How Can You Afford This
Money, Money, Money,,,Aha-ahaaa
How We (Barely) Afford This
(Posted Sept 2011)
Funds are getting low — anyone in the market for a slightly used kidney? Every £60 we spend is one less day on the road. This month alone, we’ve “saved” ourselves 25 days… by losing them. No job = no income = spending money that isn’t replaced = the trip quietly eroding under our feet. Time to get moving, shall we?
(Posted 31/07/2011)
I’ve been trying to plug the holes other travel blogs leave. I’ve read them for years, planned this for about two, and I still find the same unanswered question: how do you actually afford this? It’s not just the upfront cost of upping sticks and leaving the UK. There’s pensions, tax, savings, whether you’ll have a job when you crawl back, and a dozen other fun administrative goblins I’ve probably not met yet.
So how can we afford it? I’ve had some decent jobs over the years. Jelly was with the same company for 21 years and then got made redundant. The plan was simple: use her big redundancy lump sum to fund two years — roughly £40,000 before any sensible words like “contingency” got a look in.
And then the company went bust. Cheers. That left Jelly with the government minimum — about five months — which isn’t quite two years no matter how you squint at it. We’re not selling the house, and with no income while we’re away, I started asking myself the same question you’re asking me.
The unglamorous truth: we’ve been saving like maniacs for years. We had good jobs (past tense doing a lot of heavy lifting there), didn’t splurge on shiny nonsense, still took holidays and enjoyed ourselves, but we saved and saved again. I’ve been made redundant twice and once managed to lose redundancy money on shares — sterling work — but we kept the saving habit.
The working budget for a two-year run: £20,000 per year to live, £25,000 on the car, and £10,000 for contingency. Total: £75,000. We spread the car costs over two years and chipped in savings to finish it. The rest took about a decade to stash away — call it £7,500 a year. As for pensions: I could die tomorrow, so why worry… though I may feel differently in 25 years. Tax on rental income while you’re not in the UK? That little joy gets its own spot on the planning pages.
(Posted 19/09/2017)
Lesson from the first big trip: don’t burn through your capital like it’s kindling. The bright idea was to have investment properties, live off the rent, and only nibble at capital when absolutely necessary. Revolutionary, I know.
Next time around the aim was rental income of about £1,500 a month. Not as flexible as sitting on a glorious pile of cash, but enough to keep wheels turning indefinitely if we stay frugal. You still need an emergency float because breakdowns and “surprises” happen — and getting home from somewhere far-flung isn’t exactly bargain-bin pricing.
At that point it was mostly a plan — funds weren’t there yet — but we knew people who were doing exactly this, so it clearly can work.
(Posted 20/09/2020, revised 07/07/2023)
We did what we said we would. We paid off the main house, bought a smaller, cheaper one, and now rent both. We live off the income. It’s… tight. Same as anyone: money in, bills out, and if you’re lucky there’s something left to save. We’re not currently acquainted with “lucky.” After admin and maintenance, we’re below what you could live on in the UK without creative accounting or a taste for air sandwiches.
We don’t pay tax because we don’t earn enough to hit the threshold. If we claimed UK benefits, we’d have more coming in. Does that paint the picture? Regardless, we’re full-time on the road and making it work with a fixed budget and stubbornness.
(Updated 07/07/2023)
I also run a small remote business making Land Rover windows. It’s “pocket money,” but without it we’d be in a proper mess. I had a sticker business that covered about 30% of the trip, but a crucial part of the operation became impossible, so I sold it. That nearly ended the whole adventure, but here we are — still moving, still solvent (just), and still counting days by how many £60 notes we don’t spend.
(Posted 11/08/2025)
Lots of changes to the budgets and finances since my last update here. Pensions are being claimed. Houses are being sold. The small business is still running. We’re actually now financially stable and have have more cash now coming in than since we worked. Its crazy and as we are not really moving at the moment we are doing OK. Our “home” is in storage and we are living temporarily in Thailand. Our proper home in the UK is just going through sale and once thats done we won’t know what to do with all that cash. Live it up a bit I guess. The kidney is off the market.
The Trip Spends is a work in progress as there’s a lot to go through.