Day 268 / 2016 - Full Time on the Road Life So Far Part 1

 We have based ourselves Walkamin for several months. A house sit has become available once again for up to 12 months if we like so here we are again. We have found house sitting a good way to save money and explore a region like a local would.

I though this would be a good opportunity to pause and reflect on the past almost three years of living on the road. What were some of the plans we made before we started, how have they panned out and would we have made the same plans if we knew then what we know now.

Pay off the mortgage and all personal debt before we leave. This is without doubt a big yes. One of the main reasons we have been able to continue is because we have no personal debt or regular commitments apart from phone / internet, vehicle insurances and vehicle registration. So when funds get a bit low we can just hole up untill they build back up again. In our case we catch up to the budget (as we receive no pension or benefits living only on savings and rental income).

Make and stick to a budget. Again another resounding yes. I know it's a pain having something that constrains your every whim after all you are travelling and want to experince everything as you may not get back to that area but in reality if we didn't budget ourselves then the money would have most likely disapeared within the first year and our expiences would have just been a blur.

Budgets help you pace yourselves and choose those experiences you really want to do giving you the chance to savour each new experience rather than just rush from one attraction to the next. Being so long on the road you start to look for those unique experiences after all how many heritage museums, zoos, crocodile farms, gorges and waterfalls can you visit.

I am a bit anal about keeping to the budget and record every expense right down to the cup of coffee. To help keep our spending in check we work on an average dollar per day guide. When the average dollars per day spent is below the budgeted dollars per day we can spend a bit more. When the average dollars per day spent is above the budget dollars per day we stop spending for a while. Over the three years this formula has worked well for us.

Have a (big) pool of savings. We decided we needed a big pool of savings to travel. Our intention was always to work at various places along the way to help fund the trip. In reality this never happened. I only picked up work in the first year for 3 months but haven't worked since. The savings help take the pressure off of finding work and gives you some funds if things go horribly wrong such as a major breakdown either on the road or at home such as when our HWS at home sprung a leak... $2,000 later...

Sell or Lease our house? Well if you had asked us at certain times through the trip the answer would have been "should have sold the bloody thing..." especially when you are having maintenance, tennant and property management issues. But at the end of the day renting for us has been the best choice.  Selling was not really an option as Anne wanted to know there was something to come back too and to get out of the property market would make it much harder to get back in. There is a small income from the rentals which has helped a lot keeping us financial. Leaving it vacant is just asking for trouble and leaving it to family to live in for free can have its own set of problems and end up costing you money. I cannot overstate how important having a property manager is. I know they cost taking about 10% + of the rental income but when you are on the road you really need someone who has the resources to filter out the bad tennants, collect the rent and ensure the house is looked after.

How long will we go for? When we first proposed this trip it started out as 12 months then 2 years then 3 years finally 4 years maybe. Anne was not to excited about commiting to 4 years on the road so we agreed at the end of each 12 month period we would evaluate and decide whether to continue of go home. We also agreed we would include in the budget money for two trips home by plane each year no matter where we were. There was some strategy to agreeing to the flights as I felt if we drove home at the end of each year there was a chance we wouldn't leave again.

This segue's into where do we leave the van and car for the few weeks at a time if we fly back home? I didn't want to leave the van and car out in the weather while not within easy access so we only considered undercover storage. At the start of the trip I hadn't looked into what was available but when we had an idea of where we would fly from I would google "undercover storage". In 2014 we were in Melbourne and found R & R Caravan Storage near Somerton which we highly recomend. They stored our van and car together for about $300.00 month. In 2015 we were once again in Melbourne and wanted to use R & R but they were unable to accomodate us so we found Fry's in Geelong which stored both van and car for $200.00 per Month.

Now that we are near the end of the third year four years doesn't seem enough and I would like to extend it out a few more years even to stop somewhere and get a job or do some volunteer work for 12 or more months. Alas the call of grandchildren, and having our own home in need of repair is getting louder so we have planned to return home sometime around the begining of November 2017. One of the things we do do talk about regullay is how will we feel being in one place again settling back into a routine life at home.

Buy second hand or brand? Buying a brand new caravan and car was a good strategy for us. We tried to buy the best of brand new we could afford. Firstly you know the sevice history secondly you are reducing (note not eliminating) the risk of something going wrong with your vehicles. The last thing you want is to be stuck somewhere because your vehicle broke down because some part was worn out. Old vehicles mean more maintenance and more problems unless your new vehicle is a lemon of course.

Managing the Mail. We were lucky we had family that could forward our mail onto us so had it all redirected to their place. If we give them enough warning they can forward onto a post office of a town you are passing through. Still we didn't want to burden them with managing all our mail especially with the bills so had all the bills we could converted to electronic notification and payment method.

All the house bills such as rates and maintenance we left up to the property manager to sort out and pay. Others such as the insurances we converted to a monthly payment plan. Although it cost's more we don't have to come up with big amounts of cash at one time and they automatically roll over so you don't end up uninsured. Government departments are a bit trickier as they rely on paper mail to communicate but most have electronic payment portals and if you keep in a diary the dates they are due you can look the accounts up online. some departments are now using SMS or E-mail to send reminders. my.gov.au has been really usefull especially when dealing with Centrelink and the Tax Office.

Plan a route or leave it to the flip of a coin. We had to have some idea of where we headed so opted for a planned route. Now to plan a detailed route for a four year period especially when you weren't sure if you were going to go the full distance didn't make sense so we tried to keep it simple and flexable We first proposed a figure 8 route, across the Nullabour, Up the centre, over to the east down to the bottom then back up the centre and down the west for the final leg spread over 4 years. We always new things would change but hey you have to start somewhere its important to at least have a direction you want to travel in.

How you travel through each region is very much a personal taste. We have met people who travel to each region and stay there untill they have seen every square metre in every season before moving on while others prefer to roam through a region chasing the sun skipping over certain attractions with the intention of seeing the bits they missed next time they pass through. We ended up opting for the latter way of travelling this seemed to suit us as we liked the sun and wanted to experience the eternal summer.

Keeping in touch. We use mobile phone and e-mail mainly. We wanted to use skype or facetime as well but for some reason this seemed to be difficiult and we didn't use the video technology as much as we would have liked. We opted for Telstra as the carrier and as much as we don't like them they were the best option for coverage especially in remote areas. We setup our own web site which included GPS tracking on our van overlayed on a google map so the family can see where we are and read our blogs. To date not sure if anybody uses it. We carry a personal locator beacon onboard more for piece of mind and logging our GPS coordinate on the website hopefully we will never need it for an emergency.

Physical Health. We would recommend you get all the bodybits checked out to establish a health baseline. We had full blood work done, immunisation and dental checked with any work done before we left. We then asked the doctor to print out each of our medical summary to take with us in case of unexpected illness. This came in handy as while in Cairns I contracted another skin infection. I had my notes from a previous episode which helped the doctor diagnose quickly and instead of a week in hospital I was only in for 24 hours and my recovery was about 5 days instead of 2 weeks.