We have started to get quite a few questions on preparation so I’m going to try to address them today!  This is Kristi, I’m the organiser of the house, so Ian asked me to write this blog…  I’m going to try my best to remember everything because the preparation started over a year ago!

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY….

Let’s be honest, most people wonder “how can you afford to take a year off work to travel?”  Well, this is where the most preparation comes to play.  I came across a traveling single Australian mum in an article when I was pregnant with our boys (in early 2016).  I had always had this vague idea to travel around the world, but never thought about actually making it a reality until I read her article and felt inspired!  She decided to travel the world with her daughter after losing two close friends to cancer in one year – she decided life was too short and was off.  In short, that is the same decision that I made in early 2016!!!  One slight problem was that my decision was unbeknownst to Ian…. It took lots of research and lots of discussions before he came onboard with the idea at some point later in the year.  Once he did though, there was no looking back (or very little anyway).  Thus our financial planning began.  We didn’t have a set year to go traveling, we knew we wanted to finish before Lara started high school so we just knew we had to be back by about 2021.  Initially we planned to fund the entire year out of savings, rental income on our house in America and out of equity from the sale of our house in New Zealand.  

In 2017 we also felt called to start our doTERRA business to help change lives due to amazing results we had with essential oils with Charlie.  We didn’t initially intend for it to be a major money-making venture, we just wanted to help other parents.  As time went on though, we saw more financial & altruistic potential and thought that it might help the finances a little while we were traveling.  By late 2017 we had enough of the corporate world, put our house on the market and waited to resign.  As soon as our house was under contract we resigned from our corporate jobs and poured all of our energy into growing our doTERRA business and doing some work with soulful meaning!!  That brings us to now, where we are happy to report that our doTERRA business and our rental income will be funding our travels. 

That doesn’t mean that we haven’t employed other tricks & tips along the way though, see below:

• Reduced our coffee intake in NZ to once a week, instead of multiple times a week (we haven’t been so disciplined since getting to the States!)
• Saved all of our Airpoints to pay for a couple of the long haul flights
• Simply asked ourselves “would we rather have this here in New Zealand, or have something else in Indonesia/Philippines/etc”. This was actually huge because in these countries we could all eat out for a few dollars, so suddenly a $50 meal in New Zealand seemed much more frivolous.
• Chose countries with low-cost of living and Airbnb’s with good internet so we can still work!
• Made sure all of our medical was up-to-date while it was free in New Zealand
• Purchased as much of our packing list as we could while we still had a good income
• Used Christmas & birthdays in the two years leading up to the trip for other items
• Saved 100% of our annual bonuses for the remaining airline tickets

Other things that we see traveling families doing:

• Affiliate links
• Teaching English online (I have recently started doing this too for a little extra spending money, but have found that I actually love it and find it very rewarding)!
• Online medical careers (Tele-nursing, PTs, speech pathologists, etc)
• Property investments
• Telecommuting in traditional jobs (accountants, consultants, etc)

MEDICAL

This one can be touchy because of the vaccine debate, but there’s more to medical preparation than just vaccines.  As for vaccines, I do not judge either way, I have best friends that do every vaccine when recommended and best friends that don’t vaccinate at all.  I’m simply going to tell you what we chose as a family that practices delayed-vaccinations (one per month beginning at the original recommended time of the NZ schedule).

We did not want to have to have any routine care while traveling so we spent the last month or two getting physicals, updating prescriptions, getting our teeth cleaned, cavities filled, etc.

Prescriptions – thankfully, in our family we have two prescriptions and one is only an emergency inhaler that the boys haven’t used in over a year.  For the other prescription our doctor was able to give us a year’s supply.  That was simple.

Over the counter medicine – We don’t use over the counter medicine much, but did get rehydration salts, ibuprofen and liquid emergency allergy medicine for the kids from the doctor.  We also have DEET bug spray, which is something we never use, however we have opted not to take any malaria precautions (except smart travel decisions) so are compromising with having some DEET.

Essential oils – these are our go-to and we do have a long list of essential oils and products we are taking.  From a first aid standpoint we keep Terrashield bug spray, Lavender, On Guard, Digestzen, Helichrysum, Correct X and Frankincense with us in our backpack at all times.

Malaria – as I said, we are choosing not to take malaria medication.  Ian took this years ago with a negative response and it just isn’t something we are willing to give our children.  Instead, we are avoiding the rainy season in all countries (this means higher prices but less mosquitoes!), we are renting all places with air-conditioning so the bedrooms can be kept shut & mosquito free and for the most part we are not spending extensive time in malaria-prone rural areas.

Vaccines – we visited a travel doctor of Cambodian-decent in New Zealand about 9 months before we left.  Because of our delayed vaccination schedule I needed a lot of time to fit in any additional vaccines.  There are a long list of vaccines to get in SE Asia, so I asked the doctor point blank, if he was taking his children back to Cambodia to see his family what injections would he get.  He recommended typhoid and hepatitis A, so that is what I went with.  After doing further research, I decided not to vaccinate the boys for hepatitis A.  Hepatitis A does not tend to make young children sick, but the risk is in them spreading it via their diapers.  Since Ian & I are the only ones that will be changing their diapers (and we got vaccinated) we decided that they did not need to be vaccinated too.  We currently do not have Africa or South America on our tentative agenda so we did not need to address the Yellow Fever vaccine.

