Budget for Full Time Travel?

Hi Mark B68,

From the information gathered on these “long term nomads”, the majority of these people have sold their house, and use the money raised from the sale to fund their trip. A lot of them also raise money by working on the road doing odd jobs, or have advertising on their UTube channel, or Facebook page etc.

Macca.

Rent your house out, sell or put the bikes off the road, you will cover mortgage and rates plus a bit of rego money, and you should be able to travel, and do the odd job each for extra money, it won't be a rich life on the road, but you will get a good experience.

SAVE MONEY FIRST, when sufficient, you can afford some travel. Then spend it wisely. Two Motorcycles cost would pay for a pretty good trip I reckon! Don't live BEYOND your means!

Mark : There is No Doubt there would be youTube videos on how to make money on YouTube but aswel that is going to take some time/ years to get enough followers to make you any more than few $$ . most start off as a hobbie .
And if you were going to do it on travel etc you have a lot of other people to compete with . As well a good gift of The Gab
Good luck .

I suspect that a lot of the 'full time traveller you tubers' have little in the way of a back up plan & that their full time lifestyle will cease when their money runs out. Few make 'liveable' money out of Youtube. Recently Karstan & Maxine said that each youtube video they release nets them around $600. Helpful money but not a salary. Many would get less. I would hate to be feeling the pressure of 'producing content' all the time, to be seeing my chosen lifestyle compromised by trying to appeal to others

As early retirees who choose a full time travel lifestyle our lifestyle whilst not as 'flamboyant' as some is one that we love & which we think is sustainable for as long as we want, or as long as our health allows.

The key to being in this position was a combination of frugal living, owning our home & becoming debt free as early as we could - when I was in my mid 40's. We gave financial advisers the flick 20 years earlier than that after twice being shafted by them & lived a life of only buying what we could pay for & 'making do' whilst paying off what debt we had(mortgage) as early as possible. We weren't high flyers earning big money. Both of us were nurses. I retired from nursing in my early 40's and ran our small self sufficient hobby farm (not a business) for 20 years & my wife continued working as a nurse until she was 59.

We sold our rural property & downsized, to a small house on 2.5 acres a short drive outside a major rural victorian city, & built a large shed with comfortable but modest accomodation inside, plus a large workshop. The shed has it's own driveway, separate to the house which we rent out. The nearby city has most major health services & any other services we may need in the future, but the location is just enough outside the city boundaries not to be 'threatened ' by burgeoning housing estates, but continues to increase in value as city services get closer.

Rent plus us each getting small pro rata pensions from the UK largely keeps us going on the road, topped up now & then from our super/savings. Finding ways to live for free or very little have helped enormously. We spent almost two years on Cape York for a cost of $0. During that time we paid a few bills back home & saw our bank balance rise modestly. Currently we are negotiating what we hope will be another similar opportunity in the Kimberley for 6 or 7 months. Living for nothing for half a year whilst having unique experiences without working our butts off means travelling for the other half of the year becomes a lot more affordable. We could get paid jobs if we wanted them, but we don't want to be employees. Too much like hard work with accompanying expectations & a different relationship with the property owners than we have with unpaid/mutual benefit arrangements.

Our income is close to, but under the tax free threshold. We live, quite comfortably on approximately the equivalent of the age pension. We could spend more, but believe living on this amount is sensible as later when our funds decrease & we eventually apply for an aged pension that we will be able to maintain our lifestyle if that is what we want to do.

That is about as much as I'm willing to divulge about our finances, but if you want to know more about our lifestyle check out our (100% commercial free) blog. :)

Forget You Tube, best bang for Bucks is start ya own Only Fans page ;)

Become a modern day swagie. Travel till you run low on cash then work to build the funds up, then travel again. Had a mate who was a handyman did it for four years. Stopped at towns and stations and did odd jobs and small reno's

I wouldn't be doing it unless I had everything paid off with money in the bank and would be in a caravan etc for comfort especially in rainy weather but that depends on what areas you plan to spend time in. A canopy on the 4wd tray set up for living out of if you leave the van behind to explore further afield. 800 - 1,200 a week sounds a lot for expenses but that depends how your set up if you stay in van parks all the time or just in big towns or cities if you're spending time looking at the local sites.
The type of vehicle you drive for rego and fuel cost do you need motor bikes or not as they add to the cost in some areas but can be a benefit for exploring further afield it's a personal option. If you own a house renting it out but I didn’t think the owner was responsible for the power bills the might be for the water if the have gardens the want maintained but it would be best to just have lawn to mow instead.
There's so many different scenarios and options which take time to get things right that's why when people are set up ready for long term travel doing some trips leading up to the big one it helps to iron out most of the bugs. That's for people who are new to it and are expecting everything to be roses.

you're looking at a different scenario than these YouTubers who often live out of a backpack. Most successful long-term travelers I know either

Work remotely while traveling
Do shorter trips rather than continuous travel
Rent out their home while away to cover costs

Start your channel, upload content and hopefully you will be monetized soon enough.