After my mum died 6 months before my step-dad was due to retire, kyboshing his plans for them so spend a lot of their time travelling, my wife and I have decided, at 42, that we should do the trip we've always wanted to while we're physically able to enjoy it. We're v lucky - renting, in jobs we are both bored in and no debt, with a bit of an inheritance coming this year which will basically be a deposit on a house when we've finished our 12 months. This means we can budget out of our savings, and we intend to work for some of the trip. We'll also have no roots, which is scary, but a terrific opportunity as we could potentially end up anywhere at the end of it
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I've spent a long time thinking of all the potential things we're going to need to budget for and going with the $1k a week general concensus we're going to be able to hit the road on 1 March next year.
A few of the things that we need to budget for that aren't obvious daily expenses, but we still need to have $ in the bank to pay are:
Storage of our possessions for 12 months;
Insurances - house contents (in storage), camper trailer, car, income protection, private medical insurance;
Normal servicing and rego of the car & trailer;
Use of a post redirection service;
Slush fund for repairs.
We want to be very comfortable on the trip and we've written down and priced every possible thing we can think of that we need to buy to prepare for the trip - right down to the porta potty. (Of course that won't be everything but it's better than taking a potshot at the cost - we were surprised at how much we have to get!!)
Funny enough everybody we've mentioned it to has said it's a brilliant idea. We reckon 90% of them don't think we'll do it.
We can't wait until the day we wave goodbye to them out of the car window
