Let’s face it, unless you’re a lottery winner, you’re going to be keeping a close eye on your spending during your trip, as well as considering ways to generate a few Euros to help fund it.

We’ve brought together here all the financial lessons we learned as we travelled, and afterwards, to help you get an idea of how affordable this type of lifestyle can be. It includes places to further your financial education, our journey to financial freedom, costs for motorhoming and how to generate an income.

Financial Education

The Money Muppet
We came back to the UK after two years on the road in order to set ourselves financially free. Our goal was to travel where, and more importantly when, we wanted to. In order reach this goal we needed to earn enough money to sustain us outside of the rat race. As Jay (the Money Muppet) began to financially educate himself, he soon discovered that as well as working to earn the money, we needed to make it work for us. The posts here take you on our journey up to 1 January 2015.

Funding Freedom
In August 2015 we reached the tipping point and became financially free. In April 2016 Jay wrote a free ebook mini-guide telling the story of how we re-designed our lives to enable us to stop the daily 9 to 5 of our corporate jobs, and to instead have the choice to do something else. Its purpose of the guide is to help others who are thinking about making a similar lifestyle change. telling the story of how we did it.

The Matrix Experiment
Born in the spring of 2017, The Matrix Experiment is (well, will be over time), an evolution of the Money Muppet. We’ve had years now to study and practice the lifestyle changes and financial literacy lessons which underpin our life of freedom. The Matrix Experiment will describe how we think and act, and what resources we’ve used to build our education, with a view to helping anyone wanting to follow a similar path to us.

Financial Independence / Early Retirement

Should We Stay or Should We Go?
The offer of another contract gives us sleepless nights as we are gearing up to set off in our motorhome.

Eight Months At Home, at Home and The Road Calls!
A spell at home and a corporate contract give us itchy feet.

Our Second Full Year of Financial Freedom – The Numbers
We round up the financial figures from our second full year of freedom – is our experiment working?

Our 30 Year Retirement – Inspiring Folks Via The BBC
We woke up on New Years Day 2018 to find a video about our lives being the most popular on the BBC website!

8 Working Hours Left To Go, Again
Jay’s thoughts and feelings as he counts down the hours until his contract ends

5 Week Countdown to Retirement Number 3
Jay’s thoughts and feelings as he counts down the weeks until his contract ends

Our Break From Motorhome Life
Jay stepped back into Corporate Life as a contractor for four months – this is Ju’s side of things

Our Financial Freedom Story in Five Minutes
A guest post we wrote for ‘The Escape Artist’ financial independence blog.

‘How to Retire at 40’ and The Daily Mail
If you spotted us on the Channel 4 programme, or in the paper, here’s more detail of what they were on about

How we’ve risked our money on the stock market
What investments have we made and why

Miracles do happen – the wonder of passive income
Does money drop into your bank account each month without you going to work – find out how it can

A designed life – frugality is not enough
Why we needed to so something other than just reduce our spending

Our early retirement viability spreadsheet
How we worked out that we could retire in our 40’s

Four questions answered – A year in early retirement
We answer the four most prominent questions about life as an early retiree

A year of financial freedom – are we losing money?
A year after we retired early, find out how our finances are doing

Freedom to travel – Financially independent at 43
How we reached our goal and hit financial freedom

Funding Freedom – Free mini guide available now
Our mini guide outlining how we moved from our corporate lives to financial freedom

A dangerous idea – unemployed and getting richer
How we got richer by sitting in the sun and doing nothing in Croatia

How we fund our lifestyle – retired at 43
Also see funding freedom book above for more detail

Corporate life done!
September 30 2015, Jay leaves the office for the last time

Three weeks to financial freedom – the interview
Watch as we discuss our upcoming financial freedom

The tipping point – Financially free at 43
The weekend of 31 August 2015

Costs

Our 2018 Three Month Motorhome Tour – Summary and Costs
Cost breakdown for three months pootling around France from April to July 2018

How much did 8 months touring in our motorhome cost?
Cost breakdown from our 2017 trip to Morocc for the winter.

How much does a year in a motorhome cost?
Cost breakdown from our 2016 trip around Scandinavia – some of the most expensive countries in Europe!

In between motorhome tours – costs to prepare
Costs to consider when you are between trips.

Motorhome tour summary 
Costs and statistics from our 78 day tour of France and northern Spain

Total Costs
A blog post outlining what our first two years on the road cost.

600 days
A round up of our costs over the first 600 days.

Country Cost Comparison
This gives an overview of how much stuff cost in some of the countries we visited during 2012/2013. There are individual cost breakdowns too in our Country Guides section.

Our financial set up and tracking
Here we show how we set up our bank accounts, pre-paid credit cards and how we tracked our spending.

Our original cost planning
How we guestimated our costs for a long term trip (it wasn’t extensive and we ended up being way out!).

Earning

Earning from a travel blog
Ways we looked generating an income from our blog as we travel.

Making Money
The different ways people we met earn while they travel.