How we Balance Work, Family and Travel
“How do you find the time and money to travel so much while raising a baby?”
It’s a question we’ve been getting a lot recently from friends, colleagues and readers. Our answer is always the same – balance. I know, I know. That term is beaten to death these days, but it’s true.
We started this blog four years ago, before embarking on an extended trip around the world. Followers of our blog during that period were interested in the journey, tuning in each week to learn about a new destination or simply to find our where we were that day.
This travel blog, like our life journey, has evolved.
Some readers of this blog are surprised to learn that we no longer live a nomadic lifestyle. That we have roots firmly planted in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia.
But our adventure is still very much alive.
We have a house that we love (and mortgage that comes with it). We have careers that challenge us and, like most of you who work a traditional 9-5, we are required to be present in the office every day.
Sure, sometimes the corporate routine gets tiring and repetitive, but that’s the sacrifice for being able to afford the lifestyle we choose. Babies aint cheap!
We’ve met a number of people, mostly travel bloggers and online entreprenuers, who have decided that a life of perpetual travel is the best way to live their lives. We applaud them for having the courage to pursue a lifestyle less ordinary, one that fits their personal goals and passions.
After living out of a backpack for over a year and sleeping in a new bed every few nights, we’ve learned that a lifestyle of perpetual travel is not for us.
We no longer wish to live out of a backpack indefinitely.
We grew tired of not having money or a bed to call our own. We learned that travel is only one part of our life journey.
That brings us back to the question.
How do we balance work, family and travel?
Well, the good news for you fellow cubicle dwellers and full-time workers is that you don’t need to quit your job to travel the world. In our experience, the most common reasons people say they can’t travel are (1) not enough money, (2) not enough vacation time, and (3) too busy to travel.
If traveling IS important to you then these are just excuses.
If traveling is NOT important to you, then you should probably stop reading this post and watch this instead (it’s pretty funny).
How do we pay for travel?
You don’t need to be rich to travel, but you do need to have money – unless sleeping in filthy dorm rooms and eating canned beans is your idea of enjoyable travel.
When it comes to money, we don’t have a magical formula. We aren’t financially rich. We don’t have a trust fund. We didn’t win the lottery and we didn’t receive an inheritance.
We simply save and budget.
That might not be the answer you were hoping for, but the cold hard truth is that there is no silver bullet. We have learned to pay ourselves first and we avoid debt like the plague.
We don’t wear designer clothes and we rarely eat at expensive restaurants (unless we’re traveling – then we go to town!). We simply limit our spending and make small sacrifices every day.
Aside from our day jobs, we earn money from our blogs and that money is saved and put directly towards future travels. We work hard for this “extra money”. When most people finish work, they go out and socialize or sit in front of the television. Not us. After Baby B goes to bed we open our laptops and start working again – writing, editing, emails, sharing, tweeting, liking, commenting.
Managing an online business is very time consuming, but we’re committed to its success and we enjoy tapping into our creative side. We work hard so we can play harder.
There are literally thousands of ways to increase your travel bank account. The most important nugget of advice we have for you is to start saving today. As in RIGHT NOW!
When you get paid, set aside some money for your travel account first — before you pay your bills. This will force you to adjust your spending habits.
Here are a few more related posts:
- How to Travel the World on $50 a Day
- The Ultimate Guide to Housesitting
- How to Budget for a Trip Around the World
How we use our vacation time.
When it comes to having enough vacation time, we simply plan our trips well in advance and take advantage of holidays. Cam gets 5 weeks of vacation time and Nicole gets 3 weeks plus Christmas holidays.
That might be more than some, but the number is not as important as the timing.
We almost always travel on, or around, holiday weekends. For example, our recent trip to Molokai was scheduled over the Easter long weekend. We departed on the Thursday evening and returned home on the red-eye flight on Tuesday evening, arriving super early on Wednesday morning. This gave us a 6 day trip but we only burned 1 vacation day (the Tuesday).
We do this for virtually every holiday weekend, stretching our vacation days and ultimately the number of travel experiences we can have each year.
