There are numerous things which people struggle with but one of the most common hurdles is generating a location independent income and setting up a location independent business.

We’ve tried a few things to help with this, including the Business Guide, the Freedom Roundtable and private consulting – but all of those things cost money and are therefore not available to everyone. We wanted to do something which is free, leverages our/your time as much as possible and which will help people take massive action and make massive progress towards their goal of location independence.

These conversations, in conjunction with others we have about where we want to be and what we want to achieve (especially Jonathan), have all resulted in this…the 12 Week Challenge.

In a nutshell, it’s a 12 week “program” which is free to join. The aim of the game is to help you make massive progress towards becoming location independent by getting everything in place you need for a location independent business. It starts on Monday, 5th April.

Each week for 12 weeks, we’ll post a task which you’ll complete with the help of the tips & resources we’ll be suggesting (look out for some pretty cool tips from people at the top of their game). At the end of each week, we’ll round-up your progress (if you tell us about it) here on the blog. We’ll be encouraging lots of cross-participation, community support and hoping to get you all commenting, cross-promoting and more on each others’ sites and projects so everyone who joins will benefit from this community effort to make massive progress on an individual level.

The details are here but if you’d like to take part, let us know here in the comments or in the Clubhouse so we can feature you on the site when it starts and help you along the way. So if you’ve been struggling to become location independent, why not join us on the 12 Week Challenge and make MASSIVE progress on your own journey?

Are your children ready to make the leap into location independence?

So you’ve decided to become a location independent parent. That means your children have to become location independent too – and for some children that could be a big problem.

For many younger children, routine and familiarity are everything, while for older ones, it’s attachment to their peers that may prove a sticking point. It’s a real worry for parents, who may worry that their children may not settle into the nomadic lifestyle and won’t be happy when you move abroad.

The lesson I learned when moving from the UK to the Caribbean is that preparation is everything. Here are some strategies you can try…

Check Out Your Location Independent Destination

Many people spend a long time planning for their next move. If this is you, and you’re planning a semi-permanent relocation to somewhere that you visit regularly, schedule a family trip to that destination to ‘sell’ it to your kids.

Plan some fun activities that they will remember when you return to your current home, so they will have something to look forward to when you move. If you’ve got friends with children, plan some get-togethers so that when your children arrive in the new location, they already know someone there. That will ease the transition for them.

Living Space

Do you already know where you’re going to live? Then show it to your kids. If a visit to the location is feasible, then do that, otherwise use Google Earth and other web resources to give your kids as much information as you can about the country they are moving to.

Use the Internet to find photos of the place you will be visiting, research fun activities in the area and generally get informed about your destination. With older children get them to help. They can create a wish list of things to do when they arrive and prepare a scrapbook to tell their current friends about where they will be going.

In our case, we were relocating permanently (more or less, anyway) and we were able to show our daughter the house and her room. We took photos back to the UK with us so she could show them to her friends. We started this process about nine months before the move.

Education

How are you going to educate your children?

You may already be homeschooling, in which case you will be doing the same thing in a different location. If not, let older children help you research schools and visit them all when you arrive (preferably before the start of the school term or semester).

Hook up with a couple of expat groups who may have children in the same schools. This will give your kids a small circle of friends to start with.

Focus On Fun

If your children have any favourite activities then find out where they can do these in the place that you are going. It will help them to feel that they are not leaving their entire way of life behind.

Also, explain to your kids why you are going and what benefits you think it will bring. Kids have a sense of adventure – so appeal to it!

Preparing To Move

Get your children involved in the preparation process. Even children as young as three can make decisions about which toys to take and which to leave in storage. We gave our daughter a suitcase of her own so that she could decide what would go with us and what would come later.

Be sure to explain that toys which are being boxed are not being thrown away but saved. Our daughter was also happy to help wrap items for packing (even if we had to add some extra tape later!).

Keeping In Touch

The great thing is that these days, moving halfway around the world doesn’t have to mean losing touch with your friends. Photos of the people and places they love really help, so get that camera out!

If you have email, a laptop with a webcam and Skype, your kids can talk to friends and family back home, which will make the transition easier. When my daughter first used a webcam, she was very excited. And now, she regularly Skypes with a friend in Gibraltar while they play an online game together.

Talk, Talk, Talk

For us, the key aspect of the whole thing was communication. Our daughter had lots of friends whom she’d known since birth and was a bit upset about leaving them. All our friends talked to the children about the fact that we were leaving, but would still be in touch.

We spent lots of time together, took lots of photos and exchanged Skype IDs. Since we’ve left, several of my daughter’s friends have come to visit and we’ve been back to the UK once. And although she missed her friends at first, and still talks about the UK, she’s settled well into her new life.

