Reflections on Long Term Travel

I thought it might be a good exercise to look back on our first long term travel experience and break down what it cost, what we liked, what we didn’t like and what we might do differently if/when we do this again.  As you can imagine a lot went into this trip in terms of resources and planning.  It was all worth it as far as I’m concerned, and maybe you are now interested in doing something similar?  Hopefully we inspired somebody.  So without further ado, let’s get into it!

What It Cost

Cost and time are the big roadblocks for most people when planning long term travel.  There are all kinds of different approaches to dealing with these obstacles that will work for many people, but you really have to want to do this.  That is because it will disrupt your “normal” life at home in many ways and force you to make some serious changes.  Long term travel is not something you can do on a whim unless you are really young or comfortably retired and healthy.

My original plan for this trip was to take an unpaid leave of absence from work.  Technically I am a remote worker that could work from anywhere but I did not want to be tied to my laptop all over Europe.  Over the previous years through careful planning, I had worked our family into a financial position that made this doable.  This included difficult and laborious decisions such as selling our house and buying a smaller less expensive property, selling expensive cars with loans and buying cheaper ones with cash, and saving!  All of this made it possible to go months or even years without a full income if necessary.  

I know the cost and effort that goes into hiring a new employee so I figured that it was more likely that my company would grant my request and retain me rather than denying me and risking me quitting (which I was prepared to do).  My gamble worked even better than I hoped.  Instead of unpaid time off they offered me a deal to do an independent project on my own in return for my full salary.  This seemed more than fair so I happily said yes and the rest is history.  Working on an independent project allowed me to work at my own pace during our downtimes so it didn’t even really feel like work.  Even though I had this amazing outcome, everyone’s situation is not the same.  I would never recommend taking this approach unless you have built the financial stability to be ready to walk away from your job.  All of that said, if you are financially prepared and are a good employee I think you are highly likely to get a yes when you ask for your time away.

Having a steady income throughout the trip really helped with our expenses as you can imagine.  I had planned to travel pretty frugally and instead was able to be a little more loose with our spending in terms of things like eating out and drinks. 

I track all of my expenses in detail so it wasn’t much trouble to track exactly what I spent on this trip.  Here is a full breakdown of the costs:

Category	Amount Spent
Trans-Atlantic Crossing	$10,352
Lodging	$9,506
Rental Cars	$0
Public Transit	$1,249
Health Insurance	$788
Entrance Fees (includes attractions & tours)	$1,035
Dining (includes Alcohol)	$5,070
Gas, Tolls & Parking	$1,232
Misc (includes all cash transactions)	$5,584
Groceries	$1,264
Total	$36,080

$36,080 is certainly a big number and it definitely inflated our spending for 2025.  We spent more than we would have at home on things like dining, alcohol, gas, tolls, parking and public transit.  We spent less on groceries.  There is a lot to unpack in a few of the categories so from here I’m going to break those down in greater detail.

Trans-Atlantic Crossing

This is our journey across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2.  If we weren’t bringing our dog (or if we were comfortable flying our dog) this would not have been our preferred method of transportation overseas.  I don’t regret it because the first crossing in the summer was a unique experience I will always remember but after one crossing it lost its luster for me.  If we flew I could have leveraged airline miles and paid a few hundred dollars max to cross the Atlantic via plane.  Since the $10,352 we paid here represents nearly a third of the cost of the trip I thought this is worth mentioning from an affordability standpoint.

Lodging

My budget for accommodations largely stayed unchanged as I had done most of the planning on the assumption I would have no income during the trip.  The plan was to stay in around $100 per night AirBnBs in rural locations.  Staying for over a week in most locations helped keep the price lower because most properties offer a discount for longer stays.  In cities which tend to be more expensive I leveraged my points and many hotel credits to try and stay free as much as possible.  Here’s how our stays broke down:

Property Type	Total Cost	# of Nights	Avg cost per night
AirBnBs	$8,799.22	75	$117.32
IHG Hotels	236,000 IHG points	6	39,333 IHG points
Marriott Hotels (Points)	49,500 Bonvoy points	3	16,500 Bonvoy points
Marriott Hotels (Cash)	$939.00	3	$313.00
Hilton (Points)	352,000 Hilton points	6	58,667 Hilton points
Hilton (Cash)	$469.86	2	$234.93
Hyatt (Points)	367,000 Hyatt points	20	18,350 Hyatt points
Hyatt (Cash)	$252.93	3	$84.31
Other Hotels (Points)	24,718 Capital One miles	1	24,718 Capital One miles
Other Hotels (Cash)	$758.68	4	$189.67

Keep in mind that these numbers don’t take into account things like travel credits from my credit cards or upgrades I used to get better rooms than the point price reflects.  There were also games I played to get gift cards for AirBnB and hotels at varying discounts of up 25%, not to mention maximizing my points returns when booking all of this travel.  When taking into account all of the rebates and discounts the out of pocket cost is actually lower than what is reflected here, but trying to show all of that detail would be difficult and convoluted.  