Now, the flip side is that we often travel when other 9-5er’s travel, which can be more expensive. But that’s the trade off. Sacrifices must be made.
Even though we both work corporate jobs and have a baby, we still travel at least once a month. Baby B has visited 6 countries in his young life.
Travel does not have to stop because you have a family.
Baby B and Dad at the Louvre Museum in Paris
Nicole also earns overtime hours that she banks and converts into vacation days. She hosts information sessions, attends networking events and sometimes visits with candidates outside of normal work hours. At the end of the year she typically accumulates an additional 2 weeks of vacation days in lieu of pay. Work hard, play hard.
Aside from that, we took advantage of Nicole being on maternity leave last summer when we traveled to Europe (Canadians get up to 12 months maternity leave). Because Cam gets more vacation days, we banked his days and used them for an extended trip to Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and France.
We will likely do the same thing next year when Baby #2 arrives.
You can travel with limited vacation days.
Take weekend trips or short trips that require limited travel time and few time-zone changes. You don’t have to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu or go on an African safari to have a rewarding travel experience.
Often times a trip close to home will scratch that travel itch just fine. In the past two months we visited Whistler, Parksville and Victoria, all short trips from Vancouver, but all are world class destinations with very different things to offer.
In a few weeks we will visit Los Angeles for the first time, another destination that’s only a short flight from Vancouver, with no time zone changes. We will be there for 5 days, but will only burn 2 vacation days because we will be visiting over a holiday weekend.
If you’re doing the math, that’s only 3 vacation days used while going on 5 trips (Hawaii, Los Angeles, Whistler, Parksville and Victoria). Not bad, right?
Baby B’s first international trip to California – 3 months old
Balance can only be achieved with sacrifice.
When it comes to balancing family and travel, our solution is simple – we bring our baby boy everywhere. It’s not the easiest way to travel, but we value our time together and do not want to spend our limited vacation time apart.
Our priority is to experience life as a family, which means sharing a hotel room with a cranky baby and trading late night partying for early morning visits to the park.
But it’s so worth it.
We can’t travel together as a family without sacrificing the “old way of traveling before baby”. And we can’t support our family and afford the lifestyle we choose without sacrificing the freedom to travel.
We feel it’s a fair trade.
Baby B roaming the streets of Strasbourg, France
These last two years have been extremely rewarding.
We initially thought that going back to the corporate world would be impossible. We thought those days were long behind us and that we’d never be able to go back.
Never say never, right?
Long term travel has forever changed us. We are not the same people we were before. But something very cool happened when we slipped back into normal life – we reignited our love of travel.
It’s not that we lost our passion for travel, far from it, but long term travel became our new norm. It lost some of its sparkle. We found ourselves longing for a simple night on the couch watching a movie instead of searching for adventure.
The grass is always greener, I suppose.
This new perspective on life has given us an appreciation for the travel experiences we have together. The excitement of dreaming and planning has returned. The stomach butterflies have returned.
We look forward to staying at nice hotels and eating at fancy restaurants, something we found challenging when we were living on a backpacker’s shoestring budget.
We’ve been able to have a family, find great corporate jobs and introduce our little man to 6 countries in his first year of life – and we think that’s pretty awesome! We’re proving to ourselves, and other young families, that it can be done.
It hasn’t been easy balancing work, baby, blog and travel. There are certainly times when we want to run away to a remote island in the South Pacific (who wouldn’t?!).
But we feel very fortunate to have found balance.
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What about you? How do you balance work, family and travel?
Share your tips in the comments section below. Our readers thank you!
You guys seem to have a great balance and I know I’ve said this before, but you make it look so easy! It’s hard enough for me to balance work, home life and travel — so I can’t imagine how much of a basket case I would be with kids.
When people tell me how lucky I am to travel so often, I remind them that I choose to work the long hours in order to have this lifestyle.
How does that work out with Cam having two more weeks vacation time? Has he been sneaking off on solo trips? 😉
Thanks so much for including our post here!
Thanks Christy! Wait until we write our next story about the flight to TBEX with Baby B… let’s just say it aint pretty!
