Welcome to Wander Worldschool. It’s trivia time! What northern Minnesota town lies on the southwest shore of a lake of the same name where the Mississippi River originates? Tune in to this month’s listener locations to find out. I’m Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado—and soon Japan. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way.

Today’s end-of-the-month episode includes exciting updates about the project I’ve been diligently working on and listener locations, including our connection to the town from this episode’s opening trivia. We also discuss highlights from this month’s episodes, and our deep dive is all things "How to Rent Out Your House While You Travel." But before we jump in, how has your month been treating you?

I know there is a lot going on in the world right now, and I hope you are safe wherever you are. Give yourself extra time if you’re traveling and know that it’s okay to pivot on your travel plans if you need to. Our family explored the amazing town of Mérida, Spain, which is about two hours north of Seville, and it’s packed with amazing Roman sites, including a giant theater where summer performances still take place.

We also fit in multiple family events and birthday parties, a flamenco fashion show, and a wonderful home-cooked meal of paella at a friend's house. I also finished up the e-book on how to rent out your house while you travel. Fittingly enough, this month I also managed a turnover at one of our long-term rentals and preparations for new mid-term rental guests at our primary home-base home, all from thousands of miles away. My e-book is out today and will help you turn your home into an asset to fund your travels. I’ll share more in today’s deep dive.

Are you based out of San Francisco, California; Abbotsford, British Columbia; or Bemidji, Minnesota? I love looking at the listener locations from this past month. Bemidji, Minnesota, is the city from the opening trivia. Lake Bemidji is the start of the mighty Mississippi River in the United States. It is also where my 15-month-old son, many years ago, ended up in a tiny urgent care because he had a breath-holding spell while at a family reunion.

He went unconscious in my brother's arms suddenly; we were working to resuscitate him with another bystander. He started crying by the time the ambulance arrived, but we still went to the urgent care to check him out. They did just that, said he was fine, gave us a stuffed animal, and sent us on our way with a diagnosis of "fussy baby." Literally, the paper said that. I’m a nurse, and I promise I did not take an ambulance to the hospital just because my baby was fussy. He thankfully never had an episode again, though he still keeps us on our toes to this day, as he is home right now with strep throat as I record this. Thankfully, he’s feeling a lot better.

Shout out to the Apple Podcast listener who left a five-star review stating: "As a family on our first worldschooling adventure, I found this podcast to be a wonderful resource both for inspiration and resources. If you're open to creating some teen or tween-themed episodes, we would love to hear those." I love this feedback. Luckily enough, some episodes next month will feature teen families as well. I love to hear how this show has inspired families. If you find value in these episodes, will you leave a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your shows? Links are in the show notes.

For the monthly episode recaps, listen back to Laurie, Elodie, Anthony, and Jody. If you have not yet, follow on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for reels and shorts that highlight the most important clips. What episode from this month resonated the most with you? Send me a text in the show notes with your feedback, thoughts, and questions.

In episode 41, Laurie Bevan Jackson from the UK shared her gap year travels with their adopted twins and navigating various countries as a two-mom family. You never know if you can take a work sabbatical until you ask. In episode 42, Elodie Ferchaud, the co-founder of Boundless Life and mama of four, recounted the origin story of Boundless Life. I love the many diverse options in the worldschooling and traveling family community, and I can't wait to experience Boundless Life in Japan this fall. In episode 43, Anthony and Jody St. Clair from "The Learners and Makers" continued to fuel my excitement for Japan. With their teen and tween, they transitioned to a life of travel by first renting out their house, then eventually selling and buying a condo in Japan.

If renting out your home is your ticket to more travel, you're in luck. It’s time for a deep dive, which is all things "How to Rent Out Your House While You Travel." This ties perfectly with the release of my info-packed 38-page e-book, out now. More on that in the show notes.

Let's say you're listening to this right now and you have itchy feet. You are dreaming of a family gap year, or a long summer abroad, or a life of open-ended travel. But you also have a very real mortgage or rent payment acting as an anchor in your home base. I encourage you to stop looking at your house as a monthly bill and start looking at it as a travel asset.

I’ve shared in the past, but we have been renting out our home in Denver, Colorado, for a couple of years now. This started back in 2021 when I set up all the systems to take our test trip in the summer of 2022. We did a road trip in Canada for two months while renting out our house on Airbnb. This involved a lot of home preparation, professional photos, getting the listing up and going, and the legal and licensure logistics. But ultimately, we made over $6,000 renting out our US home and spent only $5,000 on lodging in Canada. This takeaway for me was that it actually became cheaper to travel than to stay home. And we had some amazing adventures exploring all sorts of nature and parks in Canada while we had this opportunity.