At a real basic level let’s take the total out of pocket cash cost from all of our stays ($11,219.69) and divide it by the number of nights (123) to get the out of pocket cost per night of $91.22, pretty good!  Now let’s take that total lodging out of pocket cost and divide it by 4 months to see what our monthly “rent” was for staying in Europe for those 4 months.  The result is $2,804.92 which is pretty comparable to a rent or mortgage payment in many places in the United States these days. One thing we did not do but I know is a popular technique used by long term travelers is renting out or subletting your home while you are traveling.  This could easily offset most or all of your lodging expenses while traveling.

Rental Cars

We ended up renting a car for nearly our entire trip mostly because the rules about dogs on public transportation were inconsistent between countries.  It seemed like too much of a headache to deal with things like muzzles and dog tickets.  Plus having a car gave us much more flexibility while staying in rural areas.  I knew this would be a big expense and I ended up leveraging my points and miles to completely offset the costs and pay $0 out of pocket expenses for the rentals.

Our first car was rented from Hertz in the UK.  I picked up and dropped off from Heathrow airport.  This wasn’t the most convenient but the cost difference was significant.  I ended up booking through the Chase travel portal which had a competitive rate and allowed me to use my Chase Ultimate Rewards to pay for the rental.  The cash cost would have been $917.01 for a 28 day rental which I think is pretty good.  I used 61,134 Chase points instead of paying cash.  It’s not the best use of Chase points, but it’s respectable and free is free!

Our second car was a lease through the French auto makers.  You can read more about that in my previous post.  The cash cost of the lease was $3,112.20 for 83 days.  I ended up charging the entire amount to my Capital One Venture X card which allows me to redeem my miles at 1 cent per mile to “erase” travel charges.  So I used a whopping 311,220 miles to eliminate this charge.  This was a bit painful because this is definitely not the best redemption for Capital One miles but once again, free is free!  It’s nice to maximize the value of every last mile you earn but it’s not really a good idea to hoard your miles either.

At the end of the day I cashed in 372,354 miles and points to keep $4,029 in my bank account.  I imagine we could have possibly saved some money/points if we had gone with public transportation via buying a rail pass for our time in Europe but I’m not sure because I didn’t research them.  Driving was stressful at times but it was the right choice for us in this situation.

The Highs

It’s hard to summarize everything we loved about this trip.  We loved having more than a week in smaller places to explore, something we rarely get when taking a normal 1-2 week vacation.  This also gave us the opportunity to get a taste of what it might be like living in a place.  The extra time allowed us to slow down a little and do things like shop at the local market or grocery store and cook meals.  It also allowed us to see smaller, quieter attractions without the big crowds.  In many cases these places were just as good or better than the big stops on the tourist trail.

Unlike at home where routine can take over and days blend together, every day on our trip was a new adventure.  It could be something as simple as trying a drink or snack from the grocery store that you had never heard of.  Or something as grand as stepping foot in a whole new country for the first time.  Since we were 21 nearly every day of our lives has been dominated by the endless march of routine dominated by work.  Being free from that for four months was an amazing feeling!

The Lows

Overall our trip was a roaring success but there are a few things I would do differently if I were to travel like this again.  The first issue is that I think it was simply too long.  Because of the logistics involved with taking a leave from work and bringing our dog it made sense to make the trip as long as we could within reason.  Once we hit about the 3 month mark our energy started to fade.  It didn’t help that we started moving much more quickly during the last month.  This limited our downtime and contributed to the fatigue.  

I think 2-3 months would have been perfect at the pace we were going at.  A longer trip could still be enjoyable but I would build in more downtime where we could live a more “normal” life instead of constantly moving from place to place.  

Another pain point was how we crossed the English Channel with our dog.  The ferry worked ok but it wasn’t the easiest.  Getting to/from the terminals with all of our bags and the dog proved to be somewhat problematic.  Getting off the boat tended to be pretty chaotic as well.  If I were to do it again I might look at one of the many pet transport services that have sprung up on both sides of the channel.  It would have been more expensive but it might have been worth it because the ferry was stressful.  Having someone drive us door to door would have saved me a lot of anguish and logistical planning.

Would I do it again?

Yes, yes, yes!  Long term travel was an amazing experience and I already can’t wait to do it again.  The options are endless around the world, but even just Europe offers so many different experiences.  We didn’t even touch the Mediterranean region or the Scandinavian countries during our trip.  The real question would be if we would do it again with our dog.  This is less likely for a few reasons mostly having to do with time and life circumstances.  We do want to plan a long term travel trip in North America with Maverick.  Hopefully we can make that happen sooner rather than later!

Hopefully our experience has inspired you to do something similar, even if it isn’t quite as ambitious.  Try long term travel on for size and you might find you love it.  Regardless of how far you travel or how long you travel…Happy Travels!