How we’re going to save 20k a year

This year we have over 20k coming out of our bank, 20k that ISN’T making us happy. We found ourselves in a place where we are very happy, but not settled. What more could we ask for? We go on adventures around the world throughout the year, have designer clothes, we have a beautiful family, home and car. We get out most weekends, we eat out, our children are fortunate enough to go to Nursery. WHAT MORE DO WE NEED!?

This is what we kept asking ourselves, there was always something more that we wanted but we never found ourselves completely happy no matter what we brought. So we spoke about what truly makes us happy, when are we in our ultimate happy place? Lets just talk about our dreams and we’ll go from there.

We LOVE travelling, it’s our passion together, even more so as a family now. Each and every trip brings us closer together, binding us as one for them short few weeks were away, then once we’re home we are ripped apart by LIFE. Work, appointments, cleaning, cooking, play dates etc etc. There is always something to do. You’re probably thinking, well yeah of course Elle, thats life, grow up.

Hold on a minuet, hear me out.

WHY do we all live like that, we work our butts off year round to afford that one precious break with our family, whilst the rest of our hard earned cash goes in to that beautiful home, car and clothes. So in speaking about what truly made us happy (?travel) we then spoke about all the things our money goes on and if those things make us happy too. Well it turned out if we stripped all them things away, we wouldn’t be unhappy. So we looked at all our outgoings, if we stripped back all these things that weren’t a necessity how much would we be left with? 20k was the amount we worked out we were spending on things that we didn’t NEED.

Okay so thats just a few things, there are a ton of other small outgoings that in a year all build up! Then we spoke about our house, what about if we minimised our living and some how found a way of living tiny without the huge expense of the mortgage and bills

So here we are, looking at these figures, knowing we NEED to do something about this and start LIVING. We look in to a ton of different options on where to live, we didn’t want to travel full time as we want England to be a base and for Stu to continue his work. But we did like the idea of travelling 6 months of the year and working 6 months. so we looked at living in a motorhome first but this just didn’t seem a viable option with the amount of space in them. We looked at a couple other options before we stumbled across static Caravans, we viewed loads and did so much research on them, until we have now found our new home! We have brought a caravan that is on private land, it has its own garden and everything! Sure, it was small, but we didn’t want clutter, we wanted to be more minimalistic and stop surrounding ourselves with THINGS that ultimately doesn’t make us happy.

Oh and the outgoings here are 3k. No, not monthly, YEARLY! all bills included, everything. We couldn’t not pass up this opportunity, we brought it on the same day we viewed it.

We have a huge year of travel this year and with the timing of some of the trips it would make it difficult to move in to the caravan this year, so we have a year to minimalise, rent our house out, move in to a caravan, buy some backpacks and some tickets then go off on more adventures. We feel like the way we have worked things out, this is something we are going to be able to do for the indefinite future, we are TOTALLY excited, eager to get going but also know that we need to slow down and just let things run smoothly!

Oh and incase you’re wondering on our children’s schooling, they’ll be home educated with love ❤ IF you want to hear more on our approach with Home ed then let me know, I’d love to do a blog on that too!

I hope we can inspire just one other family to follow their dreams and live a happy life. Peace and love people!

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