Despite all the hassle, you’re thinking about traveling or living abroad with kids. Exciting! This post will give you some food for thought as I’ve been thinking about doing just that for the past year.I loved growing up overseas.
It was always a treat to meet new people, eat new food, and learn about new cultures. My parents worked for the US Foreign Service and were stationed in Manila, Lusaka, Kobe, Taipei, and Kuala Lumpur before finally arriving in McLean, Virginia for my high school years. McLean is 20 minutes away from the US State Department in Washington D.C.
Because I attended international schools for 13 years, I felt like I had a much richer childhood compared to many of my high school peers who mostly spent elementary school, middle school, and high school in the Northern Virginia region. Every summer I’d go back to see my friends in Taipei and KL, which was an absolute blast.
Living abroad helped me understand and embrace different cultures. For example, because roughly 61% of the Malaysian population was Muslim, I had several close Muslim friends who shared with me their traditions. I’m certain there would be much more love and harmony around the globe if more folks traveled.
Disclosure: Financial Samurai has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Samurai and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Going On An Adventure
As a father now, I often think about ways in which I can provide the best childhood possible for my son, while also creating a life of adventure for all of us.
“Best childhood” can subjectively be described as one that is: filled with happiness, friends, unforgettable memories, abundant life lessons, adventure, the learning of at least one other language, and continuity in the family.
Because we run an internet-based business, we have the ability to provide for a unique childhood experience by living anywhere. If we don’t travel or live abroad, it would feel like such a waste, especially now that the San Francisco Bay Area has become so crowded and economically homogenous.
Before our son was born, we always noticed a nice uptick in our happiness when we traveled abroad. We traveled aggressively for five years before our son was born. For example, spending three weeks on the Hapsburg Trail helped us love our online business even more. Prague, Vienna, and Budapest are truly wonderful places to visit. It was a dream to spend the final week in Paris to watch the French Open.
Overlooking the Danube River in Budapest.
The following year, we spent three weeks in Asia, finally visiting the great temples of Angor Wat after spending a week diving off the island of Pulau Redang, Malaysia. It is unbelievable to dive in 80+ degree crystal turquoise water.
Taaras Resort at Pulau Redang, Malaysia was amazing
Only One Problem: Childhood Amnesia
Traveling is enriching. Unfortunately, few adults can remember life before age three. Even though I had specific country anchors in place during my childhood, I only have two memories between the ages of one and two.
The first memory was sitting in an outdoor restaurant in Lusaka, Zambia while I tried Pepsi for the first time. It was delicious.
The second memory was when I had to go to the bathroom, but couldn’t because it was occupied by my dad. I banged the door hard, but he wouldn’t open it, so my mom had to clean me up in the tub.
The other memory before three was in Arlington, Virginia. I remember playing with my sister and babysitter in this makeshift room that was made out of sheets.
If I couldn’t remember much before three years old, I must imagine others who’ve lived their lives all in one place might have a difficult time recalling their past as well. Everything tends to blend together if you don’t go anywhere.
Sigmund Freud coined the term “childhood amnesia” to describe this loss of memory from the infant years. According to a study done by Emory University, they found that a child’s earliest memories begin to fade around the age of 7.
Therefore, we can conclude that any family traveling with a child under the age of three is doing so not for the child, but for themselves. We purposefully traveled as much as possible because we knew we likely weren’t going anywhere for at least the first two years as parents.
If a family wants to provide the richest cultural experience for their child, the family should travel after their toddler or toddlers are at least three years old.
Three Childhood Experience Models
Based on the logical conclusion to travel after the age of three, we’ve come up with three different childhood experience models to consider.
1) Anchor in San Francisco, and travel all summer and winter. The easiest solution is for us to live in a diverse city like San Francisco for the next 18 years until our son goes to college. Every summer break we’ll spend three months living in one or two countries as a family. Every winter, we’ll spend the 2-4 week break in another country. By the time our son goes to college, he’ll have lived abroad for a total of 52 months, or a little more than four years. He’ll also have visited at least 20 countries, thereby expanding his cultural experience.
2) Anchor in Honolulu, and travel all summer and winter. San Francisco, unfortunately, has the lowest kid density for cities in America. As a result, SF is the least kid-friendly city. Instead of staying here, we would move to Honolulu, one of the highest kid density cities in America that is very focused on family (ohana) living.
The advantage of living in Honolulu is that we also get to be close to my parents (but not my wife’s parents), and we can send our son to a school that goes from K-12. In San Francisco, you have to go to a different school for elementary school, middle school, and high school, and it’s inevitable your friends will end up going to different schools. The disadvantage of living in Honolulu is losing our social and professional networks we’ve spent 17 years building in SF.
