To consider selling our house and travelling the world with two toddlers?

[travellingwithtoddlers]

DH have been discussing the possibility of doing this for a while. DH is incredibly unhappy with his job at the moment and is considering quitting and having a break to de-stress. I am a SAHM and we have two toddlers aged 1 and 3.5.

We don’t need to sell our house to use the money to travel (we have savings we could use). We are considering selling our house, lots of our possessions and our cars in order to reduce our responsibilities here at home and putting things that we want to keep into storage.

Ideally we would spend some time in SE Asia, Australia, the Middle East and perhaps return home after 12-18 months. We would then look to buy a house again upon our return.

Is this idea great or am I just swept up with the excitement of planning the trip? We can afford to support ourselves for the trip, but it would use all of our savings. We would be returning purely to a deposit for a house (from the sale of our current house) which would be approx 40% of the value of the sort of house we would like to buy (if this makes any difference!).

Also - does anyone have any tips on places to visit?!

It sounds like a dream trip. I'm torn about doing the same with either toddlers, because there's less disruption to school and friendships, or older children because they'll remember it for the rest of their life.

How did your children find being away from friends for so long and going back to friendship groups after such a long break?
Did they feel they missed out or were left out when they came back?
Was the school ok with it? Did they do work whilst away? Was it in the gap between primary and secondary school and did your 11 have to leave friends they'd just made at secondary school and then how did they fit in when they got back to fully formed friendship groups?

This sounds amazing! Does he remember any of it now?

I'm desperate to do something similar, but I can't afford to do it twice so trying to work out how to make it work schoolwise and socially but also leave them with memories.

The children complained bitterly when we told them we were going but then quite liked the attention of leaving. They adapted to coming back easily, picked up old friendships and made new ones. They missed out on nothing. My eldest had a place at secondary school so wouldn’t have done much for those last 2 terms. My youngest seemed to catch up no problem. They also had mandarin lessons when we were in Shanghai for a month. They were old enough to remember a lot of the trip which was good because some of it was expensive - Sumo, Great Wall of China, Angkor wat, cruising in halong bay. They were robust enough to carry luggage, miss meals, eat interesting food, be independent which was great. I can honestly say it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

He remembers nothing! He is autistic although academically very successful. I will never know if the autism was because of what we did or hereditary and inevitable. At the time he enjoyed having the stability of the motor homes and a different back garden every day

Rent your house instead of selling it.

We did something a bit like this, the kids were 2, 6 and 9 ish. We rented out our house, although actually when we came back we remortgaged it to release equity for a deposit on a new house elsewhere in the country. We spent 6 months in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Indonesia then 18m in Southern Africa (including DH working in South Africa for a while). Came back for DC1 to start secondary school.

Personally I think you would be nuts to do it but I also know people who have done it and loved it.

The thing I would consider though is whether this will fix things or not. You still have to come back, your DH will have to go back to work at some point, will you just be punting the stress down the line ?

Do it!
We did exactly that, sold up travelled with our kids SE Asia, Japan, Australia and 2 are now settled and couldn't be happier in NZ. Life's so short you can always go home if you don't like it. I'd probably rent my house out though if I wasn't sure!!
Happy travels

I am insanely jealous. Would love to do this. We backpacked in India when our two were a bit older and have also travelled in Africa and America with babies and young toddlers. Obviously you have to make concessions and trying to maintain a routine can be tricky but it’s absolutely worth it. Have an amazing time.

Many parents opt to home ed these days and not put their kids in the state daycare.

You won't get a mortgage as neither of you will being employment please be careful if you try to rent a place a lot of landlords also require you to be employed. Technically you could be homeless

Dont sell, just in case you should need to return for health issues or if something happens in the family etc. Rent it for a year, until you know whats what and if you settle down somewhere else.

Good luck otherwise :)

We went travelling before kids and rented ours out furnished for 6 months. It was a 2 bed, so we rented it as a 1 bed on the condition we could leave the spare room full of stuff. We managed to find a lady who wanted to check the area out before committing to moving and needed furnished and was more than happy to have the living space of a 2 bed for the price of a 1 bed. It was the perfect arrangement for both of us. It worked out really well. She paid a reasonable amount towards our mortgage and we had a house to come home to!

I'd do the same again and not sell my home for such a short amount of time; however, family had the opportunity to go to Thailand for a few years, maybe 5? They'd rented their house out, but they decided to come home a year early and they ended up having to rent somewhere else until their house was empty. Something to bear in mind with renting out your house. What if you've had enough after a month or two?

Yeah, I won't get into what I think about that choice on this thread, lol ...

Sell all the belongings you don’t need.
Speak to an agent to get a valuation done, maybe see if you can get photos of the property before you go away?
Rent the property out whilst you’re away to keep a steady income.
Put the house on the market just before you return.

Get your bags packed and go! Life is too short have regrets and you will probably never have the chance again! In years to come, you will look back at your memories and not your dreams!

I would rent it out also because you don't know what the future holds, at least you'd have a base to come back to. Just make it known its not a long term rental. At least your mortgage would still be getting paid and you wouldn't accidentally dip into house money. Go for it though, what an opportunity to spend time with your little family!

Luckily your opinion on how other peoples kids are educated is irrelevant, not every kid is happy being told when to talk/think/pee/eat/what to wear/how to cut their hair etc and sit in a stuffy classroom for the majority of the day and their childhood.

It depends on your kids. We used to have one holiday for 3-6 weeks every 3 years when kids were young. We started at 3 weeks and lengthened them as kids got older. As young kids 7 days seemed ok, 10 days saw them at their limit, they wanted to go home to their own environment and stuff. Even around 10/11yo they only got to around 3 weeks before the ‘when are we going home’ started. Unfortunately, it always took us several days to get to get to any destination as long distances were involved, we drove and had our own car as was just easier with multiple child seats etc and made getting around places at destination easier. Given my experience, what you suggest would seem a special kind of hell, but I’m sure others have had different experiences.

Well yes ... hence why I'm not going into on this thread as I just said as it isn't relevant. Sounds like you have a real hang up about it though, so best not to derail the thread.

Look up expat and children's Facebook groups for some of the places you are going to visit. You just need one good one to be the source of all your knowledge to help you settle in quickly to each new location.

Good luck, it sounds amazing! I wish we had the resources to do similar.

Sounds like merry hell with two little ones!

I would not sell up and just leave the house empty - that way if it does become too stressful or there’s an unexpected injury/illness then you have a house to come back to rather than being homeless.

Have you watched the Bucket List Family vlogs on YouTube? They've got a lot of money and have done this really - more extended holidaying than the backpacking type travel people normally associate with this sort of lifestyle. Sounds absolutely ideal!

I have no experience, no advice.
But I think it sounds brave and exciting!
And I think selling up before you go is a great idea. Cut ties, no money worries, no legal responsibility to maintain a property from the other side of the world.
You might love it and travel for a lot longer. You might find your new family forever home in SE Asia.
And whenever you come back, IF you come back, the kids would just walk straight into school and be just fine. It sounds so cool to introduce them to new places and people and cultures. Of course it will have a positive impact on their development, even if it’s just a year or two and they don’t have any concrete memories later. Good luck!

@Buffs Thanks for your honest answers. It sounds like they really benefited from it and you also got to do cool things that the Great Wall of China that they may end up remembering. That's good to know about the friendship groups still being ok when they came back.

@GuyOnAMotorcycle I don't think it's possible to cause a child's autism in this way, I wouldn't worry about that (though I'm not an expert). It sounds like you really gave your kid a great experience.

A lot to think about.

I am truly inspired by many of the people on this thread.

OP do it. Live your dream. We only get one life.