We are gonna start to break it down today, but know that there is more to come on this topic. So let's start with a broad overview of funding long-term travel. There are a few options here. You could work remotely, receive income from real estate. save up sufficient funds to cover the duration of your expected travels, or achieve a level of financial independence so you can sell your invested assets to cover those expenses. Money, many will actually do a combination of a lot of these options. And remote work is often associated with the digital nomad lifestyle. This is where a family earns income while traveling. This can include salaries from a remote-first organization, freelance contracts, or entrepreneurial ventures. Some people already have these roles and others actually create these opportunities either before or even during their travels. Conversely, those who achieve FIRE, which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early, they operate a little differently. This is where a family has accumulated substantial portfolio of assets from which they draw down a predetermined amount to cover their living expenses, allowing them to travel without the need for active income. It can take a longer preparation time to achieve this, Same with living off of rental income. These options for financial planning may take years to fully put into place. And maybe you have that time or maybe you don't, which is going to play a role in your situation as well. Saving up a travel fund can also take a while, depending on your income and expenses, but it's often a viable option for families who want to get started traveling sooner. They can also use that fund as a runway to start their own online businesses. Overall though, From a lot of my conversations on the road and for this show, for many families, the nomadic journey is not a retirement from work completely. One or both parents often do continue to generate income. They leverage remote work to build savings and investments while simultaneously exploring the world. The income funds the day to day and the assets that they have already accumulated can act as a crucial safety net during either periods of non-work or unexpected financial downturns or just those big. costly emergencies that can come up too. Regardless of what your family chooses, having a financial plan is a necessity. A nomadic lifestyle introduces unique complexities that are not always present in a stationary one. Yes, some things might be easier, but some may be trickier. For example, have you ever delved deep into international tax laws, rules around managing assets across borders, worried about health and travel insurance? Have you ever wondered what it even costs to choose this lifestyle? These are all the things that we will dive into. And not to be a downer, but if things don't go right or how you envision them, the dream of long-term travel can quickly change. It can become a situation where there's financial instability or legal complications. And I don't want that for you. So let's come up with a blueprint for you and your family to help you plan, prepare, and manage your finances. letting you truly have a journey that is secure, sustainable, and fun for the whole family. We run through this more in depth than a coaching call, and soon we're gonna have some group coaching options to work through this together with other traveling families. Some of the more in-depth and personal parts of this journey actually start with looking back at your own money story as well. What are the money scripts that we learned growing up and over our adult years? How often do those money mindsets continue to shape our thinking as parents? How does that influence how we talk and deal with money with our kids? Stay tuned for more options to explore this together. But for today's step-by-step Wander Financial Framework, we start with step one. This is where we dream. This is the fun part. We chat with our partner and kids and whoever else we may want to see or involve with our travels, and we figure out a rough idea of where we want to go and for how long. Part of this is including our family goals. Do we have a major bucket list, location or activities we wanna go to? Some families center this around a monumental physical achievement, like a big hike or a certain hub that they want to attend. What are your priorities? What spending habits? Are you okay living behind? Make sure you write all this down and this probably won't happen over just one conversation. But over time, I want you to work on developing your why. What is my why? Write that down and work on it. I want you to spend time answering this question, especially include your family. Always keep your why front and center in this planning process. Because when things go awry, either planning for your trip or on your travels, which they will, inevitably there will be some challenges. You will want to come back to your why for family travel. For us, our short version why is language acquisition. Fully immersing our kids in a trilingual school something that's actually not even possible in our home base, this continues to be our why for now. So these goals will help us with step two, which is creating a realistic travel budget. What feelings though come up for you when I say budget for many? That word can feel restricting depending on our money origin story. Let's practice shifting that to viewing finances from a place of abundance where money is a tool to accomplish our greater purpose in life. That means not just restricting yourself, but instead being intentional about focusing on your values. Budgeting is just putting expected numbers to expense categories, like accommodations, transportation, food, activities, education, travel, bills, and personal expenses. When you get to this step, jump back to my deep dive episode on websites to research for the cost of living in locations around the world. That's episode six. and budget-friendly accommodation tips in episode 15. Future