Away With The Steiners

Budgeting For Full-Time Family Travel (How To Budget For A Gap Year).

Sarah Steiner

Wondering where to start 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 SIX 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 nearly SEVEN 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. 

Creating a budget for a family gap year and wondering how much it costs to travel the world as a family for a year. Here on the overnight train to Karachi, Pakistan with kids.
First Class overnight to Karachi, Pakistan (enjoying my chai for 10c a cup).

Setting Up Your Finances

Preparing for a family gap year is a massive undertaking, but the secret to staying afloat financially is organisation. To keep your budget manageable, think of your finances as five distinct “buckets”.

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

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

The Five Essential Budget Categories

This is a big part of creating a budget for a family gap year. Categorising your spending prevents “budget creep” and ensures you don’t run out of funds mid-adventure.

Here is how to categorise your expenses and the formula to make your dream trip a reality.

1. Daily Accommodation

This is a fixed daily allowance dedicated solely to where you sleep. Whether it’s an Airbnb, a boutique hotel, or a guest house, having a set nightly limit helps you choose stays that fit your long-term goals.

2. Daily Living Expenses

This bucket covers the “rhythm of life” on the road:

3. Major Travel & Logistics

This category is for the “big moves” between destinations.

It includes:

4. Pre-Trip Essentials

These are the one-off costs incurred before you even leave home.

Investing here often saves money later:

5. The “Splurge” Fund

This is my favourite account and the most important category for morale.

It’s reserved for those “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences that don’t fit into a daily budget, such as:

An adventure to get there but two days at the remote Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was one of our most treasured adventures!

Calculating The Budget For a Family Gap Year

Now that we’ve categorised your spending, let’s look at how to assemble the actual budget for a family gap year.

To do this, we need to distinguish between Fixed and Flexible costs.

Fixed vs. Flexible Costs

Understanding the difference between these two is the key to “wrangling” your budget. It allows you to see how much your trip costs just to “get out the door” versus how much it costs to stay on the road.

The Budget Formula (Yes; You Need One)

Even if you aren’t a “math person,” you need a formula to help you jiggle the figures. This formula allows you to test different scenarios: What if we travel for three months instead of six? What if we stay in cheaper guesthouses?

To demonstrate, let’s use some hypothetical figures in NZD. (You can swap these for USD or any other currency using the same logic).

1. Assign Your Estimates

For this example, we will assume a mid-range budget:

2. Apply the Formula

To find your “Magic Number,” multiply your flexible daily costs by the number of days you’ll be away, then add your fixed totals.

(Daily Accommodation+Daily Expenses) × Days + (Travel+Pre-Trip+Splurge) = Total Cost

3. Calculate: 6-Month Trip

If you travel for 180 days (approx. 6 months) using the figures above:

Clutching millions in Shiraz, Iran.

What if You Travel Longer?

One of the most helpful aspects of this formula is seeing how the total budget shifts when you extend your trip. Because your Fixed Costs (flights, gear, and insurance) stay relatively the same whether you are gone for six months or nine, the “cost per day” actually starts to drop the longer you stay away.

However, your Flexible Costs will naturally increase because you have more days to account for.

Let’s see how the maths changes if we extend that six-month trip to nine months (270 days):

Calculate: 9-Month Trip

Using our same daily estimates, here is how the budget scales:

GRAND TOTAL 9-Months: $87,000 NZD

Note: Even though you added three full months of travel (a 50% increase in time), your total budget only increased by about 26% ($18,000). This is because your fixed costs—like your flights and gear—are already “paid for.”

The 12-Month Plan: Budgeting for a Family Gap Year

Finally, let’s look at the “Big One”: a full year of global adventure.

For a trip of this scale, we have adjusted the flexible costs to cover 365 days. We’ve also bumped up the Travel and Splurge accounts to account for the extra ground you’ll likely cover and the additional “must-do” experiences that pop up over 12 months.

Here is how the formula looks for a full year on the road to Budget for a Family Gap Year:

The One-Year Calculation

GRAND TOTAL ONE-YEAR: $111,000 NZD

Why This Method Works

This isn’t just theory; after six years of full-time family travel, this is the exact system we use to keep our finances in check.

The beauty of this framework is that it is entirely customizable. You can “play” with these figures until they fit your reality:

By breaking your dream into these five buckets, the daunting task of “saving for a gap year” becomes a clear, actionable plan. You aren’t just saving for a “trip”; you are funding specific categories that guarantee your family’s comfort, mobility, and memories.

Putting the Gap Year Budget into Practice

Once you have your “Magic Number,” the next challenge is managing it on the road.

It’s easy to feel a sense of wealth when you see a large sum in your bank account, right?! But without a system, that money can vanish faster than expected.

Tip: Avoid the “One Big Bucket” Trap

The biggest mistake you can make is keeping all your travel funds in a single account. If you do, you won’t know if your daily coffee habit is eating into your flight fund, or if an expensive flight just wiped out your “Splurge” budget.

Watching one giant balance slowly dwindle is also a recipe for “budget anxiety.” Instead, create a system that keeps you accountable without requiring you to track every single cent.

The Four-Account System

You don’t need a complex accounting degree—just four separate bank accounts (or digital “envelopes” in your banking app) named after your categories:

  1. Allowance Account: For Daily Accommodation and Daily Expenses.
  2. Travel Account: Specifically for flights, trains, and visas.
  3. Pre-Trip Account: For the gear and insurance costs you pay before leaving.
  4. Splurge Account: Reserved strictly for those bucket-list adventures.

By separating these, you can look at your “Travel” account and know exactly how many flights you have left in the tank, regardless of what you spent on dinner last night.

Pay Yourself a “Travel Salary

This is one of our secrets to stress-free long-term travel. We pay ourselves a weekly allowance – like a Travel Salary!

Rather than pulling from your main savings whenever you need cash, set up an automatic weekly transfer from your Allowance Account into your Daily Spending Account.

It’s like getting a weekly salary, even though the money is already yours. This creates a psychological boundary that keeps your spending in check.

Maths for the Weekly Allowance

Using our previous example of $100 for accommodation and $100 for daily expenses:

Every Monday, $1,400 lands in your spending account. That is your “limit” for the week. If you stay under it, you have a little extra for the following week. If you go over, you know you need to find a cheaper guesthouse or cook at home for a few days to balance the scales.

This method is the perfect middle ground. You don’t have to be the person recording every bottle of water in a spreadsheet, but you’ll always have a high-level view of your financial health. 

Cha-ching! Show me the money, baby!

Unexpected or 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 first set off with in 2019. This was how much it cost us per day to travel full-time as a family in our first year.

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

So, how much does it cost now 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. 

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.

A splurge-but-oh-so-worth-it adventure to the Edge of the World in Saudi Arabia.

Budget For a Family Gap Year

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).  

Then 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. 

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).

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!

Wishing for a pot of gold somewhere in Kuala Lumpur?

So 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. Plus 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.

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

If you have any questions, comment below or send us an email. We’d love to hear from you! 

Travel Planning for a Family Gap Year

These are the companies we use while traveling as a family and that we would recommend to anyone planning and booking travel. 

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