How to Travel the World With Kids

How to Travel the World With Kids

Many people dream of traveling the world when they’re younger, only to grow up and have kids of their own. At this point, most parents are forced to accept that their wanderlust could go unfulfilled, or that they might have to wait until their kids leave home. Children need stability, right? Plus there’s school, work, and a family home to consider not to mention the expense of a round-the-world trip.

While your responsibilities are far greater now that you’re a parent, that doesn’t mean you have to give up on your dreams entirely. Here are some tips to help inspire your travels and plan your family trip.

Start Small

How to Travel the World With Kids

As parents all over the world have illustrated on social media and travel blogs, it’s perfectly possible to travel the world with kids, and you don’t have to give up everything in your life to do so. If you decide to homeschool your kids and sell your house, there’s no limit to where you can go, but you might not be ready to commit to such a drastic lifestyle change. If you decide to keep your home base, there are plenty of ways to show your kids the world one country at a time. It’s best to start small with an extended vacation to get a feel for how life on the road suits your family.

Work Out a Budget

Perhaps you have some savings set aside for your next vacation, or maybe you’re planning to sell your home to fund a long-term trip; either way, you need to work out a budget before you can start planning your travels. Consider any money you might save on rent, utilities, transport, and childcare, then research the cost of living in the countries you plan to visit. Think about extra expenses, such as storage for items you want to keep at home, currency exchange, tourist tax, roaming charges on your phone, transport extra baggage, and temporary driving licenses. You will also need to have travel insurance, travel health insurance, and baggage insurance in place. You can read top travel health insurance reviews online to find the best coverage for your family’s trip.  

Write a Five-Year Travel Plan

If you’ve heard of the five-year career plan, this part will be easy. Think about all the countries you want to visit in your life, then pinpoint the ones you want to the most urgently. A fun way to do this with kids is to tape a map to the wall and stick pins or stickers onto the countries you plan to travel to. Perhaps these are parts of the world you’ve wanted to see since you were a child yourself, or maybe you have family living across the pond that you’d like to visit. It doesn’t matter how big or small your ideas and how many countries you can realistically visit in that time setting your goals down on paper will take you one step further toward living your dream.

9 Comments

  1. This is definitely great advice! For a lot of parents they really do feel like they have to push their traveling dreams under the carpet. Thank you for sharing.

  2. Traveling with children can be very difficult. I think this is great advice for families so they don’t feel deprived from not going on trips as a family!

  3. Heather S Brodbeck

    Budgeting is definitely the right key. I have 5 kids and we have tried to take them on trips and sightsee, and budgeting and planning were the keys. This was a lot of great advice.

  4. Looks like some smart advice

  5. When our kids were little we never went anywhere without them. Traveling was just something natural we did. No matter what their ages. Find something everyone will enjoy. Make those memories.

  6. I think this is great advice. Writing out a five-year plan will definitely help put priorities in place if traveling like this is what you want to do.

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