deep dives will cover other categories like transportation and how to save on flights and other ways to get around. Always add a 10 to 15 % buffer onto your expected budget to account for unplanned things that will inevitably happen while traveling long-term. But beyond the numbers, the budgeting process is an important part of mental preparedness too. It provides your family with a clear understanding of your financial situation and the inherent financial boundaries within which you can travel. And don't forget to include children in this too. Maybe they have certain needs or desires or wishes or things they want to do or places they like to stay or health considerations. When we're talking about timeline, it's important to decide how soon you want to travel as well as the duration of your travels. If you want to get out the door ASAP, that is gonna be a different consideration than if you know that you want to travel during a certain school year for your kids, and maybe that's a couple years down the line. And then for the duration, often people might start with a semester or a gap year. And so how long do you have to travel can play a role when it comes to saving up and expenses while traveling, as well as education. So that timeline piece is important, but also know that there is going to be fluidity to this. things may change. So once you have a clear budget and timeline, step three is to look at your current financial situation. What do you have in liquid savings, like a checking or savings account? Ideally, this is parked in a high yield savings account, especially if you're in the US. So your money can earn interest. You should have three to six months of expenses in a high yield savings account at a minimum, but many people are going to want more, especially if their future income will be less. as you're saving more money to cover your gap year or your long-term travels, if one or both parents aren't working or you wanna have that cushion, this is a great place to start building up your savings. What long-term investments do you have? Maybe through a prior or current employer or through individual retirement accounts, you've already started saving for retirement. This sounds boring, right? Retirement is years down the line and I wanna travel sooner than that. And that is okay. It is okay to plan for today and living the rich life we want to have while also making sure that future you is going to be very happy with those moves that you've made today. So in this step, we look more closely at your progress towards financial independence. Financial independence is where you have enough assets and passive income to cover your expenses without needing to rely on an active job or traditional employment for money. This freedom means choosing to work or allowing you to pursue other passions, one of them, which might be world schooling with your family. We do this by, in general, calculating your financial independence number, which is roughly 25 times your annual expenses that you predict you will need in retirement. But still, there are many levels to financial independence. My favorite for couples before they are parents is aiming for full financial independence. This means saving and investing as much as possible. But if you're listening with kids already, as part of your family, you may choose to opt for CoastFI, like us, which is where we have now invested enough that we should be able to retire at traditional retirement age. And thus we can choose more flexibility now. Like I'm working less, I'm not working when we're in Spain, starting our own businesses, moving abroad, et cetera. Maybe you opt for financial independence retire often, FIRO is what I like to call, and it is featured in a book I'm reading right now by Jillian Johnsrud called Retire Often. This is when you take many, retirements or sabbaticals or career breaks or gap years, whatever you want to call them, you take many of these throughout your working years for various reasons. Also, it's important to ask yourself what short or medium term investments do you have? So not just the stuff you're saving away for future retirement, but things like savings in a taxable brokerage or plans to sell your primary home or a rental home. Getting a solid picture of your current overall financial situation is very important before we move on to step four. So in step four, we are now gonna switch and look at the income side of the equation. I want you to list out all of your current sources of income, which are often in three categories, earned income, passive income and portfolio income or investment income. So earn income are things like making money through a job, commissions, tips, gig or freelance work or other side hustles or profits from a busy you own or manage. One such example of a side hustle that we are loving right now is dog sitting at our house through Rover. We just had the sweetest dog with us for a week and made almost $300 doing it. And this sweet dog will be back next month as well. In general though, this category of income requires you to put time into it. Then we have passive income, requires less ongoing effort after the initial setup. This includes rental properties, royalties, digital products, affiliate marketing, or limited partnerships, which is where you invest in a company, but you don't actively manage it. I can tell you, we do have rentals when we rent our house out. It is not 100 % passive, but it does offer flexibility. Lastly, income can be through investments on your portfolio. This typically is more passive, meaning you don't have to do as much for it. This includes dividends paid by a company to its shareholders, interest that you earn on lending your money, such as through that high-yield savings account, and capital gains, which is what you make from selling an investment, like a stock or a property, for more than what you paid for it. We could spend forever on this category, so more to come on this in the future. But let's move on to