Since then, we've also rented our house out as a mid-term rental, which is for guests that stay longer than 30 days typically. And I found that does have its own benefits. But either way, it is important to consider that you are swapping your home-based expenses for whatever your lodging and accommodation expenses are as you travel. If you have remote income or savings, your dollar goes further in places like Spain, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

In the book, I explain that before you pack, you really need to run the numbers. Because again, I’m a money nerd. I like to run the numbers. It's really important to know the financial piece of this as well. So in the e-book, we talk about how to calculate what anticipated monthly rent you may receive and then subtract things like your mortgage, taxes, insurance, estimated vacancy, operation costs, and management. With that, you can calculate the cash flow. If that number is negative, know that you will need to budget for that, and you might be subsidizing a little bit of someone staying in your house—though with depreciation on taxes, you may still come out ahead. If your cash flow is positive, you now make extra beyond just what it takes to cover the expenses of your house, and this can go to your travel fund.

But it’s not all sunsets and sun-da-da-da. Remote landlording has its "no" moments. While, yes, I want to sell you this e-book because I think it will be incredibly helpful—and again, I think you have a wonderful travel asset that you can utilize with your home base—I also want to keep it real and tell you our two worst-case situations that happened over the last few years and how we managed them. And ultimately, why we continue to rent our house out because it is such an important asset to our travel plans. But I think if we can start with the worst-case scenario and tell you how we overcame those, this will give you more of a realistic idea of what to expect and know that you can figure everything out. Everything is "figureoutable." That’s one of my favorite things to say when things get difficult, either with the house or traveling.

Our first crazy situation happened actually while we were in Minnesota on that trip where my son had the breath-holding spell. Our Airbnb tenants at that time reported a sewage leak in the basement bathroom. And while we were gone, we had someone come clean that up and take care of it. And we knew we were coming home in just a couple of days. Well, turns out two days later, a spigot in the backyard burst and water was flooding into the basement bathroom—the one that had just had a sewage backup.

Our guests were young and basically sent us a text saying, "Hey, this is happening," and then left the house. So we were able to respond quickly and get someone to turn the main water line off. And then we came home the next day to find the basement flooded with sewage. This meant two months before we moved to Spain, we had to completely gut our basement and take out all the flooring and some of the walls, because sewage is not something you want to keep down there, and rebuild the basement. We did utilize insurance. We were putting in a new toilet three days before we moved to Spain. But ultimately, we have a brand-new basement. We were able to get some of the expenses covered by AirCover through Airbnb. And even though it was a bit stressful, I also realized that we lived and learned through a lot.

I also cover the water monitoring system we have since installed where we can remotely control the main water line. We also have signs all around the house telling people what to do if there is an emergency like this again. And again, all this information, all these lessons learned, are in the book. That's why I put together this guide: so you can move forward with that knowledge on your own and just know that you will figure this out. And it was very helpful that we had a trusted plumber on hand. We had "boots on the ground" that we could call while we were gone. And that is a big part of the e-book as well.

I also want to talk about another less-than-wonderful experience we had with a mid-term rental guest. In the e-book, I talk a lot about how to vet and screen your guests, which you may or may not have extensive ability to do for short-term rentals. But for mid-term rentals, these are ones where the guest stays one to three months or more. You will often work directly with the guests to make sure that they meet your screening criteria and that they’re eligible for renting. And it’s important to have screening criteria that is in line with fair housing laws—that’s super important—but also can protect your asset.

Well, with this CRNA travel nurse and his girlfriend, I did my checks. I did my professional references. It's always important to do your professional verification, meaning confirming that this person has income that can support the rental amount, either by talking to the supervisor directly or getting their work contract. But it's also important to do rental verifications. What is their rental history? Do they have a current landlord? But also more importantly, do they have the landlord before the current one who you can talk to to ask certain questions about how the rental situation went with this potential tenant of yours? And I include questions to ask these past landlords in the e-book.

I did all that with the CRNA and his girlfriend that were going to stay. They had plenty of income. The past landlord, and then even the one before—those landlords said great things about him, how he even helped with their chickens while she was gone. And we had no reason to believe we would have any problems. About two months into their stay, a neighbor of ours—because again, you want to have your neighbors on your side—a neighbor sent us some videos that she recorded of him going crazy in the backyard and kicking the garage. And I reviewed all of our exterior cameras, because again, you should definitely have those and make sure they're discussed in your lease and in your listing.

But I reviewed all the camera footage, and it looked like they had had a fight and she left, which is good. I'm glad that no one was hurt in this process, but he was very upset and kicked the property, caused some damage. And we had to work with them for the next two months to resolve this damage. And even when we got back to the house in the summer, we had to fix some things on our own. Thankfully, because we had proof from our neighbors and they knew that they had messed up, they did take responsibility. They were able to pay for much of the damage, and we also retained the deposit for some additional damages and also paid for some new furniture.