3) Completely live abroad and come back to America during summers and winters. I like the idea of living abroad in three international cities for four to six years each once our son is old enough to attend kindergarten (age 5). The idea is to be in one city for all of elementary school, another city for all of middle school, and a final city for all of high school. We’ll use the summers and winters to come back to America and visit other cities close by to where we are currently stationed. Some places we’d love to live in are Amsterdam, Barcelona, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Kobe, Tokyo, and Rome.
Which Childhood Adventure Would You Choose?
Angkor Wat At Night
A big part of me wants to go all out and live abroad once our son turns five. I did it for 13 years of my life and traveled internationally for 25 years since. It would be a blast! We could rent a fully furnished house and rent out our home in SF.
My wife, however, isn’t so keen on the idea because she has never lived abroad for an extended period of time. Only summers in Japan. She’s more keen on option #1 or #2.
She reminded me about the pain of having to change our business address, file different types of taxes, and all that type of stuff she deals with as the CFO of our company. We’d also have to go through the arduous process of applying to expensive private schools with limited spots.
Life is so comfortable now, but I long for excitement. I’m the guy who has to get out of the house and do new things every day. Whereas my wife can comfortably stay home for weeks.
Biggest Concern Living Abroad
My biggest fear about living abroad for my son’s entire grade school life is him not developing lifelong friends from childhood. I don’t have any elementary school friends I keep in touch with because I don’t know them well enough.
I do sort of keep in touch with my middle school friends from Malaysia, but the relationships aren’t tight since they are so far away. Because I started high school as a new kid, I wasn’t able to develop deep relationships either. There’s really only two people from HS I keep in touch with, but they are both on the east coast, so I hardly ever see them.
That said, we now live in the time of the internet, social media, and video chat with our phones. It’s much easier to keep in touch today than when I was growing up.
I’d love to get everybody’s opinion on what you think we should do, and what you would do if you had these options. If there’s a different childhood model that I’m missing that could also be amazing, I’d love to hear it.
The Benefits Of Traveling Abroad For You And Your Kids
* Potentially easier to learn a new language
* Forces your child to open up given he’ll have to make new friends at a new school
* Gives her firsthand experience of things other children might only see online or in textbooks
* Might make him more unique when applying for colleges
* Creates more empathy and understanding for other people and cultures
* May let her appreciate living and working in America if that’s where she ends up
* Make international friends in addition to American friends
Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards
Looking for the best travel rewards credit cards to travel to more places for free? Here are my favorite out of over one hundred I’ve reviewed so far. I’ve traveled to over 60 countries in my lifetime and always use travel rewards points to get free airfare.
1) Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card
This popular travel rewards card waives its annual fee for the first year and offers flexible 2X miles rewards on every purchase. I’ve partnered with Capital One on several occasions and have always been pleased with their product offerings and customer service.
Key Benefits
- Get 50,000 miles (=$500 value in travel rewards) when you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months
- Earn unlimited 2X miles fast on every purchase you make
- Transfer miles to any of Venture’s 10+ travel partners
- No foreign transaction fees
- Get a $100 application fee credit for TSA Pre or Global Entry if you use your card
- Built-in coverage and purchase protections
Read more and learn how to apply
2) Chase Sapphire Preferred Card
I’ve been a happy Chase customer and cardmember for over 10 years. The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is one of my favorite travel rewards credit cards.
Key Benefits
- Get 60,000 points (=$750 value in travel rewards) if you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months
- Earn 2X points fast for travel-related and dining purchases
- 25% extra value when you redeem for travel bookings
- No foreign transaction fees
- Built-in coverage and purchase protections
- Frequent travel point transfers 1:1
- Invite friends for up to 75,000 extra bonus points
Read more and learn how to apply
3) Wells Fargo Propel American Express Card
If you’re looking for a card with no annual fee, the Wells Fargo Propel American Express Card is a great option.
Key Benefits
- Get 30,000 points (=$300 value) if you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months
- No annual fee to worry about
- No foreign transaction fees
- Earn unlimited 3X points fast on travel, gas, ride-sharing, transit, eating out, ordering in, and on popular streaming services
- Points don’t expire as long as your account is active
- No travel black out dates if you redeem using Go Far Rewards
- Built-in cell phone protection
Read more and learn how to apply
Disclosure: Financial Samurai has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Samurai and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Hi Sam.