Photo credit: Japs – TheGypsy)

Image by Graham Binns

One of the things I’m often asked about is what we do before we hit the road and so now we’re settled in Thailand, we can take a step back and review what we’ve done over the past few weeks as we’ve prepared to hit the road again with a baby…

Here is a list of the main things we’ve done so far (sort of in the order we’ve done them):

1. Found tenants for & rented out our rental property
2. Booked flights & confirmed accommodation
3. Organised & taken Mali for her jabs
4. Researched how baby-friendly our destination is
5. Stocked up on essentials & things we know we can’t get
6. Packed up our stuff into storage
7. Packed our travel bags

For more details about what we did, why & how we did it, keep reading…

Renting Out A House

Our property was bought primarily as a long term investment (it’s our pension!) but was a handy place to live when we headed back to the UK to have our daughter. Now we’re back on the road again, we rent it out full time so we’ve had to find tenants and sort out the management of the property in our absence.

We don’t want to have to pay for a mortgage AND the rent on wherever we’re staying so it’s important that this piece of the puzzle is in place before we book flights & head off.

The timings on this are crucial…you don’t want to rent it out too early and leave yourself with nowhere to stay but equally you don’t want to have it unrented for several weeks/months after you’ve left. We put it on the market about 6 weeks before our ideal departure date and by the week after, it was rented out.

Tip: Consider renting out your property furnished to save on storage costs.

Booking flights & Accommodation

Having rented out our place, we could now confirm the flights & accommodation we’d researched earlier and start getting things booked. I’ll be writing more on how we manage the research & booking processes so watch out for those posts in the next few months.

Tip: Don’t commit to any flights or accommodation until everything back home is lined up & ready to go; but make sure you bookmark/save all the relevant emails in a separate folder so you can find them easily & finalise/confirm your arrangements as soon as you are ready to hit the road.

Vaccinations, Jabs & Health Preparations

As our daughter is still young, she’s not had all her jabs. In fact, we’ve chosen a different schedule to the NHS-prescribed one so we’re having most of them done privately.

Tip: If you’re thinking of travelling with kids or babies, make sure you leave plenty of time to have any jabs needed – and always ensure you give them enough time to recover from any adverse reactions prior to flying.

Research How Baby-Friendly A Destination Is

During our stay in Thailand, we’ll be weaning our daughter on to solids; it might not seem too big a deal but when you take into account all the advice about how to do it right (the equipment to use, how to sterilise said equipment, what food to give etc. etc.), it then throws up all sorts of challenges about whether you can get everything you need in your chosen destination.

Then of course there’s researching things like medical facilities, nearest emergency medical facilities, what other equipment (even simple things like same-brand nappies seem to differ wildly by country), clothing and more is available.

Tip: It’s worth doing your best to find out if you’ll be able to source any special stuff you might need and if not, consider taking it with you.

Packing Up Stuff & Putting It Into Storage

Our interim plan was to move in with my stepdad – who has a big house and plenty of space. Of course doing this with a young baby wasn’t ideal (for him either, I’m sure!) but we had no choice unless we wanted to find short term (expensive) furnished accommodation somewhere else.

We rented out our house fully furnished this time round, which meant we really only had the things we didn’t want them to have and our own personal effects to pack up and store.

We keep only a small amount of sentimental and expensive/precious/investment items in storage – and usually try and sell the rest on ebay or give things away to friends & family. This keeps storage costs down (usually calculated by floor/storage space). Last time round, we had a much bigger storage room (around 50sq ft) but this time, we only needed 25 sq ft.

Tip: It’s always worth asking for any special deals/offers the storage company can offer – and in particular if you can manage with an odd-shaped room, you can often negotiate a better deal.

Packing Travel Bags

Prior to having a baby, we were “last minute” packers – and could usually be seen packing into the early hours of the morning before we fly! Due to the shortage of sleep and the fact we both want to be relatively rested before we take the first flight with our baby girl, this time round we were determined this time to be fully packed a day or two in advance so we can spend the last day relaxing and sorting out any last minute bits & bobs (and we managed it too!).

We’re “no stuff” people and like to travel light – something people have scoffed at now we have a baby – “Oh you’ll never manage that” is a common remark we hear. However, we’ve managed to hit the road with 35kgs between us all (in two travel bag-style bags) and 2 laptop bags. Again, I’ll be writing more (with pics) about the things we’ve packed and how we manage to travel light.

Our Current Whereabouts…

We’ve arrived in one (well, three) piece(s) in Thailand – our home for the next few months. We had a week-long stop in Dubai to stay with my brother and help our daughter acclimatise to both the heat and the time zone change.