Nicole is able to work a lot of overtime, so she typically gets another week or two in banked vacation time. So we both get about the same amount of time off by the time the year is up.
That said, I will be sneaking away for a solo trip to Ontario next week 🙂
Hello fellow, Canucks! This is so inspiring and I’m glad I saw it through Christy’s share. My husband and I (also Canadian) are expats living in the Netherlands and for the past 2 years of living here, we’ve taken over 30 trips. We’ve been trying to ‘get it out of our system’ before we head back home and buy a house, nest, and settle. Lately I’m realizing though that I will never get it out of my system. I fall in love with travelling the more I travel. I worry about going back to Canada and feeling stuck, especially when we have a baby. Your post has quenched that worry somewhat and I thank you. 🙂 I look forward to reading more of your stories!
Hi Jizelle!
Thanks for commenting, and for checking out our site. We’ve always wanted to live in Europe for a few years, what a fantastic experience.
Travel does not need to stop with a baby, but it does change. You replace your personal wants (like sitting on a patio drinking wine all afternoon in the sun!) for other great things, like watching your baby’s eyes light up when they experience something new. It’s a different kind of awesome, but it’s still awesome!
I appreciate that you explain another model that exists. I think a lot of inquirers – at least in our case – like the IDEA of constant travel and a lifestyle that sustains itself from a website. When we say: 1) that we have “normal” jobs that we can take with us anywhere and 2) That we love having a home base (Seattle), it’s as if it’s an entirely new idea to them.
There are lots of ways to do what we all do, and we’re happy to know and support you on your path.
I am so glad we had the chance to meet you in Toronto. I am eager to continue the conversation in Vancouver. We are due to get up there.
It was so great to finally meet you guys in person in Toronto! Long overdue.
We would love to be able to take our “normal” work with us on the road, but I think it would be too difficult with the little man – we’d never get anything done! We love him to death, but we also like dropping him off at day care in the morning. 😉
Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up the next time we’re in your hood.
And the offer for Vancouver stands!
At my last job, everyone got the amazing gift of five weeks vacation every year. Unbelievably, but I was one of the only people to use all that time! Most of my coworkers would get to December and realize that had to use the time or they’d lose it. So they’d take off two weeks and just hang around their house. Meanwhile I was taking two or three international trips a year plus visiting friends and family all around the country (America). I had bills just like everyone else, but I saved and made travel a priority. It can definitely be done!
It’s funny how some people see 5 weeks vacation as a huge bonus, while others see it as a burden. I just can’t imagine “forcing” myself to take a vacation.
I’m glad to hear you took full advantage and had some fun travel experiences!
Great post and very inspiring –we will be welcoming our first any day now. All we hear lately is “good thing you travelled a lot first” and hearing that drives me crazy. We plan on figuring out what works best for us as a family and continuing our travels! 🙂
Congrats! The first few months are a blur but then it all comes together and you can’t remember a day without the little one.
Traveling doesn’t have to stop just because you have a family – it actually gets better in many ways because you have more people to share the experience with.
The perpetual travel lifestyle is something I also admire, but it’s definitely a mix of pros and cons. Generally it means sightseeing repetitively, meeting new people frequently and ditching them the next day, or, if you want to slow things down, doing very little each day (unless you’re working as you go). That can be great for a while, but it’s nice to break up that routine with something else entirely. Volunteering, working, teaching, going home, etc etc. All it’ll do is make the trips that much more special. Besides, then you can have, like…a couch and stuff.
I think long term travel is a must for everyone, at some point in their lives. Traveling slow can be so much more meaningful and enriching. But at some point, the trip must end, which is when the balancing act begins… 🙂
Great post! We don’t have children (yet), but have met a lot of nay-sayers that tell us we will not travel once we are parents. Thank you for the information and encouragement!!! It’s not easy to fit it all in – but it’s certainly worth the effort! 🙂
It’s definitely worth the effort. It’s not easy, and there will be times you want to just stay home, but making the extra effort is so worth it.
