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How to Travel & Save Money by Putting Your House to Work

Having days free to explore and travel is the dream of just about anyone, but a reality that so many feel they can’t afford. Can you imagine relaxing on the beach reading a book; exploring the Waitomo caves of New Zealand; trekking the length of the Great Wall of China all the while not spending a dime on housing, saving money, and not having to work for it.

If you own your own home and want to save loads of money to kick start your world traveling lifestyle we have a great idea for you! We’ve found the perfect pairing to allow homeowners to travel, get to know the locals of each destination and to make money from their home to fund their travels. This way, if you’ve saved enough for your flights beforehand you will be in top shape to get around to visit your favourite destinations with little start up money.

The Plan

List your house on Airbnb, find someone to do cleaning and sign up as a house sitter on one of the many house sitting websites online: housesitter.com, nomador.com, www.trustedhousesitters.com, mindmyhouse.com and luxuryhousesitting.com to name a few.

This will allow you to practice your nomadic lifestyle safely with the reassurance of knowing you have a free roof over your head and steady income from your home.  We will put together a step by step guide for you to follow.

Pre-Travel Stage:

Step One: Depersonalize Your Home

People are going to be staying at your house but that doesn’t mean it should feel like being in someone else’s home. This means that you should reduce the amount of personal decorations, empty your drawers and closets. To do this you will need to put a bunch of stuff in storage, preferably in your house or someone’s nearby that you trust. One option is taking a small spare room to store your stuff and locking it up tight. Another option is using airtight bags and plastic totes to store items in your garage, basement or attic. If your walls or shelves look a little empty put some random art or photos of local landmarks around.

Step Two: Make Your Home Comfortable

People will be sleeping in your beds and although your worn or dated sheets might be fine for you, you should buy three sets of fresh white sheets, pillow cases, a comforter and a hypoallergenic mattress cover. Three sets for each bed to ensure that it is easier for your cleaning person to change sheets and should one set become stained it can be replaced easily. Also buy some nice-ish white bathrobes, slippers, wash clothes and towels for you guests to use.

Step Three: Create a Central Theme

People need a reason to choose your house over the others in your area. That reason should never be that it’s the cheapest house available. With higher prices you are not likely to attract the group that are ready to party and possibly trash your house (one reason to ensure that you get the details of what the nature of your guests visit is if they are bringing lots of people).

TIP: If your house is not the nicest of all the houses in the area, or the one with the most amenities you can stand out with a theme. Pull from the most well attended surrounding tourism events and locations in the area for inspiration. Is there a popular Highland Games nearby? Try an Outlander Theme. Shakespearean Festival? Try a Midsummer’s Night Dream theme. If you can pull together a strong theme your biggest difficulty will be finding time to maintain your home.

Step Four: Find Trustworthy Help

You will need a person or people that live nearby who will clean your home, tend to your lawn and respond to emergency calls from your house guests. Interviewing is a great way to eliminate weirdos and find some good possibilities as well as backups. Try them out a few times before leaving just to make sure they can handle the responsibility. Be sure they are happy with the agreed upon rate of pay, you don’t want to find out they’ve weren’t being thorough for three months because they felt underappreciated.

Step Five: Airbnb Trial Runs

Invite some friends and family to try out your place to give reviews and leave suggestions. Ask them to be super kind in their reviews and brutally honest in their suggestions. Remember to follow through on their suggestions to ensure that paying customers don’t feel the same way. Don’t forget to pay close attention to their compliments, if you can improve them why not make the move from good to great?

Step Six: House Sitting Trial Run

Book a Short House sitting nearby to try it and to develop your reputation. Leave the house spotless and better than you found it. If you were looking after pets be sure that the pets are in love with you before you leave so that the owner can see their pet’s loving you before you leave. House sitting site homeowners review the sitters who stay at their house. The better your reviews the better the chances of getting the house you are really hoping for later.

Step Seven: Plan Your Escape

Find long term house sitting opportunities in places that will be both interesting and not overly expensive in terms of food, transportation and other needed costs. Also, choose places that will help you feel like you’re staying somewhere special so you don’t feel the need to spend loads of money. Choose places you can drive to easily or places that have very long house sitting times to keep transportation costs low.

Step Eight: Put Your Time To Good Use

You have been given the gift of time, use it to earn even more money. If you’re already planning your nomadic lifestyle this is your opportunity to put full time effort into earning money online. Write blogs, make videos, take on work, and so on. This will allow to put even more money in the bank. Want advice on how to do this, check out our article on how to earn money while traveling here. Try to remember not to spend like your on a vacation because the point of this exercise is to save money. If you can earn $2000 a week from your house you can pay for your various living expenses, keep your own house maintained and still squirrel away a good amount of money into your savings to provide for your future plans.

Step Nine: Live The Dream

Now that you’ve saved a ton of money by house-sitting and earning money online you should be in great shape to travel the world. There are tons of books and articles out there talking about how to travel the world on $50 day or $18,250 a year. With this technique can now get free accommodations all over the world which brings your costs way down.

Want to learn more about how to travel Europe for almost nothing? Check out this Article.