Full time Vanlife: How much money do you REALLY need?

£2,000. That's how much you need to budget to live full-time in your motorhome. Now, how you reacted to that statement will tell you an awful lot about how you're going to be spending full-time van life. Now, some people will go, oh my goodness, that was really cheap, and some people will be like, that's way too expensive, I know people who live on half of that. And the problem with asking how much It takes, or how much money you need to live full-time in your motorhome, is that there is no magic number. I'm really sorry, I have just given you a number, and that, I mean, it's not completely out of the ballpark, but that is not going to be true for everybody across the board. It's going to depend on loads of factors, including how many people you travel with, the size of the vehicle you've got, your experience, so what your insurance is, how often you want to travel. Do you want to stay in one place or one area? Or do you want to do what I do, And go to places like Iceland or Norway and drive thousands of miles, which of course increases your fuel bill? Do you want to stay on proper campsites, or are you happy to stay off-grid? As you can see, there are so many factors which will affect this. However, there are a few things that you can consider and that you can do to give yourself a rough budget or ballpark, so that if you are planning to quit your job and go traveling, you've got an idea on what you need. And that is what we're going to talk about in this video. Now, if we've not met before, hi, my name is Kat. I run the motorhome and van life website Wandering Bird, and all the way back in 2018, I quit my job. I used to be an air traffic controller, and I quit that very well-paid and stable career in order to go touring around the UK and Europe in a motorhome. Everybody told me I was insane, and most of their concerns or fears came from a financial point of view. So what would I do about earning money? What would I do about my pension? What would I do if I changed my mind and like I wanted to go and buy a house again? How would I have savings? All of this financial concern. And don't get me wrong, it was a concern for me as well, but that's a huge doubting point for a lot of people who would love to change their lifestyle, whether it's to travel full-time in a motorhome or to do something else. The finances are the bit that holds a lot of people back. So I'm hoping this video will make things A little bit simpler for you and perhaps give you a different way of looking at it so that you can work forward to finding a way that works for you. Now, I am doing a workshop in June all about how to quit your job and go traveling, and obviously finances is going to be a part of that workshop. So if you do want to know how to start with the planning, how to downsize, how to deal with your finances, how to work from the road, if that's something you want to consider, then by all means come and join me on the workshop. I will leave the link for all of that in the notes. But for now, let us dive in. Dive on in to cover how much money you really need to be full-time van life. Now, the first myth that I want to bust is that you do not need a large savings account. I didn't have a huge bank account, I didn't win the lottery, I didn't get a large inheritance. I saved a lot and I downsized a lot, and that is one of the hardest but also the key thing to deal with when you want to change your lifestyle in any way and live on a smaller budget. Then Absolutely. Learning how to downsize and have different priorities. It's not doing without, but you're realizing that you just don't necessarily need that, you know, daily latte or taking your lunch to work, and also realizing that actually going to work costs you money. So you might be running a car, obviously you're paying for fuel and insurance and all of those costs. You might go eating out with your colleagues, you might pay into a tea fund, you do those little envelopes that go around going, would you contribute to so-and-so's leaving present or maternity present or paternity? All All these things, they all cost you money by being part of a working establishment. So once you've got a handle on your spending, then that can absolutely be a chunk of money that you don't have to do once you have quit your job and go traveling. Another thing to consider is the kind of lifestyle that you enjoy whilst you are traveling. And the best way to get this information is to look at your previous holidays. So for example, do you like to stay on expensive but amazing campsites with all singing or dancing resources, and is that the kind of lifestyle that you want to have going forward, or do you want to be more flexible? Do you want to stay on cheaper sites? Do you want to cook more often in the van rather than eating out? Do you still enjoy going to museums or castles or all of these things? And you can absolutely have a balance, but you have to understand how much you spend when you are traveling, which will allow you to form a rough budget. Have you considered your insurance? Because full-time insurance is a lot more than non-full-time insurance, but you've also got things like health insurance, Travel insurance, pet insurance if you travel with pets. All of those things need to be budgeted for. Then you've got other online expenses. So for example, I pay for Netflix, I pay for Amazon Prime. You've also got things like your internet cost and your Wi-Fi. Now I've got Starlink, which is expensive. I pay about £90 a month. I do not recommend that for most normal people, but obviously I use the internet an awful lot for work. So for me, it's an essential cost to make sure that I've got decent internet to be able to work From the road. But as you can see, there are a lot of people, like my parents, for example, if they ever decided to do this, would not need Netflix, they would not need Amazon Prime. So there is a huge discrepancy in what some people think is really important, and some people are like, no, I don't need that, I can live without that, I would rather have to work less and therefore spend less in order to get that kind of lifestyle. So your monthly budget could be