Besides, you won’t remember the early mornings and cranky baby in 10 years when you look back at the photos. You’ll remember the special moments, like playing in the park in front of the Eiffel Tower
love this post as it totally mirrors our experiences and lifestyle! Baby B and the Little Monkey will have to meet one day soon, they’ve had very similar 1st year experiences!
Didn’t know you guys have #2 on the way… we do as well and definitely looking forward to continuing the adventures!
Great tips for encouraging young parents to continue with their pre baby lifestyle! All about balance and tradeoffs!
Thanks for the feedback Yashy – we’re pretty excited about Baby #2. Life is about to get pretty crazy!
I definitely relate to this. Honestly, travel has gotten harder since the birth of our second child, partly because he’s a handful, but also because it’s that much more expensive for flights. We’ve done a lot more domestic travel lately because of that. I work full time but have lots of time off, but I never seem to have much time! It’s so easy for vacation to fill up with other stuff…
We’re not looking forward to having to pay for 4 flights in the near future. That’s part of the reason we’ve done a lot of international travel over the past few years. We plan to rent or buy a camper and tour North America in a couple years, visiting every National Park and all of the provinces and states.
I hear you on the vacation days getting filled up with other stuff. All it takes is a bad flu and you can easily lose a week!
This is truly inspiring! I’m kind of torn as I’m about to start a very well paying job that gives me a month off in December (percect!!!) but Matt works at a restaurant so he literally doesn’t have any time off. I can one dream of both having stable jobs!
Hopefully, during the holidays it won’t be as busy at the restaurant so you will be able to get away.
Great post. Good somehow to see that other people struggle with this balance as well. That whole “not alone” thing.
I just switched over to freelancing as a programmer as we are hoping to do several months on and then several months traveling. We have done one cycle and are still learning. I expect it to ever be a learning process of adjusting as we change and grow.
Travel is important and letting work overwhelm one’s life is usually not. Often it gets switched. Good on you for traveling with your little guy and not letting “having kids” stop you from enjoying it.
You are definitely not alone 😉 Your freelance job is ideal for traveling! We know many people who do it and absolutely LOVE it. Some even spend a couple months while freelancing in a different country.
It allows them to see the world but also have a paycheck.
That’s great! Just because you have kids doesn’t mean that you stop travelling! They will be made travellers! ;P
Agreed! It’s not as difficult as some people make it out to be. It’s actually a lot of fun introducing the little guy to new places. Seeing the world through his eyes has been very rewarding. We can’t wait for him to be talking so that he can share his excitement
Lovely post! I’m trying to plan my first travel-with-baby adventures now!
Awesome! If you need some tips you can check out our other site at http://tipsforbabytravel.com.
Excellent! Be sure to stop by again and let us know how it goes!
What a lovely post. This is what we are doing right now, balancing life and career and taking our kiddos to see Indonesia and the world. Sometimes we left our kiddos at home with their grandparents, to have our honeymoon:p Hope someday our path will cross. If you come to Indonesia pls let us know.
We would love to visit Indonesia – it’s one of the SE Asian countries we have not yet visited. Sadly, I don’t think we will be making any trips to Asia in the next couple years. Too difficult with two kids under 3 years old. But we plan to visit Korea and China in a couple years, so maybe we can add a visit to Indonesia too 🙂
Such a great post, and so refreshing to hear as I embark on a new chapter of my life — one that will undoubtedly involve me being more grounded. Glad to hear that choosing this path can be as rewarding (if not more so) than a life of perpetual travel.
At first we felt like we were “missing” something, that perhaps we could never return to the 9-5 world. But, our travels taught us to be grateful and thankful, to look at our surroundings with appreciation.
Because of this, we’ve found that life is much more rewarding and full. Travel is important to us, but we can only appreciate the gift of travel when the other aspects of our life are in check.
It’s been fun trying to figure it all out! I’m sure there are some awesome things just around the corner…
Great advice! I’m in awe of you balancing all of that. I’m single and have a very small family who cope just fine without me around, and I still find it hard to balance work and travel!
