How We Afford To Travel With Kids

No we don’t earn megabucks, no we haven’t received a massive inheritance, and no we haven’t won the lottery (reminder to self: must buy lottery ticket this week)… yet.

I receive lots of emails and messages from parents who want to travel with their kids. I love receiving them and I’m always more that happy to reply and offer advice; whether it’s asking about booking trains in India, vaccination questions (although I encourage that this one is better answered by a medical expert), safety of tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka, or what to do if you need a no.2 on the road in Africa (I’ve had this more than once).

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click to purchase, it is at no additional cost to you, and I receive a small commission.

But the most common question I receive is – “How do you afford to travel so much?”

I always smile a little when I receive this one. It’s so very un-British to ask someone about money, and I know it’s taken some balls to ask.

I admit that we travel more than your average family (check out our top family travel destinations), but there are lots of families like us. In fact, there are families who travel even MORE than us; digital nomad parents who homeschool their children full time, or families on year-long sabbaticals.

If you’re looking for ways to travel more as a family, 5 Lost Together has a great series interviewing families and finding out how they find ways to travel; from using maternity leave, using home exchanges, renting your home, and just saving bloody hard for a gap year. Recently, we’ve adopted the unpaid parental leave approach offered by the UK Government.

But this post is about how we, TraveLynn Family, have so far managed to afford to travel.

1. Prioritise travel

We do feel lucky and appreciate that we’re in a privileged position to decide how we spend our money. However, we don’t drive fancy cars (our main run around is a Peugeot 107), we have never stretched ourselves on a mortgage (although we do have one), we don’t go out for fancy dinners, and you’ll never find me clothes shopping unless it’s absolutely necessary.

We watch the pennies, and the majority of our disposable income goes to travel. Check out some of these money saving ideas for families.

For us, we see that there are huge benefits of family travel, as so we’re more than happy to cut back in some areas of our spending so that we can travel more.

2. Travel as much as possible before the kids start school

Once kids start school you are tied to school holidays; especially here in the UK where parents are fined for taking their kids out of school. We travelled as much as possible during term times before our boys started school, meaning we could get off-peak airfares and accommodation.

From long weekends, fortnight holidays, to our epic 101 days in Africa, these trips were all done during school term. Now that both our kids are in school, we’re having to work a lot harder in finding ways to fund our travel and maximise annual leave for holidays, although it’s still very possible!

So if your kids aren’t yet in school, NOW is the time to travel with them.

3. Move overseas

In 2017, through an opportunity with my husband’s work, we moved to Bangalore, India. This was an incredible year, full of highs and lows, but A LOT of travel adventures. We had a new base to explore a new corner of the world, and used EVERY available opportunity to travel; popping on a sleeper train of a weekend to explore Hampi, Pondicherry or Kochi, and cheap AirAsia flights took us to Northern India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. And on the occasions we flew back to the UK to see family, we would always ensure a stopover in Doha or Abu Dhabi. Living as expats was a fantastic way for us to travel more.

4. Voluntary redundancy

This is a bold move. Back in 2018, Jay was in a good job in India and he loved the company he worked for. But, when an opportunity for voluntary redundancy arose seven months before our eldest started school, we jumped at it. This gave us the pot of money we needed for long-term travel, and the timing was perfect. So off to Africa we went; 101 days in a Land Rover with roof tents, the boys were aged 2 and 4 at the time. And for those of you worried about whether he found work again on our return. Yes, he did. And he’s actually back working for the same company.

5. Embrace slow travel

When we have a pot of money and chunk of time to go travelling, we don’t race around trying to fit in as many places as possible. Actual travel between places costs money, and in today’s travel climate with changing travel restrictions, more countries mean more complications.

So if you travel to fewer places, closer together, money goes further. A round the world airfare sounds tempting, but perhaps look at return flights to the one destination and embracing slow travel from that start and end point.

But slow travel isn’t just about saving money. It’s a deeper and more rewarding travel, where the natural daily routines of staying in the one place for a big chunk of time allows you to feel part of the local community.

Indeed our 4 months in Morocco was s all about embracing slow travel.

6. Travel to cheap destinations

As a family, we haven’t been to the States (although the boys have Orlando on their list for the theme parks! ), we’ve only dipped our toe in to Scandinavia, and we’ve never been on a package holiday.

We generally travel to cheap destinations, so that when we are there, we know our money will go further. This is our number one tip for budget family travel. Yes, this may mean more expensive flights. But an all-inclusive two week holiday at a Spanish holiday resort can sometimes cost more than two weeks of budget travel in Thailand or Sri Lanka, including flights.