How We Did It!

You honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments?

This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.

Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in the movie Fight Club

Here, you can benefit from our experience as minimalists, who retired early, sold most of our possessions and rented out the house. We do not purport to be experts, but this is what worked for us!

Our general tips should apply worldwide, but we are UK based, so a few aspects are UK specific.

Getting Ready for Life on the Road

1. Decluttering

1. Getting Rid of STUFF! – ‘pieces of string too short for further use’ – if this is you, help is here to make getting rid of STUFF manageable & environmentally friendly.
2. My Tips on eBay Selling – make cash from your trash!
3. How to Cram Your Life into a Box on Wheels! – “If you possess something but you can’t give it away, then you don’t possess it. It possesses you.”

2. Financing – You DON’T Have to be Rich to Live Your Dreams!

1. 10 Tips on Letting Out Your House to Fund your Travels – we’re not millionaires, so this was our key to livin’ the dream and never working again!
2. The Question that No-One Dares Ask – “What Does It Cost You to Tour Full Time?!” – you might be too polite to ask how much we spend, but I have saved your blushes! 
3. 10 Tips to Save Money While Caravanning – 10 tips that saved us £1000’s!
4. Top Tips from the Our Tour Blog
   1. Funding Freedom From Corporate Life to a Life of Travel – This mini-guide from the bloggers behind “Our Tour” is free to download from Amazon. Written by a couple who gained financial independence decades earlier than us but in much the same way, I wish I had read it years ago!
   2. Dreaming the Motorhome Dream? Take Action Now
   3. Funding a Long-Term Motorhome Tour, Buying a Dream
   4. Into Our Fifth Year of Financial Independence – some home truths & advice from “Our Tour”.
5. How to Make Money on the Road – From Matt at Expert Vagabond
   1. 35 Best Travel Jobs – a useful guide to careers involving travel or location-independent jobs to help you work and travel the world.
   2. 38 Creative Side Hustles to Make Extra Money – I am not sure about selling your plasma & doing clinical trials, but this blog features some good ideas! 
   3. How I Saved Money to Travel – don’t believe me and ‘Our Tour’ that you don’t need to be Rich if you track your spending and cut out non-essentials?!
6. From Rest Less, the job site for the over 50s.
   1. 8 Roles That Will Take You Around The World
   2. 11 Business Ideas That You Can Start From Home – including a few that you can start from a caravan.  
7. If you’re not there yet, here’s how to fit more travel around a full-time job on a budget
   1. How To Travel More With A Full-Time Job – from the “It’s All Trip To Me” blog. 
   2. 18 Best Travel Resources – great hacks budget travel hacks from “The Planking Traveler” blog. 

 Going for It!

1. From First Timers to Full Timers in Two Bottles of Champagne! – learn:
   1. How to budget and fund going full time
   2. The rules and regulations you need to know
   3. How to de-clutter and downsize
   4. How to avoid killing your partner
2. Carry on Caravanning – Part 1 – how we made the decision to tour full time & how we finance it.
3. Fur Babies in Franc: From Wage Slaves To Living The Dream – stories from our first year of touring, now immortalised in print.
4. Pups on Piste: A Ski Season In Italy – stories from our first ski season.
5. Dog on the Rhine: From Rat Race To Road Trip – our second year; touring through France, Germany, The Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia & Italy. 
6. Dogs ‘n Dracula: A Road Trip Through Romania – our third year, crossing Slovenia & Hungary to spend 3-months in Romania.
7. It Never Rains But It Paws: A Road Trip Through Politics And A Pandemic – with Brexit looming, and the chance we could be trapped, we escape Britain, only to find ourselves locked down in Europe’s No.1 coronavirus hotspot!
8. To Hel In A Hound Cart: Journey To The Centre Of Europe – released from lockdown in Italy, but with border closures preventing our return to the UK, we set out for Spain. If we get there, it will be third time lucky, but post-pandemic, everything we knew about travelling had changed and we ended up in Poland.

The purpose of my blog is to inform and entertain. It is not professional advice. Please see my Disclaimer for more information.