We’re still trying to figure it out, but we’ve learned a few tricks! 😉
Wow. This really resonated with me. I lived in London and NYC for a few years working and traveling, then two years ago I came back to Sydney and hung up my vagabond shoes. I have a corporate job and a mortgage but travel is and always will be a priority but I knew something fundamental had changed when I got more excited about my new beachside apartment than an upcoming trip to Vietnam. I miss my long term travel days, but I really also like the financial security I have now, which I would not have if I was a digital nomad. The traveling is still happening – this year so far we’ve been to Thailand, Burma, the UK, Norway and Sweden – but other things like wedding plans, building wealth, working on my blog and settling in our own property. It’s actually a good feeling even though I miss my carefree days of being on the road. I also work on my website after work – exactly as you described! It feels like I have two jobs sometimes! Great piece of writing.
Thanks so much for the response Peggy! It’s refreshing to read your story. It seems every day we have someone telling us that a 9-5 lifestyle is the devil, and that running around the world indefinitely is the only way to find true freedom. Which, as you know, is totally not true.
I remember feeling so lost when we finally decided to return home after our long term travels. I didn’t think we’d ever be able to settle back into corporate life, let alone carry a mortgage and raise a young boy.
But, life always has something incredible around the corner! Life is so full and rewarding for us right now, we have no desire to return to a life of dirty hostels and 20-hour bus rides.
You’ve never mentioned practicing self-discipline but I think that’s the one description that encapsulates your lifestyle.
Good for you!
Thanks Monnette!
Amazing theme!
Really your blog presentation is stunning.Great information shared in your blog that is helpful for every family.
Thanks
Thank you Chetali
Wonderful tips, guys! We’re in the same boat – just couldn’t do the “travel forever” thing anymore. But we still try to get away as much as possible. Staying out of debt is an important one!
Yes, it is for us too. Thanks Andrea.
Interesting post. It is great that you can balance this. I am currently still learning to balance between work, family and travel. Reading this peace of writing is really a great piece of advice. 😀
Thanks for writing this. 🙂
Your welcome and thanks Debbie.
wow, you all guys are excellent families. balance is the key.
Thank you Ferrial.
I’m bookmarking this and sending to my wife. We love to travel but don’t want to be always on the road. Home is fun too. It’s nice to hear another travel blogger say when the kid goes to bed they get to work. That’s my life too, although I do find a way to watch some TV. That tends to be my photo editing time!
Haha, us too. We have a couple favorite shows that we watch. And we couldn’t agree more with liking home. We are building some great memories here too.
I find this extremely inspiring. It can be really hard to get around the idea that you have to have things a certain way if you want to travel, and it’s so awesome to see people who have “real” jobs and a young child proving that that is false!
Thanks so much for posting. 🙂
Your welcome Jessica. Thanks for the comment.
Amazing experience. Me and my wife with 2 kids (4 and 2 years) travelled across Europe. And it was the best month (of holidays) in my life.
So do not scary. Just plan everything and go! 🙂
So true. We need to be more organized now, but we love traveling with our little guys.
It’s nice to see a travel blogger that has to juggle the realities of full time jobs and family. I’m not sure I could just chuck it all to travel around the world.
We couldn’t. After a year on the road we realized we missed home. We may one day do another big trip, but it will have an end date.
I’ve only just come across your blog while doing some travel research, and the article I read caught my attention enough to find out more about the people behind it. Everything you wrote resounds with me and the values I share with my husband (budgeting, saving, NO DEBT, maximizing holidays, etc!). The only differences are we have no kids and we can’t write as well! Many thanks for all the inspiration and happy travels! -xo from Singapore
Thanks for the kind words Shez. We are always continually working on our writing. We are glad you liked it.
Your have beautifully describe that how we can balance in our work and travel trips with our family . Keeping your informative tips in mind in these coming holidays I am going to Dubai Trip.
Have a great trip to Dubai. It’s a fun city.
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This is very inspiring, I wish we could do the same thing… Great for you guys.. keep it up… btw your blog looks great.. 🙂
Thanks Tina. It’s not always easy, but so rewarding.