We’ve now been on the road for almost 2 weeks and have already learned tons and tons! Will hopefully be sharing it with you in the next post…

Image by Jessie Reeder

Our nomadic, location independent life is likely to be very different this time round – a lifestyle of permanent travel is not something that many people think is possible with a child, yet alone a young baby.

And while having a young baby and no more than 5 hours sleep a night makes things which previously seemed simple to us, seem quite a bit harder – we’re learning as we go along that they actually don’t always have to be any more difficult, unless you let them.

We’ve been very conscious – and still are – that everything we do will depend upon how Mali reacts and adapts and if we feel at any point that our lifestyle is detrimental to her in any way, we’ll make any changes necessary. But with that said, for now, we’re still nomadic!

So what things have we had to consider when travelling with a young baby? Well for starters there are the following…

Where to go:

Safety – obviously we’re not about to go trekking in the jungles of Borneo with a 4 month old and we wanted to head to a place which we knew would be relatively safe & stable politically.

Familiarity – for our first destination, we again wanted to head somewhere we’d already been and knew to minimise (a) the amount of prior research we’d need to do for accommodation etc. and (b) because it’s easier the first trip away to go somewhere you know so you’re not also having to contend with getting used to a whole new place (something we’d always previously found more stressful and time consuming than we allowed for).

Health/medical facilities – this is an obvious one and we know that where we’re headed are excellent medical facilities, of an international standard (cheap too)

Baby development & milestones (e.g. food available when weaning etc.): when we’re in Thailand, we’ll start to wean Mali which means we’ll need to consider the availability of the food we want to start weaning her on (organic, if possible). While we know exactly what food & equipment is available in the UK, we have no idea at the moment what’s available in Thailand so will consider taking a few things with us just in case.

Preparations:

Health & vaccinations: typically for us, we’ve gone a slightly unconventional route and chosen our own schedule for Mali’s vaccinations rather than go with the NHS-prescribed schedule. Whichever route you go, the timing and scheduling of these is something you’ll need to consider before booking any flights. Always remember to give your baby enough time to recover should they have any adverse reactions.

Routines & familiarity: we’ve been quite conscious of introducing things into Mali’s life which we know we can continue when we’re on the road – which will give her a sense of familiarity and hopefully, security. This includes getting her into a pretty strict bedtime routine – not necessarily sticking to set times but set activities which give her signals that it’s bedtime (most parenting manuals will advise you do this anyway!).

So far it’s worked out brilliantly for us – we’ve stayed in 3 different places since leaving our house and her bed time routine has been barely disrupted and she’s continued to settle herself to sleep every night, like the angel she is! We’ve also brought a couple of familiar toys/playmats which she plays with at around the same time each day (i.e. straight after getting up) – so again keeping her in a similar routine with familiar things around her.

Travel Practicalities

Flight times & time zones: Flying with a young baby was one of my biggest worries. I hate flying at the best of times (yes, I know the irony in that!) but doing so with a young, unpredictable baby in tow seems such a hurdle to overcome.

We chose our flight times carefully to coincide with her usual routine. For the first flight to Dubai (3 hours ahead of the UK), we decided to fly around lunch time. This coincided with her usual nap time – and we decided that if she slept the whole way, when we arrived at midnight, she could stay up for a couple of hours at the most and then probably be tired again and go to bed at night time – meaning as little disruption as possible to her routine and giving her a good chance to adjust to the time zone change.

We also felt it would be easier on us – than flying through the night, with her sleeping all the way and us not, then arriving in time for her to wake up and play all day and us be completely knackered. I’ll let you know how it all went in a future post.

Airlines & facilities: Flying on the cheap-y airlines just feels so much harder with a baby – and when you take into account all the additional charges they levy on checked baggage etc., going with a “decent” airline just makes so much more sense. We’ve flown Emirates many times before and they’re an excellent airline – especially for coping with babies. We’ve heard good things about the cabin crew’s helpfulness and their facilities are typically excellent.

Coping with babies on flights: Prior to flying with Mali for the first time, I had visions of her screaming throughout the whole 6 hour flight us fraught and stressed, and everyone around us silently hating us!

Most people had assured us that flying with a baby who can’t yet walk or crawl is infinitely easier than flying with a toddler who wants to run around all the time – and I would have to agree. Most babies will sleep throughout a flight – the sound and motion is soothing – and even when they’re awake, there’s usually so much going on and os many faces to look at, that it’s easy to keep them amused. A few tips for successful air travel include:

• Feed your baby on the way up & down to minimise ear troubles
• Feed your baby more frequently throughout the flight since they’ll dehydrate more quickly
• Make sure they’re wrapped up warmly in layers since planes get very cold

We’re now fully-fledged location independent parents back on the road, so I’ll let you know how it’s gone so far in the next post in this series…