This post is hard to write because our family lifestyle has very little consistency, nothing is fixed and the sands are always shifting. But people ask and people assume, so I’ll do my best to tell you about family life on the road, as it is. We’ve been travelling for 3.5 years now with two kids who were 6 and 8, now they’re 10 and 12. Obviously, their normal development brings a significant change in the family dynamic. My work, my career as a travel blogger, has become bigger, it dominates our lifestyle more now. But let’s see if I can explain a little about how family life on the road works.

Our Family Lifestyle

I wrote a post a few years ago ” What do we do all day?” it was set on Ko Phangan, Thailand, where we stayed for 6 weeks after my husband’s emergency surgery. A reader asked, so I answered her question. Much of it still holds true, our days are filled with meal times, walking, exploring, visiting, washing, laundry, reading and computers. To me it’s obvious, to you it could be totally alien.

Family Lifestyle and Being a Travel Blogger

I work very hard at what I do. If you just read email updates or occasionally click-through from Facebook, you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I start work around 4am, every morning and put in as many hours as I possibly can throughout the day. Our family lifestyle fits around my work, it’s not determined by what has to be done to make a living.

That 4am start is to get a few hours in before the boys wake up, I have to be mum first, blogger second, mostly. Sometimes they just have to wait ’till I’m done, but it’s rare. I work far harder than I ever did at the hospital and put in more hours. But it’s a lot more enjoyable!

I love what I do but I don’t just do it for fun, the websites (there are 6, that was a mistake!) provide our income and it takes constant work to keep that trickle of money coming in. Blogging is not, by any means, a set it and forget it, passive income generating machine. At this stage, it takes constant daily work to get people to the pages and grow that income to a point where we can rely on it.

Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Possibly I am, but I’ve learnt a lot, starting from scratch 5 years ago and we do make a living blogging.

I don’t have any assistants or VAs and writers. Most bloggers do, a whole team even. I need help, but so far I’ve not found time to organise it.

We very rarely do promotional or sponsored work. When we do it’s cool, it makes a change, but mostly we travel our way. I don’t like having my hands tied by third-party requirements and I take professional perfectionism too seriously to take on sponsorship deals lightly.

We have 5 nights in fancy hotels in Phuket coming up, 5 nights out of a 6-week trip. That is enough, more and it would spoil our travel experience. Yes, we pay for our travel ourselves, I’ve never done a press trip and wouldn’t want to unless it was something that was good for the whole family.

I think people assume that a travel blogger lifestyle consists of travelling for free and writing about it. Maybe some do, we don’t. That’s not why we travel.

When we’re on the road I work less, time is scarce, and when we settle for a while the available work hours increase.

Our Family Lifestyle and Being Frugal – Money

We spend as little as possible to do the things we want to do, our lifestyle is frugal or “budget.” If those things are expensive, so be it. If we really want to do something we spend the cash. We don’t scrimp but we don’t buy stuff we don’t need either (with the possible exception of Pokémon cards).

If you want to know more about how we afford to travel like this, you need to click here.

Sharing Our Family’s Lifestyle in Public

I’ve been asked many times how I feel about being so public with our lives. It’s a reasonable question, it looks like we share everything. We don’t of course, anything we want kept private, stays private.

Some things I’m comfortable with. I’m very open with talking about money and things like menopause. As a medical scientist I’m well used to talking about physical things and I think it’s a topic that should be discussed openly, particularly when it could help younger women. Some women would shy away from topics they consider personal or embarrassing. Stuff that! It’s about personal boundaries, yours aren’t necessarily mine.

I think people need to know that travel is desirable and affordable and that there are alternate ways of making a living. I’m on a mission to tell the world. We have nothing to hide there.

When it comes to protecting my kids, I’ll go silent. I will never and have never, used them to get page views.

Lifestyle and Being Wife

Chef and I have been together forever, supported each other totally through everything the world throws at us and that’s all I need to say. We are rock solid. You see, I don’t share everything.

Family Lifestyle and Daily Practicalities

Laundry, eating, cleaning, washing, shopping, cleaning teeth, they still happen. Of course they do. On long-term stays (London, Romania, Vietnam) I return to being housekeeper, in hotels others take the strain. It’s different wherever we go, but always pretty easy, no big deal. We work as a team, there are no chores or schedules, we just pull together.

Lifestyle, Health and Diet

We’ve never had any difficulty finding doctors or dentists wherever we’ve been in the world. Medical intervention has been needed less than a dozen times over the last 3.5 years. Chef had a tooth pulled in Guatemala, I had a filling, the boys had dental checkups, all good.

Chef had surgery in Thailand, one of the kids had antibiotics for tonsillitis, once, one child had a hospital visit for suspected Dengue and I was treated for giardia after India (The antibiotics made me sicker than the bug!).

Chef famously had emergency surgery in Thailand. No problem, all went well. Menopause has given me a hard time but that’s just life. I’d rather do it travelling than stuck at home.

Diet-wise, we’re not picky. We eat pretty well, Chef is an extreme athlete, he eats Mc Breakfasts sometimes along with the rest of us. Supplements are handy, your intake of, for instance, green veg. meat or dairy, can go down dramatically in some countries.