1)   What do the kids think?

Aiden has been super keen from the moment we mentioned it. He particularly loved looking for wildlife in Costa Rica and wants to go and see what we can find elsewhere. He is seemingly unfazed about the possibility of having to change schools – in fact when we told him it was likely all he said was ‘can I just go back for one more day so I can say goodbye to my friends?’.

Evie is very different from her little brother and is a bit of a worrier.  Initially, she was not that happy with the idea as she said she’d miss her friends and family. After a little bit of time she seemed to be ok with this, we talked about Skypeing people at home and grandparents are going to come and find us on route.  But there was something else too that was bothering her too.  After a lot of probing we got down to it – what she was most worried about was that we would be on so many planes that one would probably crash and we’d die!  After explaining that planes are actually safer than cars (and hoping that didn’t make her refuse to get in the car) and showing videos of planes with no landing gear etc landing perfectly safely she is totally over that and suddenly very excited about our trip 😊.  She seems particularly interested in exploring – following paths and roads we’ve not been down before and is desperate to see a zebra in the wild. 

 2)   What do family think?

Whilst supportive, our families are not that happy with this (which is a good thing I suppose as it shows they will miss us, or the kids at least!). 

We’re going to try to alleviate this by having regular Skype calls home and the kids will be writing a daily journal to a family member which we will then post back (saves us carrying it!).  The idea is to collate these at the end and bind them into a memory book for the kids.

3)   Is this safe to do with kids?

Of course it’s going to be a little riskier than just staying at home but I’m actually quite risk averse so obviously, I don’t feel like it’s that bad!  This may be through naivety/ignorance though so I do need to look into this much further.  I’ll admit that now that I’ve started to look into the various immunisations needed and the diseases that you cannot immunise against I am a little worried that there is so much we cannot protect against.  Still, most can be avoided with good hygiene and adhering to the rules on what to eat and drink, watching where it’s prepared etc. 

Other safety concerns are more about the risk of crime.  We will, of course, check the government pages about safety in each country and do what they suggest.

This is definitely something that needs more research so expect a full post on this later.

4)   How do we keep up with the kids’ education?

It will be very important for us to keep up with the curriculum as Evie will be returning to sit her SATS.  We intend to work with their current school to ensure that we cover the same English and Maths materials but haven’t yet had the conversation with them or the council about leaving the school so we’re not sure how willing they will be to work with us.  If they won’t help then perhaps the council will, or there are a whole host of online sites which we can use to download maths and English materials.  I suspect we will end up relying heavily on downloaded materials and maths and English learning apps.  More research is needed here to figure out what it is that we need to cover and where we can get this information from.

We also like the idea of settling somewhere for a month part way through as a bit of a break and enrolling the kids in an International school so they can have a chance to make friends and play and get a break from us (and we can have a break from them too!).  I know of Greenshoots in Thailand but that’s it…

5)   What impact will this have on the kids’ school places?

In the UK taking the children out of the main school system means giving up your place in the school.  Therefore, we run the risk that their spaces will be taken once they return and the will have to move schools.  Not ideal.  Evie’s year has a couple of places already though so barring a sudden influx of kids her age moving to the area she should be fine.  If Aiden has to move schools it will at least be for three school years and he’s very outgoing so will have no trouble changing schools. 

We need to understand the dates we have to tell the school that we are withdrawing the children and what we have to do to secure re-entry.

6)   How much will this cost?

A lot is my first thought!!  Honestly, when I think about how much we will spend whilst abroad on top of the lost earnings for a year it does make me want to cry a bit, so I’m trying not to think about it.

Costs will obviously vary massively by country and to get a proper budget I will need to know how much time we want to spend in each country, how we will get there and how we will travel around within the country, but we need to know a rough number so we can see if this is even feasible.  To get a quick very rough estimate I used the Lonely Planet budget pages to see the average costs of travelling for each of a number of countries.  I took the higher daily price for a backpacker, multiplied by 4 and then took 80% of the number (as costs should be lower for a family travelling together rather than 4 singles).  Turning this into a weekly price gave an estimate of £875ish for Vietnam, Malawi, Laos and Cambodia, £1,881 for Australia, £751 for China, £527 for Thailand and Indonesia and £417 for Malaysia (wow!!).  On a rough average this is about £1000 per week. 