step number five. This is where we create your financial plan. We look at income, we look at savings, we look at your expected travel budget, and we see if you have enough saved up or expected to come in to cover your travels. If not, what is the gap and what plan can we set in place to help you achieve your goals? This is so individual to each person and family unit. For many, this plan gives them motivation. For others, This plan can cause overwhelm. So it's important to realize how you're feeling about this step, especially, and always connecting back to your why. This is so important. Why are you doing all this? And lean on your community, like myself, others in this one or community, or just other people you have in your life that are supporting you and your dreams. In this step, we also discuss what to do with some of the assets you already have. Do you have a plan to sell or rent out your home if you own one? If you rent, when does your lease end and what are you going to do with your items? How can you save on housing in the meantime? Do you have a car and what will you do with it? Before we left on our first year, we sold both of our cars. It was awesome. Now we do keep one car in our home base. It is eight years old. It's creeping up to a hundred K miles, but it works for us to keep our expenses low. Do you have an RV that you will travel in or that you can rent out? These housing and car decisions are not just financial, but also emotional. They may signify your connections to a place and the decision to maintain that connection or not. Lots to consider. Moving on to step six, we are gonna put that plan into place. Do you need to save up some more? How can you increase your travel fund savings? Does that involve things like meal planning, cutting out restaurant trips, canceling unused subscriptions, also negotiating bills? I call every year to get my wifi bill lower. So also choosing generic brands, shopping at thrift stores, and networking with your local buy nothing groups, you can get and give things for free. Often this can feel restricting, but if you connect back to the why and you have that travel coming up that inspires you, it makes it little easier to cut back and make sure you're saving more. But also at the end of the day, don't exhaust all your efforts to only save just a few dollars. Possibly those hours are better spent increasing your income. Side hustles can generate extra income. I met Nick Loper of the Side Hustle Show, the podcast at FinCon, and he literally has thousands of episodes on successful side hustles. Or focusing on improving your value at your remote company or in your own business can increase your income meaningfully as well. Ultimately, determine your why, creating a travel dream plan and goals, a starter travel budget can help identify those priorities, and embracing the trade-offs to save more money and thus accelerate your savings timeline. Considerations sprinkled throughout steps five and six are safeguarding your family through proper travel insurance and other legal considerations like wills and legal trusts. Also, navigating the global financial system can feel really daunting and overwhelming at first, like how are you going to get money and pay for things while traveling? Many banks in the US require a US address now, and what if you do plan to go fully nomadic? Thankfully, there are increasing options, such as using platforms like WISE, which we use, or Revolut, to manage money across borders. And many US and international credit cards offer 0 % foreign transaction fees, which is absolutely essential. Other banks like Schwab or USA have accounts with no ATM fees. Also for mail, you might wanna have an address that you can receive mail at. Ours is through Traveling Mailbox. and they scan in mail and so we can basically receive mail from wherever we are. Tax prep is another big one to plan for. If you're from the US, you'll be obligated to file every year, regardless of residency. Do you prepare your own taxes or do you pay a certified public accountant? Are they prepared for you to go global? What about the tax obligations of any countries that you travel through? For many countries, you actually are not. a tax resident until you've resided there for 183 or more days in a calendar year, but other countries may have shorter timelines that you will want to plan for. But for this overview, we're not going to deep dive into each of those topics quite yet. Instead, I've laid out this step-by-step framework for financially preparing for your long-term or slow travel or gap year or whatever travel plans you're dreaming of that don't fit into a neat box. The dream of long-term family travel is an achievable one. But as you can see in our conversation today, it requires a level of financial, legal, and logistical preparedness that extends far beyond planning for typical vacation. Think of the nomadic lifestyle, whether powered by remote work or financial independence, as a marathon, not a sprint. The journey itself becomes an immersive lesson in dynamic management, which just means being ready to pivot often. And this can encourage a family to confront and solve tricky problems in real time, often ones that you can't always even anticipate. By embracing these steps and adapting them to you and your unique situation, your family can transform this daunting complexity of nomadic life into a source of confidence and that foundation for a truly heartfelt and enriching family experience. 

So on that note, thank you for listening through this journey with me. What are your thoughts? What did I miss or what can I expand on in future episodes? What financial considerations have you explored that I didn't cover today? I would love to hear more from you. Also if you do decide to sign up for Trusted House Hitters, Home Exchange or Rover or any of the links in the show notes, That does help support the show. Make sure to send us a text And until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.