Some of the most common
questions emailed to us are about paying or funding long bicycle tours and
backpacking trips:
How did you save enough money
to travel and bicycle tour for several years?
What is your daily, weekly, or monthly travel budget while living on the road?
How do you make money while living internationally and traveling abroad?
While we find these types of
questions a little personal, we can understand why people are interested. What we have done with our lives and how we pay
for it is not main stream. Our creative financing has caused some to think of new possibilities in
their own life. I am a true believer that
anyone living in a developed country, with boundless choices and economic
opportunities, can steer their life in almost any direction they choose. I
hope that by telling our financial story below that people do not necessarily
follow in our footsteps but find a personalized path of their own.
The Short Answer:
Before we quit our jobs and
left in March 2002, we both worked and lived well below our means. I
(Tim) was a Special Education teacher and Cindie was a Geologist. (see
about us) We lived on
less than 25% of our combined monthly income and did without the extras. While other
couples, with similar incomes and no kids, were buying new cars and splurging on
weekend getaways we were buying mutual funds and riding our bikes.
We also avoided debt, after
paying off our student loans; the only loan we allowed ourselves was a mortgage. We
still own our house in Prescott, Arizona, USA and rent it through a property
manager and even receive a small profit which pays most of our
health
insurance. We never had a car payment because we drove vehicles we paid cash
for. Car
payments and long term travel do not mix. If you are in debt and want to travel for an extended time the first thing
that you must do is get out of debt. It's that simple.
In five years we saved enough money for what we thought would
be a seven year trip. Along the way our web site grew, we sold advertising, and
wrote and self published three books.
We are by no means getting rich, in a financial way, from this. Our
current income puts us just below the
official poverty level in the USA for a married couple. Life on bikes is
cheap and we are able to survive on this limited income. So, we have no plans to stop traveling on our touring bicycles
for the next couple decades or more. What we
gain from our travels in educational value can not be measured in a bank account. We
think the trade of poverty for freedom is worth it. Who needs a wide
screen TV when there is the real world to watch?
Our secret:
The trick to surviving on the road financially has two parts.
First, we learned how to make money with a laptop and infrequent internet
connections. Computer work has to be done off line, on the go, and often at a park bench or
in our tent on battery power. Second, we learned to live cheap enough to
survive on the trickle of income that anyone living nomadically with our type of
business can expect. Living and working on touring bikes certainly makes
everything cheaper. It comes down to balance, we travel just fast enough to see new places, cheap enough to
break even, and slow enough to get our work done and make a living.
The catch,
it takes discipline to pull the computer
out in exciting places like Queenstown, New Zealand, or Bangkok, Thailand and perform
tedious tasks like picking and labeling pictures (we have tens of thousands) for
the web site when neither of us feels like it. It also takes discipline
not to spend money on things we want and live within our income. I believe
it is this kind of discipline that has turned our trip into a career; and what a
beautifully strange career choice it has been.
 More
information below:
Dreaming of Endless Travel:
This is a magazine article I wrote just before publishing our second book.
It describes the concept of permanently traveling and how we pay for it
Leaving It All Behind: Is the first chapter from our book "The Road That Has
No End" and can be read, in its entirety, by following this link. It
contains an
in-depth description from hatching the idea of extended travel, saving up money,
and every step we took up to the day we left permanently on our
bikes.
Finding gear and
equipment sponsors This page explains what we have learned about
attracting sponsors, dispels some myths about sponsorship, and provides advise
for those seeking gear sponsors.
Health Insurance
Often when traveling abroad you are not covered by the health insurance you have
at home. Health insurance is our biggest expense and most confusing to
buy. This page explains what we have learned through the years, what to
avoid, and where to start your online research.
Budgeting and
Determining a Daily Travel Budget It
is hard to figure out your daily expenses before you set out on a bike tour. So,
picking a realistic bicycle touring travel budget and sticking to it is
difficult. Yet, I believe it is this very skill that keeps the peace
between Cindie and me.
Videos and
Audio Interviews With Tim and Cindie Travis About Finances and Long Term Travel
Hear explanations to many of the travel budget and money questions gathered from
several radio interviews we have had.
Bicycle Touring for a Charity or Cause
Some say your trip is selfish if you do not have a higher cause
and other say there are way too many cyclists out there traveling and trying to
raise money for a charity.
Receiving
Donations You built your web site and have some great readers that you
want to turn into supporters. A donation button can be added to your site
asking visitors to give money to help fund your trip but there are many pitfalls
to this you should know before taking the "generosity of others" leap.
Coming Soon:
Saving up before the trip
Managing money on the road
Saving money on the road
Earning money
on the internet while traveling
working around the world
| 
