Once you make the decision to travel, you have to figure out HOW you can make it possible. A dream without a plan is just a wish. To actually make it a reality, you have to plan, you have to figure it all out, you have to make changes, sacrifices. Most of all, you have to find a way and no matter what, you have to commit 100%. You have to give it your best shot, because if you don't, you could be sitting in that same place, 10 years down the track, wondering what life could have been like. After all, it's your life, you get to live it once, so be sure to live it well.
So, my partner Leigh and I had made the decision to take off, pack up, and go and do a lap of Australia with our dog Brutus. Next, we had to plan how long we were going to be away for, what we were going to travel in and how to fund the trip. If you can plan how long you're going to be away for, what you're going to be driving and sleeping in, you can work out a budget. We had a four wheel drive, but it wasn't suitable to tow a caravan, we didn't have a caravan, we had some savings but no income to rely on other than our pay from work and Leigh's long service leave. How would we know how much it would cost to do this trip? What do other people spend the they do it? Finance and budgeting is a very personal and private topic, we could only find very general information on it, nothing specific. We needed to know roughly how long we'd have to budget for. How long does a trip around Australia take? How long did we want to take? How long could we take? Australia is a big country, there is a lot to see, if you follow the A1 all the way around the mainland, it alone is over 20,000km! How long would it take to do that? And what about getting off the highway and visiting places? There was so much unknown but we were so excited to figure it all out. This was all new to us, we had no idea how long it'd take, so, we started networking. We spoke to people who'd done the big lap, those who had travelled by caravan and four wheel drive, people who'd spent any decent amount of time traveling anywhere in Australia. We read magazines, joined FaceBook groups, watched shows on TV, searched on the internet. We soaked up any information we could get and came to conclusion that a minimum of six months was needed. We also learned that a well equipped four-wheel drive would be best to tackle the different terrains of Australia, to be able to tow a caravan and to be able to tackle some of Australias famous four-wheel drive tracks. A caravan or camper trailer was going to be our best source of accomodation, this way we could go just about anywhere and where ever you decide to park would be home! It's the cheapest and most convenient way to explore our country.
We began to research places we'd like to visit, what highlights we'd really want to see and experience. We started to make a list of what to see and do in each state, the places that are "must do's" the places that are hidden gems. Being a couple of beach bums and living by the coast, we naturally decided we'd follow the coast line around the country. There was no way we'd miss the famous red centre either, we were keen to learn about Australian history and culture and to be able to experience this was high on our list.
So back to the budget, you can't travel without the cash. You won't get far without it. You either need a decent amount of savings or some kind of income or both. You have to figure out how much life on the road will cost for you. We are all different, we all have different expenses, different bills, mortgages that we owe a lot, mortgages that we owe a little, some people are receiving Centrelink payments, some aren't, some of us have a lot of savings, some don't. Some people already have a caravan, a suitable four wheel drive, investment properties almost paid off, small mortgages. We had neither of those. What would we have to do to make this possible?
We learnt that everyone traveling Australia by four wheel drive and caravan likes to be an expert on the budget topic "sell the house" "never sell your house" "pay your bills in advance" "pay your bills by direct debit". At the end of the day, you have got to do what ever works for you. What ever is right for you. It doesn't matter what the person next to you is doing because we all have different lives, different bank accounts, different assets and lets face it, different values. Some value investment properties, some value investing money in other ways or using that money to live off while traveling. What ever you decide, you need enough funds for EVERYTHING! Your vehicle, your van or camper trailer, all your gear, food, fuel, camping & entertainment, the weekly budget. You need enough funds for your bills too, your mobile phones, insurance, car rego, maintenence on the van, car services, new tyres and even new equipment such as tools and camping gear, because you never think of everything when you first pack, you will always need more gear! You get the picture, there's a lot of expenses involved. We sat down and put together a table of our yearly expenses. WOW! it adds up really quick. To be able to maintain what we had and not be working just didn't seem achievable to save alone. We'd have to save for a long time to have enough funds to cover all our expences.