Very true that trips close to home offer great opportunities. While we were home for Christmas to see the parents, my wife and I pretended we were tourists in town (we basically were, since I hadn’t really seen the town as an adult!) Enlisted my sibling’s help, got some help from the local tourism department…
In fact, that might be a fun exercise – take a town 20-30 minutes away. Research it as a tourist would. Plan a weekend there – reserve a hotel room (or go home to sleep in your own bed if you want), and make believe it’s exotic!
Love the perspective of this post! We’re just about to leave for our first BIG travel experience with our 1-year-old daughter (we’ll be living in a different European country each month for the next 5 months). Who knows what we’ll do after that; continue to travel or settle back down, but it’s great to see that it’s possible to wind back down after the great adventure and be happy. Thanks for sharing your story!
Hi Cam & Nicole!
Just stumbled upon your blog and have to say your story sounds very familiar! We are two Canadians who recently quit our jobs and moved to New Zealand to embark on an amazing adventure – but have been doing it all while still working full time in our professional careers. It’s great to see you truly can do it all and even with a family as that’s our dream as well!
Will continue to follow along on your journey!
Take care!
Jenna & Jordan
What a great Post it is, i never think about the balance of my daily routine with work and family, i used to concentrate on my work only coz i have a busy schedule as i am working in TV Repair Toronto Shop, in this busy Schedule i never get leisure time to spend with my family, these tips really very helpful and i will try to balance work, family and travel. thank you for the post
Hi Nicole,
Your are looking so beautiful like your post about how to manage with travel and work its really inspiring me for future planning for travel,this post is really inspired me..
Thanks for the great tips! I think it’s so important to have the balance between work and life. Many of us get caught up in making a living and we forget to design our life.
Wow, I’m totally with you. One of my friends often says she’s too busy to travel but constantly begs something magical to happen. It’s very true to make some sacrifice to make something like this to happen. My hubby & me are not after expensive top brand name stuffs. Thanks for sharing your story. Though we don’t travel as much as you do (probably twice-3 times a year), and not sure if it would be easy to travel with a young kid if we have one, your experience sharing is very much inspirational. Keep going! Cheers~
Thanks for the excellent tips! I think it’s so essential to have the stability between perform and lifestyle. Many of us get captured up in generating an income and we ignore to style our lifestyle.
Traveling with children is not always easy, especially on long-haul flights, or any long trip by train or car. However, with a little preparation your traveling time can possibly become as smooth as a baby’s bottom. With the help of online hotel booking websites, it becomes more easier to manage your hotel. Book your hotel in advance and enjoy your holidays fully. Dealbuzz.in is such a kind of website for hotel and flight ticket booking.
Well said, sacrifice is the key to be able to travel more often. There are sacrifices that work fine like not spending on fancy restaurants, stop shopping designer clothes and so on. Your article inspires a lot.
So happy family, I wish I could do the same thing one day… Have time to spend with family is a big sacrifice.. Two thumbs for you guys.. 🙂
Nice and Informative Post, I highly appreciate those people who share some good information stuffs, because I like those people who actually share :).
Bravo ,True passion has no limits ,and your child learns to know the World.
Waoh, so inspiring. One should know how to balance work and family. If family is happy, you will be satisfied and will be able to perform better at work. For this, there are many travel agencies like JourneyCook.com which have special packages for family holidays.
Nicely mentioned! Yes you end up sacrificing on something for a better thing and you all have managed things in the best possible way. All the best and the child is very cute 🙂
Great article, the only constant in life is change, the nomadic lifestyle, just part of the journey!
thank you for the beautiful post. you people are balancing the life very well. everyone should follow this.
so I came across your blog while looking for travel tips to travel with our 8 month old baby. He’s quiet a handful, but we’re taking the chances and travelling. We haven’t told any of our friends about it as we don’t want any discouraging remarks on our plans. Just wish and hope we can do it, like you guys do. Thanks for the inspiration. Cheers! =)
This post is really encouraging. I often feel discouraged because my husband is a new carpenter apprentice and there’s no way he can leave his job for the next 4 years while getting his certifications. But I still want to tavel. Thanks for reminding me that we still can do that. 😉