Budgeting for full-time Family travel (and how to budget for a family gap year!).

This is the big question. And the most commonly asked question when we tell people we’ve been travelling the world as a family for FIVE years!

How on earth do you budget for a family gap year?

The truth? It really doesn’t matter how long you’re travelling for…

We reckon that as a traveller or a travel family the way to work out the budget for extended travel is actually a fairly standard method for whatever length you’re venturing.

The figures obviously vary (a LOT) and ultimately depend on how much you have to start out with.

But the actual METHOD of HOW to work out a budget for full-time travel, or HOW to work out a budget for six months family travel; or HOW to budget for a family gap year IS THE same…

So how much does it cost?

I’ll explain more below about how much it costs to travel the world as a family later.

But first, here is the HOW to set up your budget for full-time family travel. 

Talking about budgeting and financing dreams is something that’s very personal. (This blog is something I’ve toyed with the idea of writing since we started travelling full time FIVE years ago!).  

But in finally writing it (and pushing publish) I hope it inspires and gives at least one other family the final push (shove) to realise they can do it too. 

This is how we do it. 

Setting up your finances and budget for a family gap year

The first thing is to imagine your bank accounts split into FIVE different categories: 

• Daily accommodation 
• Daily expenses
• Travel
• Pre-travel costs
• Splurge

If I break these accounts down further to explain each one, it’s going to make more sense.

Categorising expenses to budget for a family gap year

• Accommodation: This is a set amount you have allocated in the budget for long-term family travel just for accommodation (each day of the week).

• Expenses (daily): This includes FOOD, daily travel costs (eg. Taxis, Uber, taking a train to the airport) or entry to a museum; buying a new pot of moisturizer; toothpaste…

• Travel: This is FLIGHTS (the biggest one) and larger train costs (that overnight train in India; a private driver over the border to Syria or hiring a car to road-trip in Saudi Arabia or Oman). And, VISAS.

• Pre-Trip Costs: Costs that begin before you’ve set foot on a plane. Vaccinations for travel; a new backpack; hiking shoes and, travel insurance.  Shop around, choose quality items and these will be a one-off cost (your backpack will last for all future adventures and investing in good travel-trousers means you won’t be sitting waiting for your trackpants to dry). 

• Splurge: My favourite account; THIS is for all those bucket list adventures that come with big costs (overnight camel safari in India; visiting the remote Aral Sea in Uzbekistan or a day at Edo Wonderland in Japan). 

Alright, these are the accounts to create a budget for family travel.  And now I am going to share our FORMULA with you.  

To make it a bit clearer I’m going to make up some figures and show you how we then calculate what it will cost for six months of family travel. Or how to wrangle it and budget for a family gap year…

FIXED and FLEXIBLE costs in your family gap year budget 

There are TWO main categories for your family gap year budget:

• FIXED costs and
• FLEXIBLE costs.  

Assuming you choose a fixed amount for your ‘Travel’ budget (flights etc) then you have fixed costs for Travel, Pre-Trip and Splurge.  

But your Accommodation and Daily Expenses change depending on how long you are travelling for… 

• FIXED: Travel, Pre-Trip Costs and Splurge
• FLEXIBLE: Accommodation and Daily Expenses

Creating a formula (yes; you need one)

Even for those not mathemetically minded you do need some kind of formula in order to be able to jiggle the figures.

How much will it cost to travel as a family for six months? What does it cost for a family gap year? How much does it cost for three months?

Let’s say for easy calculations we make it $100 NZD per day for accommodation.

We will start with giving a rough figure to each category: 

• Accommodation (daily): $100 NZD per day
• Expenses (daily): $100 NZD per day
• Travel: $20,000 NZD (fixed)
• Pre-Trip Costs: $3000 NZD (fixed)
• Splurge: $10,000 NZD (fixed)

But obviously these figures will change depending on your personal travel style. (Do you want luxury or budget?).

Or whether you are trying to stretch the budget and choose cheap places to travel or whether you want a shorter but more luxurious trip in Europe or North America… 

I have just made up these figures for easy calculations and they are in NZD. (You can change to USD below using the same formula). 

Budgeting for six months of family travel

Using the fixed and flexible costs in a formula, choose some figures that you think will be appropriate for your family.

And here is how to work out a budget for six months family travel…

Let’s say accommodation and daily expenses are $100 NZD each per day.

And for six months of travel that is 180 days.  

• Accommodation: $100 x 180 days = $18,000
• Daily Expenses: $100 x 180 days = $18,000
• Travel: $20,000
• Pre-Trip: $3000
• Splurge: $10,000

• TOTAL: $69,000 NZD

Using these figures, the total budget for six months of family travel would be $69,000 NZD.

So what changes if you want to travel for longer? 

Now we can adjust the flexible costs (daily costs increase as there are more days to account for). And see how much it increases by if we travel for longer.  

Let’s try working out the budget for nine months of family travel around the world…

• Accommodation: $100 x 270 days = $27,000
• Daily Expenses: $100 x 270 days = $27,000
• Travel: $20,000
• Pre-Trip: $3000
• Splurge: $10,000

• TOTAL: $82,000 NZD

How about a plan to budget for a family gap year?