Our situation at the time - we owned two houses, one was our first home, now an investment property and the other, our home we were living in. We owed a fair bit on our mortgages and if we rented them both out, we'd have to pay for the remainder of the expenses as rent alone would not cover the repayments, let alone the associated expences. Leigh had 12 weeks long service leave accrued in an account, I had a few weeks annual leave, we had some savings, but only enough to survive three months.
So, what were our options? Where would we begin? We met with our financial advisor and came to this;
1) Rent both houses out.
The rent would not cover the repayments.
2) Work and save
Work while traveling, save before we leave - for all we needed from the car, the van to the bills.
3) Sell one house
Sell and reduce our expenses by cutting out the extra insurance, rates, real estate fees etc and save every penny we could manage.
Option 3 seemed to be the most logical. for 1 would have been too costly, 2 would mean too much work and being stuck in the city and 3 could actually make this dream achievable. We knew we would have to save as much as we could too. All the money we could get was going to help us down the track. Our financial advisor helped us to plan what we would no longer need, what we would need, how much savings we should have in the bank at all times, what our mortgage would need to be reduced to to have the rent cover the repayments, or almost cover the repayments. We decided the most logical thing to do would be to get the ball rolling, sell the house etc and THEN, and only then, we could figure out how much money we would actually have, then we could buy and car and a van to suit the budget. If we came out with no money to spare, we would save for our car and van from scratch. "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" is what our financial advisor would always say. Best advise we could get on planning the budget for a trip like this. Planning the weekly budget is important, but also plan to have money for when the "shit hits the fan" because shit does happen! It always seems to be at at the worst possible times too. Wait until you read about our first three months on the road!!!
Anyway, we spoke with our real estate and had our investment property valued. The real estate said, due to the condition of how the house was, we'd be running the risk of losing out on a better sae if we couldn't display it how we wanted. If we could get in there, put in some work, we could potentially get tens of thousands more for our sale. We hit a little road block. Our tenants lease wasn't yet due to expire for a few months. We wanted to sell our investment property as this was the best option financially. But what were our options? we could wait ta few months and then move them out and get tenants for our newer place at the same time or sell it with them in it and pay capital gains tax. BUT if we were living in it, if we could make it our primary place of residence, we could avoid capital gains tax. Our real estate suggested we offer our tenants to 'swap' houses. Our new house was in the same suburb and we would have to put tenants in the to head off on our trip anyway. There was no way we could afford 100% of our mortgage repayments while away. It was worth a shot, e arranged for our tenants looked through our new home. Guess what? they were agreeable to swap homes with us for a little extra rent! Our new home was bigger with an extra bedroom. Turns out they were expecting another baby and needing to move to a bigger home after their lease was up anyway! It's strange how things began to fall in to place, as if it were mean to be. Don't get me wrong, there was a LOT of hard work involved, we were faced with challenges the whole way, but still, little things like this made us realise we were on the right track. We wanted to get in to the rental property to sell, so we could put in the work to fix it up, prepare it for the market and display it how we wanted to get the most out of the sale. The agreement with the tenants was for a six month lease but at the last second, they turned around and said they’re not willing to move unless it’s a twelve month lease! We were literally packed and about to swap houses! What else could we do but say okay?! And that was that, a minimum twelve months we'd be away for. If the shit hit the fan, we'd have to stay else where. We would just have to give this our best ever shot to make it work, 110% commitment. It was game on!
We moved in to our investment property and with the help of our family and friends, we cleand the place up from top to bottom. We scrubbed floors, replaced carpet, painted walls, perfected the lawn, stained the deck, re-designed with new (second hand) furniture and re decorated on a budget. It took twelve long hard slogging weeks to perfect it. The house was ready for sale. It sold within 10 weeks, we rented back off the new owners for six weeks to give ourselves time to prepare, to resign from work, save some more money before hitting the road, buy our van, our car, pack what we needed in to the van, sell what we didn’t need and pack the rest in to storage.
