Thinking about long-term family travel? Ben and Claire share the real numbers behind leaving the UK, from savings and recurring income to travel insurance and the ongoing costs of life on the road.

Most of what you’ll read about families who leave conventional life behind skips straight to the beach. Understandably, it’s the nice part. But the parents who write to us with the most urgent questions never ask about the beach first. They ask what it actually cost, in real numbers, to get there.

So here’s ours, as honestly as we can lay it out.

The starting pot: £60,000

This was the figure we agreed we needed sitting in the bank before we’d feel comfortable leaving, not a guess, but a number we arrived at together as the point where the decision stopped feeling reckless and started feeling responsible. Alongside that lump sum, we have ongoing recurring income arriving daily, weekly and monthly from businesses Ben runs online. We’re keeping the detail of those businesses vague here deliberately, not because we’re hiding something shameful, but because we don’t want this platform to become a funnel for them. What matters for you, reading this, is simply that the trip isn’t being funded purely by savings running down to zero. There’s income still coming in behind it.

What we raised by selling things

We didn’t sell everything, more on that below, but what we did sell raised roughly £3,000–£3,500. That included several bikes from the garage, my car (owned outright, no finance to settle), and furniture, much of which we sold directly to the tenants moving into our house. Selling straight to the incoming tenants is a genuinely useful tip if you’re in the same position: no separate buyers to find, no items to move, and everyone gets what they need in one transaction.

What we kept, and what it costs to keep it

We chose not to sell the house. Instead, we let it out to tenants, and that rental income now covers our mortgage, car payments, and a handful of other ongoing UK costs, meaning we’re not paying out of pocket for anything back home while we travel. It also means we haven’t burned every bridge; there’s a version of “coming home” still intact if we ever need it.

Belongings we weren’t ready to part with went into storage. We use a local company in Hull, an indoor, air-conditioned unit, roughly 75 by 75 feet, at £90 every four weeks.

We also went through our subscriptions and cancelled everything we genuinely didn’t need, saving somewhere between £200 and £300 a month. Full disclosure: Claire still had a smirk on her face when we discussed this, so there may be one or two survivors in the background. We’re only human.

Insurance: £2,250 for the year

We took out a full year’s worldwide travel insurance through Holiday Extras, at a cost of around £2,250. If you’re weighing up whether that’s worth it, here’s our answer: yes. Within the first few weeks, Ben came down with vertigo badly enough to need hospital treatment in Madrid, two to three days of being dizzy and unwell. The insurance covered it, and the claim, which Ben filled out himself, is being processed as we write this. If you’re planning something similar, proper annual cover isn’t the place to economise.

Day-to-day cost of living, country by country

None of the figures below include accommodation, they’re purely what we’ve spent on food, drink and daily extras. They shift a lot depending on whether we have a kitchen, but it’s not the only factor: the region itself matters too. Spain, for instance, simply had a higher cost of living day to day than the regions we’ve visited since, independent of whether we could cook.

• Spain, around €145 a day, excluding accommodation, while staying somewhere with a kitchen. We cooked our own breakfasts, snacks and some dinners, and ate out roughly once a day plus drinks, coffees and ice creams.
• Albania, around €100 a day over ten days, with no kitchen and breakfast included, so every other meal, snack and drink was bought.
• Montenegro, also around €100 a day, again no kitchen, breakfast included, everything else purchased.
• Croatia, currently under €100 a day, staying at an all-inclusive-style hotel with breakfast and a drinks package included (we chose more comfort here specifically so our parents, who were visiting, could have a proper holiday feel too).

What’s gone wrong, cost-wise, so far

Seven weeks in, nothing major. A few hundred pounds lost from leaving one piece of accommodation a day early and rebooking elsewhere. Around £400 lost cancelling a flight to Italy after we changed our route. Small, forgivable numbers, not the kind of mistake that threatens the trip.

If you’re doing the maths on your own version of this, the honest summary is: build a floor before you leave (savings plus some form of ongoing income), keep one asset generating money if you can (ours is the house), insure properly, and expect the day-to-day spend to swing hard depending on whether you can cook your own food.

Our Cost Checklist Before Leaving

• Savings target ✓
• Recurring income ✓
• Property plan ✓
• Insurance ✓
• Storage ✓
• Subscription audit ✓

What else is possible, once the numbers are actually written down instead of just imagined?

---

Related reading: The Turning Point: How We Finally Decided to Leave · What It Actually Costs Us to Live in Spain, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia · Can You Take a Career Break From the NHS to Travel With Your Family?