You probably are wondering how families can afford to travel around the world with their kids while maintaining an affordable budget. It can be a bit confusing to know that some families are able to afford to travel full time. It requires lots of work and research, but worldschoolers all have a budget that they manage to stick to.
Budgets can range depending on your families income, and of course when and where you are traveling. When you are choosing a travel destination for you and your family, think about what you would like your budget to be, and then find destinations that would be within your budget. Would you like to keep it cheap, and stay in airbnbs, hostels and house sits, or do you want to be staying in luxury hotels. Families who want to travel luxuriously might have a harder time affording worldschooling, because luxury travel obviously will cost much more than budget travel. Most worldschoolers choose the budget style of traveling, because they can get the most out of it. Plus it is a good for kids to experience budget traveling.
In this blog I will talk about how families can afford to worldschool, some real life examples of budgets from worldschool families around the world, and how to make your own budget if you are interested in worldschooling. So keep reading if you want to find out exactly how to afford your family worldschool adventure.
What is Worldschooling?
I’m going to quickly explain what worldschooling is if you don’t already know. Worldschooling in short form is the definition of being educated from the world. In this recent movement, many families have pulled their kids out of the conventional school systems and taken them traveling instead. These families think that there is no better way to be educated than from discovering the world. This educational movement has started becoming popular within the recent decade, and now there are many communities of worldschoolers from all around the world.
The worldschool kids learn through experiencing new culture, foods, history, arts, languages, and much more when they are traveling. If you think about it, it’s kind of hard not to learn anything when you are traveling. Worldschool students get to learn math through calculating their flight or driving times, calculating time changes, money currencies, and other simple everyday life activities. They can learn history from going to museums, learning about different cultures, and visiting famous landmarks. They can learn science by going to museums, exploring towns, and even getting to know different culture.
Worldschoolers can even learn different languages as they travel, and they can work on their english skills through writing and documenting their amazing adventures. Many worldschooling families have a blog where everyone gets a turn to write, which I think is a great idea. Many worldschoolers end up doing a little bit of online work for the subjects that they don’t learn as much about like math, and sometimes science. With our modern day technology, it has become much easier to get a complete education on the internet through websites like Khan Academy, Duo Lingo, Time 4 Learning, and Ted Ed.
The learning opportunities are never ending. Worldschooling is a category within the homeschooling realm. It is considered a type of homeschooling, as most worldschool students are being educated from their parents. There are many different ways that you can be a worldschooler though. One of the most common types of worldschooling is when families sell their house and most of their belongings, and then travel the world without having a home base, in other words they are living a nomadic life.
Another type of worldschooling, which most people do without knowing it, is when families have a home base but take their kids out of school to travel occasionally. It is also considered worldschooling when parents travel and put their kids in a school system in the country they are traveling within. Really there are endless different type of worldschooling families, and each family probably does things a little differently, but that’s what makes this type of education so unique.
There are different types of ways to learn as a worldschooler too. The most common learning method for worldschoolers would be the traditional method, where the parents act as their children’s teachers, and worldschool parents pick their travel destinations based on learning experiences. So the kids get to learn from the world through exploring. Some worldschoolers might also take online classes, whether it is just a few classes, or many classes. Another way of learning as a worldschooler is through the unstructured system, so parents do not give any projects, or make their children learn anything, the kids just learn from experiencing things, playing and they learn through curiosity. This is also known as unschooling.
Another common way worldschooling kids can be educated, is through going to public, private or international schools along their journey. So they would be enrolled in different schools around the world as they are traveling. So now that you have a basic idea on what worldschooling might look like for families, let’s get into the budgeting of it all.
How Can Families Afford it?
Every family is a little bit different of course, but there are a few things that most worldschool families do and have in common so that they can afford their family adventures.
Save up: One of the most common ways for families to be able to afford worldschooling is because they save up before starting their adventure. Some parents simply put aside a little bit of money for their travels from their work pay checks, while others would find completely different ways to save up for worldschooling. There are some alternative methods that other parents have suggested and done to afford worldschooling. You could take on some extra small side jobs if possible. Or try simply lowering your monthly spendings and instead, putting it towards travel which can slowly add up. Small things like this can help you save significant amounts.
One bigger thing that a lot worldschoolers do is sell most their belongings and their house (if they own a house) just before they start traveling. This can put a significant amount of money in the bank for their travels. Plus families won’t be needing all of their things, and it would be a pain to bring everything from your home with you while traveling, so why not get a little more cash through having a garage sale and selling unnecessary things you won’t use when traveling. (Of course, don’t give up everything, and if you don’t have anywhere to store the things you won’t be needing, but want to keep, you can always ask other friends and family to hold a bit of your stuff while you are away.)
Work while traveling: Just because you are going to be traveling with your kids doesn’t mean you need to stop working. There are plenty of ways parents can work while worldschooling. Online is the first and possibly the best option for maintaining a steady income in this situation. There are so many types of jobs you can get online, including writing for big companies, blogging, programming, web or graphic designing, or you could be a copywriter, social media manager, photographer, and much more.