Now it was set in stone, it was time to resign from work. We had to give notice that we were leaving. This wasn’t easy as we’d both worked so hard to get to where we were. We were happy in our jobs and things were going well. We had to constantly remind ourselves that at the end of the day, we had bigger and better things planned. We had to remind ourselves what our plan was and why we were doing this. This was a serious step in making our dream a reality. Once that resignation is in writing, there is no turning back, shit was getting real. Our house was sold and we had sold our home, we had tenants in the new home. We felt almost homeless! Knowing all this was set in stone was our motivation to keep moving forward. There certainly was no turning back now.
The next thing for us was to wait for settlement, pay out all outstanding loans except the home loan, buy the vehicle, the caravan and the gear. We did a lot of research on what car we’d buy and what would suit the budget. We considered buying a second hand vehicle, Thi would keep our expense low and give us more cash to travel with. We hit a little wall here, we could not decide at all, but then, a man at woasked if we'd thought about an Isuzu. No, we hadn't. We hadn't heard much about them at all and assumed they were out of our price range. He knew someone who ran a four-wheel drive tour/teaching business, and he couldn't recommend an Isuzu D-Max highly enough. So, we took his advise and checked them out. We test drove them, searched the markets and BAM, there it was, an ex demo model 2015 Isuzu D-Max with 32,000km on the clock, end of plate clearance, end of financial year sales, it fit the budget. I called the dealer, I said we want that vehicle, I've done my research, we have a 2hr drive to pick it up, whats your best price? He phoned back and had dropped $5,000 off just like that! It already fit the budget so DONE, I paid a deposit over the phone and we picked it up the next day. Now the Isuzu was our best choice because they have a 3.5 tonne towing capacity, 5 year warranty, capped servicing and free road side assistance, how could we not? They have a good name and there are Isuzu service centres all around Australia, even in the more remote towns. We saved ourselves a lot of money by getting an ex demo model from the dealer and I was lucky enough to get us a bargain! All that hard work and researching paid off, it was all coming together.
As for the van, we did our research. We needed to know what we were planning to do on our travels so that we could decide what van would best suit us. We were planning to free camp. We wanted to camp on beaches, in the bush, where ever there was fishing and a good view! We wanted something light and easy to tow, something small and off road. We wanted to be able to take the van where ever we wanted to - the beach, the bush down four wheel drive tracks, you name it. We also wanted something to suit the budget, the less the better and we didn't have a lot to spare. We decided to get a Jayco Swan Outback. The percect van for beginners and explorers. It was a second hand van off a couple who‘d had it from new.
Next, the car had to be booked in to have after market accessories added.The car was done within two weeks, we had time to run around and do our last minute things and we were ready to hit the road! It’s also a good idea to pay as many bills in advance as you can. We did this with money we saved along the way and it reduced our expences while on the road. We also paid off all loans except the home loan and put our homeloan on interest only. We had good bye celebrations with work, family and friends. It isn’t easy saying goodbye, to leave your loved ones behind, to not know when you will meet again. It’s an emotional and difficult step. For us, thinking about the times we’d share with them when they come and meet us on our travels was important.
So there you have it. Our dream, our plan, our reality. Every dream starts as a wish, it’s the planning and taking that first step that makes it become your reality. People often say they want to travel, but can’t go just yet. There is always going to be ‘something’ that can stop you from going. But if you really want something, you can find a way to make it happen. If you can’t leave just yet, you can certainly start planning. Once you plan, the rest falls in to place as soon as you take that first step.
What is it that’s holding you back? What ever it is, you’re never going to get out here if you dont start planning and take the first step! Get out there, start networking, ask how others are doing it. There could be a way to make it work for you, wethers it's now or in a few years time, start planning and make it happen 🇦🇺