I apologize for being late to the game, having just come across your article. I agree with all of your points regarding the benefits of international travel for children. It sounds like you and your wife are supportive parents based on some of your list of considerations. Given that, my 2-cents is to go with option 3 and travel as much as possible. (At least, that would be my choice.)
My wife and I are considering taking it a step further by relocating overseas–perhaps Scandinavia or Australia/New Zealand. I work in a field that appears to be in demand so it seems like a real possibility. That said, there is so much to consider. Both of our children are in high school, which might make the transition difficult but they are both genuinely excited at the thought of moving overseas. It does seem overwhelming. Some of the pressing questions include, what would our kids do for college (in the States or overseas?) What if the career overseas does not go as expected? What should we consider regarding citizenship? So many questions. I would appreciate your insights regarding what it takes to make such a move work.
Thank you in advance and my very best wishes on whatever decision you make.
Hi Sam, we struggled with the same question. I recall reading on another blog post of yours that the shift in the market and the rising cost of living in the Bay Area was giving you pause and maybe having you consider creative ways to stretch your savings.
I grew up in the SF Bay Area, and then lived in SF proper for more than 20 years. When our kids got old enough to go to Elementary school we tried to make it work for a few years but (as I’m sure you know) the lottery system is brutal and the HCOL weeds out really good teachers who just can’t afford to live there.
We could have afforded to stay in SF but we chose not to. The bottom line was, we paid a lot of $$ for a mediocre school with mediocre teachers and no green space to stay in SF. I feel like it is a rite of passage for all San Franciscan parents to spend evenings fantasizing about moving out of the City and scrolling through real estate listings. And we finally gave in to that urge and moved out of SF to Seattle.
I would encourage you to consider moving out of your HCOL home and life into somewhere more child-friendly in the US, but renting your SF place out and not selling it, if you can. We make enough from rent to pay our mortgage on both our house and our apartment back in SF.
Now that we don’t pay insane property taxes, no state taxes, and our overall cost of living is about 2/3 what is was, we get to spend 3 months out of the year traveling with the kids. And when we are back in Seattle, we found a school with gifted, motivated and inspiring teachers and a school with acreage where our kids can run and play! I think it’s really important for kids to root somewhere and create long term friendships.
I feel like we won the lottery. I don’t think we knew how bad SF was for families until we lived in a city that has the perfect balance of urban and kid-friendliness. If we could leave SF after nearly 40 years and not look back, you can too. Life sure is a lot easier when everyone around you isn’t killing themselves just to survive in a HCOL area.
Move to a lower cost of living area, pocket the difference, and travel travel travel.
Sftosea, I love your advice! I am getting my son(4) and I ready to move to Central or South America. Probably Belize. I want us to have roots but travel much of the time. Living there, we can afford to travel all over the world.
Elizabeth, have you been to Belize? What part are you looking to move to? I am a single mother and also am hoping for the same thing! May you prosper, where ever you go!
We were living in Asia for 20+ years. My kids went to International School in HK last 5-12 years. With longer winter and summer breaks and much less expensive flight tickets, we did travel with kids for Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, etc.
Now we have just moved back to SFO for almost a year and we have planned winter break to travel out again. (Yay!!!) And the kids themselves have stayed in Asia for their first summer already :)))
I can’t agree more that children and we as adults have better global view and openness to different cultures.
I m still missing the rich and different language environments in Asia
Awesome! How old are your kids? And what were you guys doing in Hong Kong?
I would go with option 3 if u want to really do it the right way but I am wondering how you would handle visas because u r not going there for work?
Great post, Sam. It’s the topic I feel the most connected with, probably as a result of the global travel/living experience I gained over the last decade. Now, the family has grown and I have some of the concerns and share the same views on the virtues and drawbacks of global mobility in the context of your family.
My story is a little different from you because I haven’t moved much during my childhood/teen years…my international travels started only after graduating from college.
My wife and I are a binational couple (French/Argentinean) living in SoCal. Moved to OC from Europe for work when we were newly married in 2011. Fast forward to 2018, we have four kids aged 4, 2 and newborn twins who are just 3 months old. They are all American but are raised to be fluent in Spanish, French, and English.
I was surprised by the lack of popularity of the option #3 (completely moving abroad) which may be the only way to immerse with a new culture, although I understand how challenging that could be when your wife is not fully on board with you. I lived in the Middle East for two years and feel that experience would not have added as much to my cultural sensitivity if it would have been otherwise.