Most of these jobs you can probably do part time, so that you will still be able to enjoy traveling and exploring with your kids, while also making a part time income on the side. You could also find a part time job in the city you are traveling. This works especially well for worlschool families who want to slow travel and stay in one destination for a month or longer. If you keep your eye out for any job openings where you are staying, you might find a really good part time job that would work for you.
Start a blog or website: It is very common to work online nowadays and make a high about of money from it, and blogging is one of those great ways to earn some income in the future. Lots of people are interested in what worldschooling families are up to, so if you start a blog about your family adventures, and you post consistently, then you will probably get some traffic, but you need to be patient. Even if you don’t make any income off of your personal blog, you could still use it as an educational resource for your kids, and have them write and blog about their experiences as a writing aspect of learning.
You could also take an online blogging course, and instead of making it a travel blog you could start a blog for a different type of niche that could possibly gain more traffic. There are many amazing online blogging courses teaching you how you can monetize your own website. Yes, it is a lot of work and a lot of writing, but if you can make a good passive income off of it later on, then in my opinion it is totally worth it.
It is not as expensive as it seems: Most worldschoolers say that traveling the world with your kids is not as expensive as it sounds. This is normally because you don’t have many bills, or expenses for things like gas, when you are at home, and often living in one location (especially a city) is more expensive than traveling full time. Plus the majority of worldschool families are trying to keep their costs to a minimum, and do budget travel, which means they won’t be staying in luxury 5 star hotels every night. Location is also a big thing. If you are used to living in a big expensive city, then you start traveling in smaller towns that are not super touristy, you will probably notice that everything starts to get cheaper including food, accommodation, clothes, and excursions.
What are Some Worldschooling Budgets?
I did a little bit of research on real life worldschool budgets. I found some interesting budgets from worldschool families around the world. Of course these budgets are an estimate of what the families tend to spend each day or each month. Plus the budget often depends on the location they are traveling in, as some locations are more expensive than others. All three budgets are very different from each other, and like I said they are probably much different because the costs depend on the type of travel that you want to do, and where you are traveling to. Here are 3 families who have shared their worldschooling budgets, and their tips on how to keep costs to a minimum.
The Dennings: The Dennings are a family of 9 (yes…these parents travelled with 7 kids) from the United States that left their home base to start traveling over 10 years ago. They left home with $10,000 in savings, and slowly they learned how to make money on the road by getting jobs in some countries abroad, working online, and sometimes they would even go back to the U.S. for short periods of time, while traveling with their kids. They begun their adventure by leaving home and driving to Costa Rica! Since then they have been to over 30 countries as a family. (Check out their website with a map of the places they’ve travelled and links to all of their social medias to follow them.)
On average they have said that they are able to travel on $5,000 a month, and that is for 9 people. So for each person that is around $555 each month! One of their biggest tips to save money while traveling is to avoid the touristy destinations, and travel like locals instead. This makes a lot of sense because often when you travel to touristy spots, the prices are much higher because it is so popular. Plus traveling like a local is much more immersive, and often you can get a much more personal experience for a cheaper price.
Tesseract World: Alex and Janet are parents of 3 kids aged nine, nine, and eleven, and they took a year off work to travel and explore the world with their kids. They traveled to over 20 countries during their year and looked for the best educational experiences for their kids as they traveled. They found that there was a little struggle in traveling as a family of five because they couldn’t stay in a cheap 2 bed place for accommodation, but they still managed to get by while sticking to their budget. Their total expenses for each month was $7,500 which included everything like food, accommodation, excursions and transportation. That is around $250 a day for the whole family or $50 per person for each day. (Go check out the family’s blog tesseractworld.com)
They found that the cost for the year of traveling, it was similar to the cost of living in Seattle (their home city). The family ended up actually saving money for things like accommodation, food, and clothes, because Seattle is a much more expensive area for those things. Of course since they were not working their usual jobs as they were traveling, Janet and Alex did not earn as much that year, but it was worth the experience of a lifetime for their family. They put together an interesting chart that showed the expenses of each continent they visited, per person per day. In the chart it shows that Africa was the most expensive continent they visited being over $60 a day per person as they went on some tours and safaris, and Europe was the cheapest being around $35 each day.
Live Family Travel: The family behind the website live family travel, has always had a dream to travel the world all together, and they made it happen. Cliff and Karen, the traveling parents of two daughters, showed how they budgeted their trip, and what they ended up spending over the ten months of full time travel the did. Cliff and his family had gone on family trips together before, but they loved it so much that they decided to try and go on a much longer trip. Over the span of around 2 years they saved up $40,000 for their budget to use for their family adventure. In the end, they spent $39,550 over the 10 months, as they traveled to numerous destinations and continents. So they were spending around $3,955 each month.