Now we can look at the same formula but increase the flexible daily expenses again.  (And now note I have increased the Splurge and Travel account too).  

• Accommodation: $100 x 365 days = $36,500
• Daily Expenses: $100 x 365 days = $36,500
• Travel: $25,000
• Pre-Trip: $3000
• Splurge: $15,000

• TOTAL: $111,000 NZD 

So there you have it.  This is the formula for how we work out a budget for long-term family travel…  

The amounts can change and you can play with all of those figures. But after FIVE years of family travel this is how we have found best to organize our budget for a family gap year. 

How to coordinate your budget in practice

The next step is how to coordinate that in practice.  Because obviously you need some of that money before leaving home (to book flights, pay for pre-trip costs, insurance etc).  

• Tip: Important! You don’t want it all in one bank account where you can just see it going down.

If you have all the money in one account you won’t haven’t accounted for whether its flights or splurge-style adventures consuming your daily travel expenses! 

It is also worth noting there are extremes of how organsied people are with accountability and budgeting for family travel.  

I know families that account for each and every expense (breakfast, lunch, pharmacy costs, water, coffees, alcohol) – we aren’t that extreme! (Or perhaps, we aren’t that organised in accounting!).

This method works for us and seems to be the most straightforward way to coordinate budgeting for a family gap year.

Set up different bank accounts

You don’t need loads of new accounts.  But we set up four new bank accounts with different names.  

This way we can see how much is left in our allocated ‘Travel’ account (that is where the money for flights is coming out from. 

• Allowance (Accommodation and Daily Expenses)
• Travel
• Pre-Trip Costs
• Splurge

Pay yourself a weekly allowance

We actually have a weekly ‘allowance’ from our Accommodation and Daily Expenses fund going into our cheque account each week.

It’s almost as if we are getting a salary each week; except the money is already ours! 

Let’s say for example your accommodation and daily expenses are $100 each per day.

Then your weekly allowance would be $1400 once per week.  (This is based on ($100 x 7) + ($100 x 7) = $1400). 

Unexpected and miscellaneous expenses

It is always important to make sure you have access to some of emergency fund.  It doesn’t have to be massive.

But you do need to make sure you have a little bit tucked away for unexpected expenses.  (This could be if you miss your train and need to book last minute accommodation. Or you suddenly realise the flight ticket you purchased didn’t include enough baggage).  

It’s part of travel to expect the unexpected and be prepared so you can be flexible when needed…

So how much does it cost to travel the world as a family fulltime? 

You know above I gave a figure of $100 NZD per day for accommodation? And $100 NZD per day for daily expenses? 

Well, this was actually the figure we set off with in 2019. This was how much it cost us per day to travel full-time as a family in 2019.

But realistically (I have to add this disclosure and be honest) times are changing. And the truth is that now that figure is pretty darn stingy for most places these days…  

So, how much does it cost to travel full-time as a family? 

This really is an ever-changing figure.  As above, I could update this once a week.  

If your travel style means staying in one place in Southeast Asia for 90 days and renting an AirBnB, your daily costs are going to be very low.  

If you’re travelling in East Asia and moving fast these are going to be much higher.  (Over one month in Taiwan our accommodation averaged $100 NZD per night and our average daily spend was $90 NZD).  

Some guesthouses we stayed in India costs $35 NZD per night for of family of four.  But this year the best option we found in Dhaka, Bangladesh cost $170 NZD per night. 

So you can see it varies greatly. 

And you need a budget for full-time family travel so you can choose accordingly (destinations AND accommodation options) that fit your travel style and budget.

Budget for a family gap year – how much does it really cost?  

A generic search of the internet suggests that the average cost to travel the world for a year as a solo traveller is between $25,000 – $30,000 USD for 12 months. 

This is stock standard information from the net that is right in the mid-range of what it costs to travel solo.  But there are some financial advantages particular to travelling as a family. (The first saving is with accommodation where it doesn’t go up in price per night per person).  

And there is also the advantage of travelling with young kids (under 12 years old). They can often enter places free or share a bed (and they eat less too).  

You could travel faster (if you’re up for it) or in a more luxurious style and it might cost $40,000 USD per person. Or you could be much more frugal; and it might cost less than that too. 

I reckon – after four years of travelling full-time – and not being afraid to rough-it or splurge on bucket-list adventures; it costs a family of four with young children $120,000 NZD ($77,000 USD) to travel the world for a year.  

This is adjusted to account for inflation (ugh) and rising travel costs (sorry). (It’s true. It didn’t cost this much to travel for a year pre-Covid).

And, I haven’t broken this down into a per-person/per year cost as I believe it’s different (and one of the great perks) of travelling as a family!

Because after all, it seems to sound much better to have lower daily expenses and a bigger account for bucket-list splurge adventures!

What’s next? 

I hope this helps and inspires at least one other family to realise they CAN do it.  Fulltime travel with kids or budgeting for a family gap year probably isn’t as expensive as you think.  And it is a hugely variable figure.  

If you are considering long-term family travel and are (hopefully) inspired by a first glance of a budget then the next step is the best one…

To get out that map and start researching the places YOU really want to see. And what kind of adventures YOU each want to do!

And if you have any questions, comment below or send us an email. 

We’d love to hear from you!