Any books / guidance for preparing for a gap travel year with wife and sons?

[Abe Froman]

Hello all,

BLUF:: Wife needs a book to read how families like ours prepared to jump to a gap year of travel and how they did it.

I am a long time listener - infrequent poster - but have come closer to the line of pulling the cord for a gap year that I talked about almost a year ago here --->https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/gap-year-for-my-7-5-and-40-year-old/msg1643779/#msg1643779.

In that thread - Laura33 mentioned weighing the risk of not finding a new job vs waiting too long that I might not be able to travel. Wife and I have been talking about this more frequently over the last year and recently it has come to a head where like marrying, having kids or buying a house - there is no perfect time just do it.

To get this going - the wife would like **some** direction in how others prepared and planned for it.

Wife described things she would like more info on like....

- How would we prepare our house for rental while gone.
- Health insurance
- Home (or rather World) schooling
- Smart Travel tips
- How to prepare resume / employer for jump
- etc

Does anyone in MMM-land have any suggestions to point us in a good direction?

[Abe Froman]

Bueller?

[DaMa]

Maybe you can write one?  :-)  I'd be really interested in reading it.

Have you read any Rick Steves' books?  I think they have great info on travel.

[Jules13]

I have looked for books too and the only ones I've found were woefully outdated.  You are much better off looking at blogs.  One that I've looked at recently is www.travelwithlatitude.com.  They are a family of 4 traveling for 2 years.  I think they've been traveling to close to a year now.  Maybe 10 months.  She has posts on the money side of and preparation side of it.  And has a FB page and would likely be happy to answer questions. 

If you google things like 'families who travel for a year' or whatever, you will find all sorts of things like this article, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/how-this-family-of-9-can-afford-to-travel-the-world-year-round.html

Or google 'planning a family gap year' and all sorts of things pop up. 

I also love https://travelbabbo.com/.  He travels all over with his kids/family and has great advice on gear, packing, etc. 

Good luck!!  I used to really want to do this.  I still dream, we have a puppy now (my boys really wanted one), so will have to stick to shorter trips.  But, that's okay too! 

[cap396]

You could get some info from rtwreset.com.  It's a couple that is taking a year off to travel the world.  They don't have kids so their situation might not be 100% relevant, but they have some good practical information that would still apply.

Another good one is homealongtheway.com.  It's a couple slow-traveling the world with four younger children.  They have a good blog and some podcasts.

[Gemma]

Check out the “Family Adventure Podcast”. They are on hiatus right now since the family who makes it just returned from an extended trip. But it’s full of stories of people who took a gap year to travel, plus many who travel full time. It’s impossible to listen to these stories and not want to do it yourself.

[damyst]

I notice that your wife didn't actually ask about child- or family-related aspects, but rather general gap-year logistics.
You might want to check out the explanatory posts, especially those by Wanderer, on the Millennial Revolution blog. Not only is he very well organized, he also writes more clearly and deliberately about the nuts-and-bolts than 99% of travel bloggers out there.

Here's a good one:
https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/plan-nomadic-life-flights/