Travel and buying a house

Since I'm just about to head off on a holiday myself, I figured it would be notable to write some things about purchasing a house and travel.

One of the first excuses people usually think up when they talk themselves out of purchasing is "I still want to travel". This is probably the easiest excuse to debunk, but it depends on what you mean by travel.

If "travel" is spending 6 months in Mongolia feeding children or 12 months in Japan teaching English, then yes, purchasing a house isn't probably for you right now. Assuming, of course, that you are leaving Australia and not coming back for a fair amount of time, you probably don't really have too many commitments (job, lease, relationships) back in the homeland.

But after you've done your year, you'll probably end up coming back anyway. What then? Once you set your life back up, you're pretty much in the same boat. But the excuse still comes back - "What if I want to travel?".

I'll assume now that "travel" means a few weeks in Bali or maybe even a month at Whistler in Canada. With this sort of travel, you'd most likely have those commitments (job, lease etc..) that you had before. You'd also probably be renting too.

So ask yourself, if you were working a fulltime job and renting, would you still go on holidays with your annual leave? Yeah, course. So why not when you have a mortgage? You have the same commitments, the only major difference is that you're paying a bit more for your housing.

The key, like anything to do with buying, is just working out money management. If you're making enough to afford house purchase, there are probably places you can save money. It may take 4-5 months, but 20 weeks x $100 is a tidy $2000. More then enough for a very fun time in Thailand.

You don't have to stop paying bills, or take out second loans, or anything like that. Just funnel money from other luxuries (games, cds, booze, clothes) into a savings account and leave it alone. In 4 months you have cash for travel and you're set to go, without credit. It's simple.

If you think I'm some sort of savings guru, believe me, I'm not. Until I bought a house, I usually spent all my disposable income in a few days. Budgeting is a skill you quickly learn.