anything from as low as £1,000 a month. Some people may even live on less. than that, but it could also be up at £3,000, £4,000, £5,000 a month, which, especially if there's more of you living and travelling in the motorhome, obviously campsites cost more for more people. There can be a lot higher costs associated when there's more of you in the van. One of the most essential things that I absolutely insist that you do before you go travelling is to start building up your emergency fund. So once you've worked out a rough monthly budget on what you think you can realistically live and travel and enjoy life on— there's no point living and travelling these places and then not been able to go and experience them in the way that you want to, whether that's museums or attractions or whatever it is that you enjoy doing. So once you've got your realistic monthly budget, including all insurances and everything else, then you need to work until you have got at least 6 months saved up in an emergency fund. Now, that is not your first 6 months of travel. You need to have that plus a 6th month emergency fund, and that emergency fund needs to be somewhere out of the way. Now, some people can use this on a credit card. If you've got a decent credit card with a nice limit, I highly recommend that you keep that and you keep using the credit card and then paying it off in full every month, which will allow you to have a decent credit limit on that card in case you need to pay for emergency repairs, in case you need to pay for a flight home, in case something happens and you have to dip into that emergency fund. It's exactly what it's there for. I've had to use it a couple of times over the past few years. A notable one was when my husband ended up being really sick in hospital. I was stuck over in Europe with the motorhome and my dog, and luckily I had the emergency fund so that I could put the van in storage, I could put Mac into pet care, and I could get a flight home last minute, which obviously was not cheap. And that, without the emergency fund, would've been horrendous. When my van broke in Norway, in fact, I had 2 issues in Norway. One, I had to pay for a new wing mirror, which was £8,000. £800. No, I'm not joking. It was a standard wing mirror. It didn't even have like aerial or anything in it. £800 is what it cost me. And then also all my water system lost. Now, I didn't fix that in Norway because I just fixed the wing mirror and that was an insane amount of money. So I survived without a water system until I got back to the UK, but I then had to pay to get that all fixed. So between the two, that was probably near enough £2,000 worth of repairs that I hadn't budgeted for. But luckily I had the emergency fund and it wasn't anywhere Near as much of a drama as it could have been. Now, my advice to you is that if you need to work for a few extra months until you have got that emergency fund saved up, because your life on the road will be so much less stressful if you're not panicking every time you hear a rattle or something breaks, because it will break when you're using stuff all the time like you do in full-time van life. It will break. Things just do. Another thing that I suggest you look into is your vehicle and your gear. Now, before you start living full-time, Do you want to upgrade your vehicle? I know we did. Do you want to upgrade your gear? Perhaps you want things like a solar panel or a lithium battery or an EcoFlow, all of those things that make life on the road just that little bit easier. You might choose to work for a little bit longer in order to be able to upgrade all this gear before you go. Now, of course, quitting your job and never working again is not an option for a lot of people, especially those who haven't retired and aren't drawing a pension. So you might either need to start off working from the road, or you might realize that you can find ways to work from the road as you are traveling. Now, there are loads of ways, especially in recent years, that have developed that allow you to be able to work more remotely. And it's really important to remember that you don't need to replace your previous salary because you're not necessarily going to be going to work. You're not gonna have all of those associated costs. So don't just think if you realize you do need to earn some money that it has to be at the same level. Now, you can work online doing freelance jobs. You can do like virtual assistant jobs. Admin jobs, editing and proofreading jobs. You can also do part-time or seasonal work. Loads of places around Europe take on seasonal workers for various jobs. I know a lot of people who will either work over the winter and then they can travel all summer, or vice versa. A lot of people will work over the summer. You'll see a lot of campsite wardens doing this. They work all the summer and then they have several months off throughout the winter, the bit that they want to escape, where they can go and visit warmer climates or just get away and enjoy their travels. So that might be something that you look into as part of your financial plan. So if this video has got your brain whirring with the what-ifs and could I really do that and how do I create a plan for that, then do come and join me on my live workshop, How to Quit Your Job and Travel for Real. I'll walk you through the plan, the downsizing, the budgeting, the financial issues, working from the road, and all of the other things that you undoubtedly have got questions about. These are all the things that I had questions about and that I wish I had had somebody that I could ask these 2. So come along, you can chat to me live. It will be on Zoom, so you can ask me your questions and I can answer them for you. It'll be a really good, fun workshop, and all the details will be in the notes here. If you are watching this video after the workshop has been, don't worry, the link will take you to the replay so you can watch it there. I hope you found this video useful. If you did, a thumbs up is always appreciated, and don't forget to subscribe if you'd like to see more videos about motorhome travel and van life. You'll also find this video helpful, and I'll see you there. Bye! Take care, bye!