Becoming a digital nomad family and worldschooling your kids is a huge decision, no matter if you have plans to slow travel as a family for a year or 10 years. If you’re going to uproot your family and slow travel the world — meaning you’ll stay in one place for weeks or months at a time — then both parents need to be on board with the decision. But what happens if you have your heart set on jet-setting around the world but your partner is content with staying home?
While you don’t want to force them to change their viewpoint — the last thing you want to do is slow travel the world with an unhappy partner-in-tow — there are a few things you can do to help them see how slow travel as a family can be beneficial. Although you may not convince them to slow travel as a family indefinitely, there are many ways you can reach a compromise that works for your entire family.
And for more tips on how to plan your slow travel life, download our free guide!
1. Communicate your vision
Before you go into a conversation with your partner about slow travel as a family, it’s important to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve through travel. Both you and your partner should discuss your long-term family goals and identify how being a traveling family may help with that. What do you hope to gain or accomplish from this lifestyle? When you look back 10 or 20 years from now, what do you want your family culture to be? Be specific and provide examples of how this lifestyle could positively impact your family’s life.
2. Be realistic about slow travel as a family and talk to others
Slow travel, like anything else, has its ups and downs. While you may see beautiful beaches and smiling faces on Instagram photos, the reality is that slow travel as a family isn’t always glamorous. It can be exhausting, sometimes lonely, and you’re likely to get homesick on occasion.
There are plenty of logistical challenges, too, that your partner may be concerned about. How will it affect your financial stability, and job security, or impact your children’s education and social life?
Many times, there are creative solutions you can come up with to work around all of these challenges.
You can also pop on over to the worldschooling Facebook community to post questions or concerns you may have about the lifestyle. Many members of the group who have been doing it for years can provide you with insightful and realistic information — it wouldn’t hurt to request a phone call with one of the families, too!
3. Determine what kind of education and community your family will need
The idea of juggling educational needs and the desire for a community can be a detractor for many partners. It’s important to acknowledge that these are the two biggest challenges with slow travel as family — but they’re also the biggest opportunities as well.
There are so many different ways slow traveling families can educate their children — some, look more like traditional homeschoolers and do a lot of bookwork in their downtime. Some choose to enroll in online schools that can provide structure and a full curriculum. Others enroll their children in local schools or hire tutors. And some take more of an unschooling approach. Many families do a mix of everything.
It’s all about finding the right balance for your family: how much social time do you think your child needs? Will virtual learning work for his or her learning style? How much do you as a parent want to oversee your child’s education daily?
Another important aspect to consider is community. If you’re traveling full-time and not able to connect with other traveling families or locals, then you may have a very lonely experience. Consider choosing locations with robust worldschooling hubs so that you can more easily provide a social circle for your family
4. Look at the numbers together
Many partners may be concerned about finances when it comes to slow travel as a family. You and your partner must work through all the different scenarios together and come up with a financial plan that is comfortable for both of you.
After crunching the numbers, you may be surprised to learn that if you pick the right locations, slow travel as a family can be cheaper than staying in your current location, which means you could save money while seeing the world! The key to this would be picking locations that have a cheaper cost of living than your current location. Think Cuenca, Ecuador and not London, England.
You’ll need to sit down together and work out your financial plan and determine what tradeoffs you’re willing to make — for example, are you willing to stay in city centers? That may be cheaper than the countryside if you’re forced to rent a car in more rural areas. Are you ok with not seeing all of the highlights of a place? By staying local and not zipping off to see everything there is to see, you’ll be able to save on in-country transportation costs as well. If you work remotely, are you able to get an accommodation with an extra room so you don’t have to pay for co-working?
The other important factor is what to do with your current house if you own your own home. Many times, it doesn’t make sense to rent out your house unless you’re going to be gone for three months or more due to the costs of prepping your house for short-term rentals. For example, you’ll probably have some minor repairs or furniture to buy, a property manager to pay, a storage facility to rent, etc and all of those costs add up!
For more information on how to determine if you should rent out your property and how to maximize your profit, download our slow travel guide.
If you show your partner that you’ve seriously considered the financial implications of slow travel as family, they may be more willing to listen and think creatively about any money concerns.
5. Start small — don’t sell everything!
Even if you think that slow travel as family is a great idea, you won’t know if it’s right for your family until you do it. Therefore it may not be the best idea to jump in head first and sell your house or rent out your house long-term until you test the waters first. Starting small may help ease your partner into the idea of longer slow travel plans down the road.
Start by taking a one month trip somewhere with the security of knowing you have a house to come back to if anyone ends up not loving the slow travel life!
And remember: there are so many ways to slow travel as a family. You don’t have to do it full-time to give your family a rich experience. Some families maximize their summer vacation time and intentionally slow travel to places where their child can be immersed in local cultures; others worldschool part-time, taking one to three months a year to explore a new place. There’s no “right” way to slow travel as a family…it’s all about finding the right compromise!