Don’t forget INSURANCE!  We went with World Nomads because their policy fit our needs a little better than the others we considered. There is a lot of fine print so take the time to read it – for example, our policy doesn’t cover an accident from ATV riding but does include Scuba Diving!

SCHOOLING

This was a little bit of a hard decision…  Do we homeschool, world or unschool, do American correspondence school or NZ correspondence school???  There are positive attributes to all of those options, but in the end we chose NZ correspondence school.  Personally I’ve never been a parent that thought homeschooling would be a good fit for ME (I was born a little short of patience) so I quickly decided that I didn’t want responsibility for lesson plans and everything else that goes into homeschooling.  Worldschooling appealed to me (and still does) but came too close to homeschooling for me to be our only source of schooling, so instead we’ve opted to integrate world-schooling into the correspondence school curriculum – this is a win win for our family.  We have projects for every country that we are visiting that Lara is doing in conjunction with her correspondence teacher, with input from us.  We are also implementing as much learning as-we-go as we can.  Unschooling was too free for this A-type mama so we opted against that.  American correspondence school was way too constrictive from a schedule standpoint to work for our globe trotting, which brings us to NZ correspondence school.  So far we are really happy with our decision to go with Te Kura correspondence school.  It isn’t easy as a parent, so from a preparation standpoint I would say STEEL YOURSELF MENTALLY!!  Haha.  We have a teacher that assigns & grades work, she works closely with us on assignments including integrating things from our travels and she answers questions immediately via email.  There are no login requirements which is good for our flexibility and work doesn’t have to be turned in at a particular time either, which is helpful.  The only problem is that as a parent WE are still responsible for actually making sure Lara sits down and does her work, understands the work (there is no live interaction, just online), isn’t bored, does her best, manages her time, etc.  This is no small feat with our bright child and sometimes causes tension in the family…

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We do also have some school materials for the boys.  We have brought along a few books and a few matching games which were simply paper printouts that we had laminated.  Other than that they will be world preschoolers!!

PACKING LIST

Suffice it to say we are huge fans of merino!  It is totally worth the investment because it lasts, it can be worn multiple times without smelling and it dries quickly.  Our favourite brand is Icebreaker personally.

Ian: 2 quick dry shorts, long pants, 3 merino t-shirts, merino sweater, merino button-down shirt, merino underwear & socks, swimsuit, UV shirt, flip flops, Keen water shoes, Marmot rain jacket & toiletries.

Kristi: Merino dress with short sleeves, regular sleeveless dress, quick-dry knee-length skirt, quick dry capri pants, quick dry long pants that also roll up to capris, 2 merino shirts, quick dry sleeveless button-down, merino long-sleeve sweater, yoga pants & shirt, one-piece romper, 2 swimsuits (one-piece and bikini), UV shirt, swimsuit cover up, sun hat, merino socks & regular underclothes, pajamas, flip-flops, Teva sandals, Keen water shoes, Marmot rain jacket & toiletries.

Lara: Dress, 3 merino t-shirts, 2 quick dry shorts (one long and one short), quick dry pants, leggings, skirt, merino sock & regular underclothes, pajamas, 2 swimsuits, UV shirt, sun hat, sandals, Sketcher sneakers, Croc water shoes, Marmot rain jacket, math book, toiletries journal, drawing book & pencils, lovey & Harry Potter stuff…

Boys:  8 outfits (shorts & t-shirts), 2 merino sweaters, 2 merino pajamas, 6 merino socks, 2 pairs of Croc sandals, 2 pairs of Sketchers sneakers, 2 pairs of swimsuits & UV shirts, sun hats, swim diapers, 2 Marmot rain jackets, 2 Peapod sleeping pods & 4 loveys.

Other stuff:  doTERRA products (see below), 3 sets of snorkels, 1 set of fins, 2 life jackets for boys, a few books for the boys & schooling games, 3 quick dry towels, waterproof bags, 5 Lifestraws, faucet water filter, 3 stainless steel water bottles, 5 stainless steel straws, 2 Ergo carriers, 2 car seats, 1 double stroller, electronics (this will be a separate post because this is Ian’s territory).

DoTERRA products:  Verage, Amavi & HD Clear skincare regimes, Lifelong Vitality vitamins, Terrazyme (digestive enzyme capsules), OnGuard capsules (immune support), DDR Prime capsules (cellular and autoimmune support), Correct X ointment, Deep Blue rub (for sore joints & muscles), bath bar, shampoo & conditioner, hair serum, 2 diffusers (one for boys’ room and one for living room), OnGuard toothpaste, lotion, sanitising spray, Terrashield bug spray, baby diaper cream & the following essential oils:

Lemon, peppermint, breathe, frankincense, oregano, tea tree, OnGuard, lavender, digestzen, emotional aromatherapy roller balls, arborvitae, balance, clarycalm, copaiba, lavender peace, Terrashield, fractionated coconut oil, Hawaiian sandalwood, helichrysum, lemongrass, melissa, past tense & purify plus a selection of homemade roller balls.

** And believe it or not, we are only at about 30KG for the entire family!! **