Our children, being born in the US, are raised in a third culture which is foreign to my wife and I. It also adds up to the geographical complexity of the logistics of having grandparents in different continents. We are probably going to move overseas again (I think it’d be good for them to get out of the only way of life they know here in North America) as I also long for the excitement of you new things you referred to. Also, don’t know much about the struggles of elementary-middle-high school transitions in the American system, although I am suffering the absurd cost of childcare here these days. It seems to be a good idea to live in Europe during their college years too because it’d be unaffordable in the US.
Everyone seems to adapt differently to moving during childhood though. It’s a lot to ponder sometimes…what is that gives the best experiences and the least suffering.
Thank you for writing this. I haven’t given you an answer but your post and the comments gave me a lot of viewpoints from so many other people too. Best of luck with your decision. Look forward to reading more stories on international family living.
Sam, I must admit that I’m anxious for you to move to Hawaii! I’d very much look forward to reading about the move, seeing pictures, reading about the process of buying a home there, learning more about Hawaii life – but I doubt you should uproot your family solely for the sake of producing satisfying Internet content for anonymous readers ;-) (Though maybe you could write it off on your taxes if you did!)
It’s very interesting to read about this. For myself, I would like to spend a month to six weeks abroad in the summer, choosing different countries each time. This timeframe would give the kids some time back with their friends, while still giving them the benefit of exposure to cultural differences in a “slower” pace that more mimics the day-to-day lives of the residents there, not a “If It’s Friday It Must be France” pace: an opportunity to stay at an apartment, rather than a hotel, go grocery shopping alongside the native residents, build a little rapport, sink one’s teeth into the culture a little more than the tourist approach.
I’ve been thinking much about developing friendships as I enter my 30s. I didn’t live abroad as a child (I did as a 20 something), but I moved around enough that I didn’t develop as many of the stable friendships that some have. I think it becomes more difficult to make friends as you get older, in some sense: everyone’s so busy, by and large, and also because your life is so specific to you that it can become tricky for anyone else outside your family, or maybe your coworkers, to fully understand your day-to-day. I do think it’s important to allow children some time in the same place to develop friendships. Friendships, when you’re young, are all about shared context, being at the same school, in the same class, on the same sports team. Proximity helps a great deal. After all, when you’re very young, you have very little shared life experience to draw on to develop a friendship, and you’re a long way from developing a values system that can also form a bedrock.
Is the potential move to Hawaii a “we must decide by X date” (I would assume by the time your son starts kinder, if you have an ‘X date’) or is it more “if and when we feel comfortable, we’ll do it”?
It also interests me that you have such a sharp memory of trying Pepsi for the first time. I have a very similar memory of my first time of trying Gatorade (lemon-lime, of course) when I was about four. Something about that sugar really sticks in the brain!
As always, great blog.
Great idea of writing off the entire move and living expense in Hawaii on the business! After all, how can I write about Hawaii living if I don’t make the move?
The determination date will be either pre-school or kidnergarten. We’ve applied to all the pre-schools, and will see where he gets in. Then we’ll make a determination, and make another determination at kindergarten if we don’t move during pre-school.
Good luck w/ your adventure!
Remember the magic words “government per diem” for expensing business travel, especially to foreign countries or expensive areas. You can take a flat rate deduction based on total days without providing any receipts or other documentation.
The GSA rate for New Zealand (lodging & meals) ranges from $214 – $431 per day depending on the specific area. That’s about $6,500 – $13,000 monthly which is *far* more than we’ll be spending during our three months. Translation: tax-free reimbursements from my business for anything beyond our actual expenses.
It does help to have a business and actually *do* some real business during the trip. ;-)
p.s. Hawaii per diem is in the same ballpark as New Zealand.
That’s a healthy amount of money to spend and to expense per day. Good to know!
We homeschooled our kids all the way k-12. We traveled quite a bit through the states and we went to Central America a couple of times and went to Europe for 6 weeks. I found traveling with small children 3-7 difficult. I felt traveling with middle school to be the easiest. High school was challenging as it became more expensive to accommodate “space and energy” needs. We tried three times to live for an extended period of time in a foreign country so that our children could learn another language, but it never worked out! One time Ebola scared us back to the states. So even though we didn’t accomplish that goal, we have a lot of great memories; the kids are now in college and are finding it easier to focus on college; the wanderlust feeling was satiated (they have “been there and done that.”) A VERY important word of advise: know your child(ren). Some kids find it very disorienting to move around quite a bit — and others thrive on it. Also be prepared for the unexpected! Good luck
Thanks for the feedback. Do you feel homeschooling was the right choice? If so, why or why not?
Which countries did you choose? Perhaps the choice of country has a lot to do with how much a family enjoys there? And the accommodations and school etc.