As expected, some of the destinations they traveled to were more expensive than others too. They managed to save a lot of money on accommodation because in a lot of their destination they had family of some sort, so they were able to stay with family. One of Cliff’s biggest tips is to do something similar to that, and visit destinations where you know people and could stay with them, or try checking out websites like couchsurfing.com where you can stay at people’s houses, and guest rooms for free. Another big tip is that you use your “frequent flyer miles”, so each time you fly somewhere you get points, and slowly those points will add up, and you will probably be able to cash them in for a free flight here and there.
Hopefully these budgets gave you an idea of how much, other families are spending for worldschooling and how much you possibly would be spending. I found it quite interesting to see the different costs depending on the locations, and it really goes to show how everyone is different, and how every family will travel slightly differently from each other.
How to Create Your Budget?
You probably are curious what your type of budget would look like, as everyone’s budget is a little different. You might have gotten to the point where you want to know how much you need to save up to afford worldschooling with your kids. There are a few things to consider when you are creating your own budget. These things will help you have a better idea of how much you will end up spending on your family trip. (Don’t forget to multiply certain costs like air faire, certain transportation, daily food, excursions, and other necessary things by the amount of family members who will be traveling.)
What to Consider
Where to travel: Where you are traveling is going to significantly change how much money you will be spending on your worldschool adventure. If you pick really touristy areas the cost will go up a lot compared to the less traveled out destinations in the world. When you are looking at costs in each destinations, make sure you compare the costs of everything including food, activities, accommodation, and transportations. Look at common things too, for example compare the costs of staying in a traditional hostel or hotel in two different locations, and you will notice if there is a dramatic price difference.
From my travel experience, my family and I have found that the cheaper locations were ones like Morocco, Thailand, Southeast Asia, and certain areas of Mexico. Overall Western Europe, Oceania, Hawaii, and Japan were on the more expensive side of our trips. Look into it, and I’m sure you’ll find thousands of websites to help you find the cheaper locations.
When you are looking into destinations, don’t only think about the costs, think about which areas would have the best educational experiences for your kids. Although most destinations will have amazing educational experiences, there are some places that your kids will find more interesting than others, so make sure to think about their interest level when finding educational excursions.
Preferred style of travel: If you want to be a budget traveler that means you are not going to be staying in luxury hotels. You will probably try house sitting, airbnb, stay in hostels, and maybe even camping. If you do like to travel luxuriously and be super relaxed and comfortable, you might need to save up a little bit more before you start worldschooling. It is good to have an idea of what style of travel everyone in the family prefers so that you have a better idea of what your budget will look like.
How will you be eating: Are you picturing you and your family getting food from restaurants and cafes every day and night? Or are you thinking that you will go grocery shopping and buy, and cook in? If you want to go out for dinner every night, then you will be probably spending a lot more money because you are paying for individual meals along with tipping which overall is much more expensive than buying food at a grocery store. When they are trying to save money most worldschoolers eat in if possible, because there is always a huge price difference.
Transportation: Do you want to travel by bike, plane, train, car, truck…there are so many different ways to get from one spot to another, and they are all very different from each other. If you want your trip to be on the budget side of travel, try to travel less by plane and car because flights and gas costs are expensive. Instead see if you can travel by bus, train, or even bike, which is also more environmentally friendly.
Do Your Research
One of the main things you should do if you really want to know how much you will be spending is…research. There are pretty much answers to everything on the internet, so if you have a question on how much food will cost in Spain, look it up! Once you have an idea of the locations you might want to travel to, start researching that location, and find out exactly how much food, accommodation, transportation, and excursions will cost you each day. You will probably find an estimate amount, and just go around that. Research of course is something you should also do at the same time as you are scoping out destinations, because you need to research to learn about each place.
I found this very interesting map of the costs of rent from all around the world that was put together based on what worldschoolers have said. It is based on a 2 bedroom apartment, which would probably be for a family of 4. On the map some of the cheapest places to stay are Southern Asia, Argentina, Uganda, Egypt, and the less touristy areas of Mexico. The costs for rent are from $125 per month to $300 per month which is really cheap. The most expensive locations are places in the United States, Mexico City, Ireland, Hong Kong, and London being from $2,000 per month up to $4,500. So this shows how there is a clear difference in costs depending on where you are staying in the world.
You should be able to gather a budget if you have an idea of where you are going, what type of travel you are going to be doing, how you will be eating, and how you’ll be getting from place to place. Make a chart or timeline and add the costs of all of these things just to have a more accurate idea of what your budget will look like, and what days you will be spending the most money (ie. travel days). Don’t forget to research as much as possible in order to have a better idea of your budget. But remember, you will probably end up spending more in the end than what you budgeted, so leave some wiggle room in your budget for unexpected costs. And don’t get too hung up on the money aspect, remember to enjoy yourself as you have an experience of a lifetime with your family.