With so much talk about the ever-increasing prices of property in Australia and “expert” advice telling potential first home buyers to cut back on the travel to save money, you should probably give up travelling altogether, right?
We purchased our first house on the Central Coast of NSW in October, 2017. We settled on the location after years of travelling the world and realising that Sydney wasn’t home for us. In fact, we already plan on moving further north in the future. What we love about Australia is sun, sand and bush and the Central Coast is where we often found ourselves spending long weekends away or weekend day trips, so it made sense to buy a house in our favourite spot!
We didn’t purchase a house without first travelling to multiple countries each year and we celebrated the momentous purchase with a holiday to Hong Kong (of course), so we didn’t give up travel for good.
What we did do is make many other sacrifices.
Travelling for us was what we enjoy doing more than anything. We find travelling more fun than buying new clothes or going to the movies. So, instead of giving up travelling completely, we sacrificed everything else and put 70 per cent of our savings towards a house deposit and the rest towards holidays. We were very strategic with our savings so we could travel to the countries and cities we really wanted to.
We were also really lucky to be able to live with our parents for as long as we did so we didn’t have to worry about paying rent which meant every time we saved enough in our deposit fund, we booked another holiday.
You need to take the time to enjoy yourself and spend time doing what makes you happy. Had we not taken the time to travel, we probably would’ve ended up purchasing a house in western Sydney in 2015, a long trek from the closest beach and surrounded by congested roads and high rise construction and that wouldn’t have made us happy.
Experiencing what we did in Europe, Scandinavia, New Zealand and even here in Australia, helped us realise what made a home, home. Although we didn’t purchase our ultimate dream house (our ultimate dream house is something only the 1 per cent of the world can afford and no amount of sacrificed travel would help us get there), we bought a house that’s perfect for us and one we love.
Don’t let others discredit the way you live your life or tell you that purchasing a house isn’t possible. Or that it’s more important than travelling.