Pack in the job, rent out the house, get in the camper van, fuck off

[GotTheBug]

WIBU to do the above?

We have a house with a small mortgage, stable but unfulfilling jobs, a camper van and itchy feet. Some savings (but not a huge amount!) No kids at home, one ageing but currently still independent parent nearby. Both of us early 50s and healthy.

We have talked about doing this for years and I'm increasingly starting to think that we should do it now before we get any older - also I'm aware that my DF may need us around more in the years to come. I guess I'm worrying that if we leave it another 10 years/wait until retirement we'll have missed the window.

Obviously leaving the job and renting out the house are massive steps and that scares me - so much to potentially go wrong. But at the same time, life is for living, right? We could rent out the house easily I think - seaside location, an hour from London on the train - and the rent would pretty much cover our travel expenses. DH could take a career break for a year or so much more easily than I could, though, and we'd be pretty skint on our return.

Would we be mad to do this, or mad not to?

I think you will find thats the feelings of the majority of people who currently work in education,

I'm like this too, 'oh another beautiful beach' or yet another amazing mediaeval village. We became a bit bored but this might be because we had busy and very fulfilling jobs so didn't need to 'escape' as such. I would say to keep moving and experience different cultures in the time (but, obviously the more you move, the more expensive it gets). It sounds like this will mostly be a Europe/Uk planned trip?

Fellow teacher here.

Do it.

You are a long time dead.

Also... possibly pick up work whilst on travels.

I think it's a great idea and there's plenty of advice out there from people who have done similar. It would be better if you knew someone personally to rent your house to, someone you trust - maybe lower rent but no agency fees and less worry. Or sell, downsize and get a lock up & leave place plus storage.
Consider asking for a sabbatical e.g two terms for your DH could add up to about 8 months if you head off at the start of summer hols and come back after Easter.
You may be able to work as you travel either as a digital nomad or picking up occasional jobs. Look into the 'woof' scheme too. Also house sitting abroad for a while, park up and have the benefit of four walls and facilities.
BTW, if you haven't got a driveaway awning for your campervan, I'd get one - extra space.

If it's doable I would. Life is for living and it'll give some awesome memories.

Just not sure about the landlord thing. .might be hard to navigate emergency stuff if you're on the move. Maybe get some sort of agency in. I don't know much about it.

I have lots of friends and family that do this.
All live in very touristy places and so vacate during the summer and rent out their houses.l to holiday makers. They use a local lady to manage their properties while gone.

The crux of this is - would you be very unhappy never to do this?

Is it such a burning ambition that you're prepared to take the risks of financial and employment hit and lack of savings in old age?

You can mitigate some financial fall-out but not necessarily all.

I'm not a risk taker as you can see from my posts.

The risk is that not only are you possibly going to plunder your savings, but you will be losing around (estimated guess here) £60K a year at least of joint gross income.

As PPs have said, you need to do the sums very carefully.
The actual profit from renting out your home- if your mortgage allows it.
Your pensions that you can access later.
The equity in your house when you downsize, accounting for the legal fees, tax and ES fees. I assume you've had a recent valuation of your house.

Your bottom-line annual net income needed to give you a reasonable standard of living into old age. Based on life expectancy of 85-ish.

You could save up and have a lovely pension and get bone cancer like he did.

If I hadn't taken any risks in my life, I wouldn't have lived in other countries on my own, learnt new languages and experienced new cultures. I wouldn't have had children either. I would have stayed in the UK and granted, I would have had a stable career, probably, but who knows.

The only certainty we have is now.

The biggest regret of your life won’t be what you did, It’ll be what you didn’t do

Yes a bit of supply teaching and whatever @GotTheBug can get?

The biggest regret of your life won’t be what you did, It’ll be what you didn’t do

That's a cliche and doesn't always hold true. Some things that people do turn out to be disastrous. It's implying regrets for things you choose to do never happen.

what you didn't do here could be not saving or earning enough to be comfortable in older age.

Horses for courses. If I were the OP I'd consult a good IFA and ask for advice on long term financial planning.

Any chance of severance or redundancy at your institution? As so many of them are offering deals DH just got almost a years salary tax free from his, he has only retired a year earlier than we had planned. We have six friends now that have taken severance in the last couple of years.

Someone wrote campervan or motorhome, it’s actually a Motorhome for us. It’s going to cost roughly what we paid for our house 26 years ago.

I would not be so confident about being able to come back to house and job in a year, so would plan on the assumption it would be longer and cost more.

Old age never happens for some people. Do it while you can.

Oh my goodness DO IT!

Also I am a landlord of 17 years (awaits abuse) and I don't recognize any of the horror stories being spouted here! Get a good letting agent, set it up properly and you're off.

Come back to tell us how it's going!

Thanks all. I'm re-reading and there are incredibly useful and salient points made, on both sides of the coin.

I had another look on my work intranet re: sabbaticals. It does appear they're Not A Thing here. No mention, certainly not a written policy. I might drop HR a quick line though just to double-check. We are actually going through enhanced voluntary redundancies at the moment but I've already been told (off the record) I would probably not be accepted if I applied. So a long trip would almost certainly mean resigning.

I think a holiday let or university-linked rental would probably work better than an AST-type set-up, but obviously need to explore all this in more depth. I do have friends who run AirBnBs locally so will investigate!

Lots to chew over.

Sounds like it can’t hurt to apply though if you decide to quit anyway, nothing to loose there

If I hadn't taken any risks in my life, I wouldn't have lived in other countries on my own, learnt new languages and experienced new cultures. I wouldn't have had children either. I would have stayed in the UK and granted, I would have had a stable career, probably, but who knows.

My last experience of long-term travelling resulted in a child too (and husband no. 1, but we don't talk about him haha)

What about asking about a period of unpaid leave so you could trial it in DH summer hols for 6 weeks? You might find the dream is far from the reality! That way you haven’t turned everything upside down for no reason…

Is this a camper van though or a motorhome as most camper vans don't even have toilets. Motorhomes are much bigger and have facilities

Look at the worse case scenario and then have a contingency that is double what you think you might need ( inc mortgage cover ) and go for it. You do only live once op. Do this with your eyes wide open though. Hopefully this thread has helped highlight things you didn’t think of - better prepared and all that!

Yeah, what if you have a tiff? There is no where to strop off. You would have to slope back, get back into the campervan and drive off together or be marooned 😬

But you have to plan your finances as if you will live to a reasonable age and in comfort, or you may end up in a dire financial state, especially as the state pension age is going up.

It's all very well throwing caution to the wind to fulfil dreams, as long as you've got your finances in order and can forgo an income of £60-70K, for a year, have a good cushion of savings to plug a work-gap when back, and can be sure you'll get back into work, etc etc.

If all those boxes are ticked, do it.

Do it. So you don't save for one year. That's not the end of the world. Instead you will make your life richer in so many ways

Honestly, if you're fed up with work in your 50s, think how you'll feel at 67 when you have to work. Sorry, but I think you need to be really careful with your money.

Why not go away for all of your husband's holidays, while you take unpaid leave where you have to? (And yes, I do know teachers work in the holidays, but when I was teaching I would've been happy to work harder at the end of term if I knew I would be setting off in a camper van the very minute school closed for the summer.)