Whilst this does for initial discussions I need to work out a more accurate budget so we can ensure that we have the right funds, this is likely to require a lot of research though to understand where in each country we are going, how long we are staying, the sorts of accommodation we will stay in and how we will get around in terms of transport as costs will vary massively depending on countries, accommodation type, flights vs bus etc.  This is going to take some time…

7)   How do we fund this?

Most of this will have to be funded through savings.  We are lucky that we both have good jobs so can save a fair pile of cash before we go.  Some other things we need to look into are:

–      What bills/spending can we cut before we go i.e. selling a car, cancelling Sky, minimising holidays?

–      Renting the house will provide an additional income whilst we’re out there, but will we be taxed on this income?

–      Can we work whilst abroad?

–      Can we make any money off this blog?

–      How can we get accommodation as cheap as possible whilst we’re out there?

–      What can we do to reduce flight prices?  i.e. around the world tickets and Airmiles

So lots more questions to answer…

8)   What do we need to take?

I’ve not looked but I’m sure there are plenty of lists online.  Most of these will be for a single adult rather than a family but it shouldn’t vary massively.  We will need to bear in mind that Chris and I will be basically carrying almost all of the kids’ clothes etc in our rucksacks so we’ll have to travel extra light…

9)    What happens to the house and our stuff?

We own our house with a mortgage so our options are to sell it before we go or rent.  If we sell we have to time it right and will have a lot of stuff to go into storage and no home to return to, renting could get complicated if we cannot find someone to live in our house though. 

Having spoken to an estate agent it seems the house should rent for a decent amount of money, possibly even furnished.  The rest of our bits will hopefully go in the attic although we plan to go through and try to sell a lot of it so we can be sure it fits and not have so much boxing up to do!

10)    How many immunisations are we going to get?

Can’t answer this one until we know where we’re going country and region wise and season wise.  I think the answer will be lots though!

11)    Are there any other legal/tax impacts of doing this?

Does going abroad for a year have any impact on my domicile etc?  Will we get some repayment of tax on our earnings from April to September?

12)    When do we go? 

Our timing is heavily influenced by two things, school years and money.  Evie is currently in year 4 at primary school.  We have no issues with our school or the national curriculum and do not want her to miss secondary school which gives us three school years to choose from.  We also need money which removed this year!  Missing year 6 would involve missing SAT’s which could be viewed as a positive and would not impact on Evie’s secondary school entry, but in the end the choice came down to an unseen third factor – our impatience!  We simply couldn’t wait over two years once the decision to go had been made – it’s just too exciting!

So that’s one question answered – Sept 2019 is the date. 

13)    How do we choose which countries and our route through them?

Making the decision was difficult but planning where to go when and all the practicalities around it is making that decision look like a piece of cake! 

Luckily for us, I’m a super keen planner so although it’s daunting I’m up for it.  I’m planning to look into each possible country at what we can do, how long we’d want to go there for, what time of year would be best and the easiest places to get into it from.  This will enable me to budget for that country.  Then I shall set them all out and decide how best to make it all fit; like a big jigsaw, although probably one where the pieces don’t fit well, and there are too many pieces. 

To make things a little simpler we feel that we should go round East to West.  No real reason but we just both have that feeling so we’re sticking with it as it reduces some of the options!  We’re also both heavily interested in SE Asia, Australia and NZ, largely because they’re harder to get to on a normal holiday due to the flight times and because we’ve never been.  Evie has also expressed an interest in seeing a wild Zebra – it’s her must d which pretty much puts Africa first.  So that provides a start point.  Where from there though? 

I have 10 months to plan, but need to know the itinerary earlier than this for final budget estimates and to quote around the world flight tickets or at least our first flight (!!) so I guess I’d better get started!