But to this day, one of our kitchen cabinets was broken. And even though they actually tried to purchase a replacement one, it was a different color. And so my husband over the summer was sanding it down and matching it to different paint. And so I will say, actually, of all of this, this is the most annoying because every time I open that kitchen cabinet, I know that this is a replacement kitchen cabinet. But I will say at the end of the day, practicing non-attachment to "stuff" is a big part of this. It is a house that I love; it is a place that we have wonderful family memories, but it's also a place that is full of just stuff. Almost all of it can be replaced. We are all together as a family, and that's what's most important.

So from these stories, I want to tell you that you might have difficult situations as well, but you will get it figured out. I can be there to support you through this process. There are a lot of great resources; I learned a lot through Facebook groups and meeting with local rental and landlord agency groups in the Denver area. So I hope the takeaway from this is that you do not need to be a real estate tycoon. You do not need to be a property manager extraordinaire. You just need to build a system and have a healthy respect for the numbers and practice non-attachment to the stuff of your house and know that it is not all bad. We have also met wonderful tenants and guests that took great care of our property, people that we have kept in touch with.

And I really want to also speak highly about the positive aspects of this. Again, ultimately, this income has covered the expenses at that house and sometimes even above that, which has allowed us to travel more. So at the end of the day, you need to connect to the "why." Why am I making this decision? What benefits does my family get from this?

Let's briefly talk about the "rent versus sell" framework. You may be wondering, "Okay, should I rent out my house or should I just sell it?" And in the e-book, I run through some questions to ask so that you can figure out which path you want to take. Ultimately, you might want to keep and rent it out if you love the house, you have a low mortgage and low expenses, and you plan to return to this area and this house—or you know that your travel will be a defined duration of less than a year.

Conversely, you may choose to sell if you have high mortgage costs, high equity that you want to unlock—and make sure you're aware of those capital gains exclusions where you get to keep that if you have lived in it. You may want to sell if you have zero desire to return to this house or this location. There are lots of things to consider if you sell, and it probably will take you longer to prepare before your travels. Talk to a reputable real estate agent in your area to help figure out what that might look like and a CPA for the tax portion of that.

Again, there's no right or wrong answer when it comes to selling or renting. Know that you can make the next right decision based on information you have today. And just like our last guest, they rented out for a while, they eventually did sell, and that opened up the opportunity to buy a condo in Japan. So as your travel evolves, you may make a different choice than you're making right now. But I'll say renting your house out does offer you the chance to recoup some of those home-based expenses much quicker than selling and get out the door quicker while also deciding if this is the lifestyle that you want to take on for a longer period of time.

So let's talk about the e-book. Like I've mentioned, I have over four years of trial and error and meticulous tracking, and I put all of this information into an in-depth 38-page roadmap for you. It also includes a checklist for cleaning for the Airbnb and the person who does turnovers, also the welcome document for people coming as mid-term tenants. Tons of information. You get eight modules that cover everything from smart locks and owner's closets to tax depreciation. Again, I'm going to caveat: I am not a CPA. I am not your financial advisor. And so it is important to still work closely with the legal and city ordinances and the logistical aspects for your specific area.

Module One covers the financial and emotional game plans for deciding whether to rent or sell. Module Two goes through the physical preparation, including decluttering, setting up owner's and cleaner's closets, and the smart tech setup you need to run this property remotely. Also, Module Three covers the legal and administrative compliance, such as permits, HOA rules, and insurance. Number Four is marketing strategies, including the most important, which is getting professional photos and using different platforms such as Airbnb, VRBO, and Furnished Finder. There are other platforms, but these are going to be the ones that you will get most of your bookings on, so it's good to start with these.

Module Five is all about remote management, building your local team, and creating digital and printed welcome books. Module Six covers troubleshooting for a wide variety of situations that may pop up. And it may not be every situation, but it gives you a way to start thinking about the systems you need to handle anything that comes your way. Module Seven is all about tracking expenses and preparing for taxes. Module Eight is tenant screening and welcoming guests so that you can hit the road.

And for a limited time, I want you to take action. So if you purchase the e-book, you get a free 30-minute one-on-one video call with me to map out your specific situation. Get your e-book in the show notes, and I can't wait to meet with you.

In closing, I want you to remember that this is an opportunity to stop subsidizing your empty house and use that house as an asset that helps you get on the road and financially afford more travel. So tell me, have you ever considered renting out your home while you travel, or have you done it already? What are some of your lessons learned? Do you have any wonderful stories or some of those challenging moments that you've had to work through? Share your feedback with me in the "Send Us a Text" link in the show notes or by email. And as a reminder, please use the link in the show notes to support the show. Until next time, go out and get the e-book, stay curious, and keep exploring.