Overland with Kids

Money is very tight for us and for those wanting to know how we can afford our big trip - the answer is that we’re not sure that we can. Even though we’ve been planning our adventure for some time - things happen where money gets spent and we try to re-save the amount again, often to no avail. We’ve faced the fact that we’ll never have enough money so we’re living on a bit of a wing and prayer.  Failing success, we thought about reverting to credit card but don’t want to go there. We’re trying very hard by planning and researching likely costs for everything as much as we can. One possibility to mitigate any massive over-budget spends, is we could sell the vehicles once the trip is complete to make up any shortfall while agreeing between us a short-term debt ceiling in advance. The alternative is a loan we might not need but keep thinking ‘it would be nice to have to cushion us’. But, If we had a loan, we’d probably spend it regardless and still be faced with paying it back.

Extending our mortgage is not an option for us.

Funds for our shakedown trip last year went seriously over budget and is one of the major contributors as to why we are now falling a bit short of the mark.

Doing the lottery and having a go at Bingo have been among a couple of our most recent antics - we live in hope! - but selling our stuff on eBay appears to be our only small window of hope to raise some tiny, almost insignificant amounts of cash - but we are not knocking it - every penny counts! -latest eBay sales have just paid for our ferry costs from the UK.

We successfully rented our house in time for our leaving date of the 1st April. Unfortunately the rental rate is not enough to cover our mortgage so have to bridge the gap to the tune of approx £3K per year. Storage for our belongings will be in the region of an additional £1.5K and re-homing our cat Gizmo approx £500 PA.  On top of this, we’ll be jobless in a couple of days so will need to cover the mortgage payment for one month.

Outside of the costs for vehicles, visas, trip and on-road expenses etc. we must leave approx. £6,250K in the bank to provide enough cover for approx 12 months. For us, this is a massive big lump out of our budget but ultimately a small price to pay to retain our home and mortgage.

We knew about and prepared for all the pre-trip expense and the shortfall before but can do nothing about it short of cancel/delay/abandon the trip and that is just not an option.

We think we might have just dangerously barely, enough, to cover our on road expenses from the UK to Australia.  But that is the problem - the ‘dangerously, barely enough’ bit - with possibly a bit of over-worry thrown into the mix.

It is difficult to say how we will get on. We plan to camp, sleep and cook for ourselves with not much in the way of luxuries in between. One thought in the back of our heads meantime keeps shouting to ”Do your best to make this trip happen!”.  So here we are!

Renting rather than selling our house does create financial restraints for us but we’ve calculated the real cost to be approx £50-£60 per week each to hold onto our house and possessions.  Worth it in our view for the moment. The rationale then being that if we do decide we want to and can work and prolong our stay once we reach Australia, then the £50-£60 per week each ongoing amount will need to be earned as a minimum to help us maintain cover back home.

At the outset, we were lucky to be able to buy our vehicles from profit made during the peak house price boom during August 2007 so at the end of the trip, as already mentioned, we should be prepared to sell these.

Others Experiences and Plans

Through looking at others blogs, we’ve had some very interesting thoughts and conversations with the Naismith family (drive-to-oz.com) who we followed from start to finish of their adventure (sold up their home to fulfil their driving adventure from the UK to OZ with their 3 children a couple of years ago). They returned to the UK from their trip last year having spent approx 9 months on the road. The view was that if they set-off from the UK following the beginnings of the economic downturn & during and housing market slide they would return to a more favourable buyer’s market. Unfortunately, this didn’t go quite in the direction planned as house prices did dip but not as much as hoped. The idea was then further hampered by difficulties in securing work, having a further knock on effect in obtaining a mortgage. Graham now works as an IT contractor but mortgage companies tend to avoid lending to people of this employment status. For the moment, the Naismith’s had a fantastic trip & have long-life memories and are on the cusp of getting their lives back in order.

The reason we mention the Naismith’s is because we are older than they are so we are concerned the gap for us possibly between future employability and mortgageability is beginning to thin fast. Aside from what the children might ultimately feel or want to do, we’re not sure what will happen once we hit Australia so, we are doing our best to hang onto the house for the moment! Graham meanwhile is hoping for a double dip in the housing market. Let’s hope this happens and then jumps straight back up for us!

On the otherhand - Lee, Helen and Bev - the other convoy half of our trip - have sold their house and given away all their possessions in France. They plan to start a new life in Australia once they get there, possibly buying land to build their own house and settle.

Circumstances, finances and outcomes etc. are different for everyone.  Rather to have lived, experienced, ruined our children’s lives and die skint! Or at least ‘die trying very hard to make the trip and our future lives a success’ which is very much the case for us.

Diary (Blog)