How did we plan for full time travel?
We have always wanted to travel! We have decided to leave Australia for a year for full time travel. Then started to plan and done tons of research. We watched endless hours of Youtube, followed travel vloggers to see how they plan, gear they use, the way they create their budges,…etc. So many information out there trust me!
When we knew it was happening we started to save! We wish we saved little harder but our main idea was starting from somewhere. We are still not sure if amount we save will take you the places we truly want to see, if we will struggle or be so comfortable but only time can tell :)
Below we try to explain our preparation for the big trip! We separated into sections about vlogging/photography gear, Credit and Debit cards (we are far from being financial advisors lol so this is just what suits us the best), renting our place, budgeting and list goes on…
Step 1 - Budgeting
We prepared a budget in Excel to understand with the money we saved which countries will be more logical to visit. As mentioned before, our initial thought is full time travel for a year so budgeted for a year but we don’t know if we will be able to extend this.
Main items of our budget:
Destination we wanted to go
Which month of the year will be ideal to visit
Accommodation Cost (approximately)
Bucket List/Activities
Flight/Train Tickets
Daily Food Cost
Extras (hidden cost we can not foresee)
Once we created above we actually sat down and consider the weather, holidays, peak seasons that will affect the cost. Then searched airfare through Skyscanner, Google, Webjet to find out the average cost of the flights for the month we want to be visit that country.
We used Airbnb, Booking.com and Trivago to understand the average cost of the accommodation.
And of course Trip Advisor was one of our best friends :)
When we created the average cost we had to shuffle things around. Eventually we wanted to drink champagne with beer budget and it was the reality. So we gave up one country for example Iceland and swop it with Jordan and one Eastern European country. We had to reduce the days we wanted to stay to make the things we really wanted to do possible.
Step 2 - Choosing Credit Cards
This one was not so easy! Every single video in Youtube about travel credit cards created by Americans which was not possible for us to use. So we read blogs about Travel Credit Cards without international transaction(online and overseas) and withdrawal fee, lower annual fees, additional card holder fee, of course we wanted to get reward points, travel insurance, purchase insurance and even lounge access. So we were looking for a unicorn! But we are believers! At the end we couldn’t find all in one but we found our unicorn which is ANZ Rewards Travel Adventures Credit Card.
It does not have international transaction fee, gives 1.5 rewards point for every $1 spent, $120 annual fee and even offers international travel insurance. We compared that with Qantas Points Cards (they have plenty of them with different banks) but ANZ was the winner for us.
Our mistake was getting the credit card late! We are leaving in July 2022 and got our credit card in Feb 2022! It was so stupid not to get a year before to get more points but nobody is perfect :)
We also wanted to get a Debit card with no ATM withdrawal fee! ING is by far the best option for us. We already had ING savings accounts so we will be getting ING Orange Everyday cards to withdraw money from ATM’s overseas. They waive the account fee if you credit $1000 per month into your account.
Step 3 - Vlogging / Photography Gear
We will share the details for this in a separate blog because it is a big ticket if you want to capture your memories the way you want while travelling.
We already had a GoPro 5, Canon 60D and lenses. This year we have purchased a drone (Dji Mavic Mini 2), Manfrotto tripod and we are about to purchase our vlogging camera. We decided to get Sony ZV-1. We have watched fair bit of Youtube Videos, read so many reviews and had multiple visits to electronic shops. At the end we had 2 options, Sony ZV-1 and Canon G7X Mark lll. Similar price cameras but Canon has focusing problem and Sony can record 4K footage. We have heard Sony has heating issues after 10min of 4K recording but we are hoping this won’t be a big problem as we won’t be recoding 10min non stop with the camera. At least we think we won’t :)
Step 4 - Packing, Packing Packing!
Oh boy that was a big one! We have a townhouse in Brisbane we purchased 2 years ago. We don’t want to sell it so we are going to rent it! We do not want to pay a storage fee as in Australia they cost an arm and a leg. So we are going to sell majority of our furniture. We are working with a real estate agent who is helping us to rent the place, make sure all the alterations are done etc. We have mortgage so it is crucial for us to have a rental income. We will post another blog about this one too! To be honest we are not looking forward to this part of the prep but you gotta do what you gotta do :)
WOW! this is a long blog! We will cut it here but there are so many small bits and pieces to cover for preparation for a full time travel!
Love,
Chris and Sezgi.
Port Stephens, New South Wales, Australia