How can we afford to take a year off? First of all, we are by no means well off. We have good jobs, but have have a mortgage, car payments and three kids who needed daycare and participate in a variety of activities. Here is what we did:

1. Contact a financial advisor. Our guy, Jean, came up with an awesome plan that worked well for us. But every family has different variables that will affect how they save, so make sure you give your financial planner all the necessary info. We ended up putting all of our money into RRSP’s which have had decent returns, but also gave us healthy tax returns that we then used to reinvest or pay off other debt that might get in the way of our long term goal. We started saving 5 years ago.
2. Try not to buy anything you don’t need. Cars, clothes, food, toys….try hard to avoid it. We were terrible at that in the beginning (the first 3.5 years, lol), but got better. We may laugh about it, but we will pay for it in the long run. We’ll probably have a little more credit card debt than we expected that we’ll have to pay off when we return to work.
3. Cars, don’t buy one – and sell them before you go. We have a 2007 Mazda 5 that has over 300,000km on it. Needless to say we haven’t had car payment on her in a while (that went into our RRSP’s). We love our black beauty, she has been an excellent car. Our plan is to get as much as we can for her when we sell in July/August. We are also selling our second car (Mazda 2), so that means no insurance payments for the year.
4. Rent your house. We debated for a while whether or not we should rent or sell our home. After a lot of thought and discussion we decided to rent. We like the idea of coming back to somewhere familiar and not having the stress of finding somewhere to live when we return. So, we are renting to 4 lovely young ladies who go to university in our city. I know people probably think we are crazy for renting to students, and in the beginning we didn’t intend to, but I was so impressed by their maturity and communication skill that we were put at ease. Their rent covers the mortgage, taxes and utilities. We aren’t making any money, but we are covering all of our expenses.
5. Research. I feel like we have read every blog and seen every website about family travel. All of this research helped us estimate how much money we will need for the year. People have different travel tastes, so it’s really important that you figure out how you want to travel and find resources that suit that style. Don’t read a backpackers blog if you plan to stay in luxury hotels!!
6. Pay for as many things as you can in advance. Once you have an idea of where you’re going you can book accommodations, flights, rental cars etc. before you leave (before you stop getting paid). I have already booked and paid for accommodations in London, Holt (a small village in the English countryside), and Paris. As well as a 1 week rental car in England and a 50 day car rental in Europe (only $941!!!). So, these are all things we have already paid for.

That’s all I have for now. Contact me if you have any specific questions you’d like to ask.