Savings

So, how do we pay for our travels? We can start with the easiest, and the one that has sustained us the longest, and that’s savings. The biggest part of the past two years in Africa has been paid for by our savings. Both of us worked hard and long hours to save up for a future trip. Although neither of us had any fixed plans to start traveling (and we didn’t even know each other back then), we both had the passion and willingness to put money aside. We both had the goal of discovering more of the world and made sure to prioritize our spending and set aside as much as we could.

A great way to prioritize spending is to know how far each Euro will get you. So for us, each Euro not spent on random stuff, but put in our savings account, would get us 10 km further on the road. So, would you rather buy this new € 20 jacket, or travel 200 km through an amazing landscape? For us, the choice was easy!

For most people, saving up for a trip by working a good job back home is by far the easiest way to get you on the road the fastest, and keep you there the longest. Looking back at our time back in Europe, it was so easy to set aside good amounts of money. At least, it was much easier to save up for a trip when still back home, than it is to earn enough on the road to keep going.

So, find ways to set aside money for your dream overland adventure. Prioritize your spending, increase the amount of work hours per week (we did 40-80 hours a week), and switch jobs if necessary. Your dream trip should become your number one priority.

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Investments

This is a tricky one, as you can only invest if you have some money to spare. Luckily both of us have some investment money, additionally to our savings. Although these investments do generate some income, we are talking such small amounts here that it’s negligible. To us, it’s our buffer that we can use to settle back home if we one day decide to stop traveling. We do know other people who fully live off their investment returns, which sounds amazing! Of course, they’ve put in the hard work before they set off, instead of working hard during their travels.

Selling own products

In the months after we left The Netherlands, it quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to return anytime soon. It didn’t take long before we decided we had to make a living on the road and did not want to return to office life back home. Full-time overlanding became our dream, and we set out to make it a reality.

We can confidently say that overlanding provides the peace and clarity needed to figure out what your passions are. Back in Europe, life can be hectic, with little room to think about what you really want in life, or how you can achieve your personal goals. For us, setting out to explore Africa provided us with the time to not only explore remote places but also find and chase our personal passions.

These days we are happy to say we are writing our books, selling photo prints of our most-desired photos, informing others with practical lists, and we even launched our merchandise not too long ago. These products surely do not fully support our travels, but they provide us with the confidence to keep going. Seeing your support here makes all the difference to us. So thank you, if you’ve ever bought something on our website!

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Paid advice

As we don’t plan to stop overlanding anytime soon, we are diversifying our means of income. In this case, it means offering consultancy for soon-to-be travelers. We have been overlanding for 12+ years through more than 55 countries. In that time, we traveled with friends and strangers, saw countless vehicle builds, managed to combine remote work with adventure travel, and gained travel experience in both Europe and Africa.  

Our adventures and experiences haven’t gone unnoticed. Each week we receive countless Instagram and Facebook advice inquiries and a good amount of e-mails, all from people who are planning to start their own adventure. Of course, we will answer your questions via mail and on Instagram. However, to really dive into a subject, or elaborately discuss travel options, a call works so much better.

That’s why we are now offering advice calls, to make sure others can start their trips well-prepared, or at the least give them that extra bit of confidence to make their dream a reality. With our Overland Trip Advice Call, we aim to inform and inspire, to empower others to start traveling adventurously.

Writing for organizations

Both of us have been avid writers for years. For Tobias, this was mostly SEO blogs for his employer and informative blogs on the Rafiki on Tour website. Manon on the other hand, has been an avid writer for travel websites and has been the powerhouse behind the launch of our book It Rocks.

We love to write, and thanks to our experiences on the road we’ve got so much more to tell. That’s why we are now actively writing for travel- and overland magazines and websites. It’s a great way to inspire a wider audience and make some extra money on the side. As passionate writers, it’s a great way to generate some income and these days we are actively looking for platforms to share our stories with.

Freelance jobs

All of the above have been vital in supporting our adventures. They are passion projects directly related to our travels, and we are grateful to have started them whilst traveling through Africa. However, to make our lifestyle work long-term and earn extra money to fully cover our expenses, we are now taking on freelance jobs as well.

Both of us have experience in launching new websites, and bringing them to the attention of the right audience. Tobias has worked on backend and frontend projects in WordPress for years and combined this with highly specialized SEO blogs to attract the right audience. Manon has launched websites for small businesses with a focus on unique designs, brand styles, and catchy texts.

Recently we figured that we have over 18+ years of combined experience in building websites, and together we cover all aspects to make it work well; from server settings to working out complex backend functions, and from an inspiring front-end design to writing texts that score well in Google.

That’s why we are now building websites for small businesses too! These externally focused jobs are definitely a shift in our travels, but they are vitally important to keep us on the road. We only started this website-building project now, as the internet has been spotty in the past, and we have now invested in Starlink to make this new project viable. If you are looking to combine travel with remote work, we would definitely recommend bringing a Starlink kit along.

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Social media

Coming back to those sponsor deals that we are not having, we want to talk about Instagram and social media in general. For us, creating content has been a passion for years, as we love to capture our adventurous lifestyle and share it with you. We put in long hours to capture the moment, edit the photos, and publish them together with informative texts.

Building up our channels has been a process for years, and creating our content takes about 10-20 hours each week. This includes posts, stories, reels, and sometimes blogs elaborating on the content on social media.

If you think we are generating a nice income through it, you are unfortunately wrong. It would have been very nice. Luckily, we do it out of our passion to empower others to travel adventurously too. In full transparency, we do believe the people following us are more likely to buy the products mentioned above, so whilst not directly generating an income, it will hopefully help us to create more exposure.

Besides, we have worked with a few paid product advertisements over the years. Meaning that brands pay us to show their products on our channels. In the few instances that we received money for product placement, we were clear about it to everyone and we fully believed in the product. We get nice offers for random products every week, but can’t justify the reasoning behind it. If we say yes to all these offers, we would make a nice living, but it would also mean selling out what we believe in. So we rather focus on all our other projects and only take on brands in which we fully believe.

Lastly, although not directly related to our socials, we work with a few affiliate links on our website, which provide us with a small commission every time we generate leads for our partners. This costs our visitors nothing extra but provides us with some extra cash to keep traveling.

Patreon

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our Patreon channel! As it opens up new possibilities we will be sharing loads of new exclusive content with you on the platform. We are building a space to connect more in-depth with you, with insights into our trip, group calls, and our podcast: Rafiki Rooftop Recordings.

We can’t wait for you to tune in, so check it out!

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Find your way to get started with long-term overland travel

The streams of income mentioned above all contribute to financing our overland travels. Although not all might be applicable to you, we strongly believe the first step in making your dream come through is to build up some savings. These will not only directly fund your trip, they also give you the financial buffer (and with that, time) to see what ignites your soul. We’re pretty sure the adventures on the road will provide you with more inspiration than ever before, and it might just include a project that will fund your trip for the coming years.

Besides the topics covered above, we know people who fund their travels by working remotely, or by renting out their apartment or house. Working remotely has become a large part of many professions. Keeping a part-time remote job during your trip is a great way to fund your overland adventure. It’s predictable and safe, and if savings are an issue, this can be a great way to get out there. Keep in mind that combining work with travel will surely impact the freedom you experience on the road, and it might therefore not be for everyone. Experiencing a trip in full financial freedom (by living off savings) is pure bliss, and it will enrich your travels in countless ways. What is possible all depends on your financial situation back home, and the time you want to travel. Think about what you are planning to see and do, how long you want to travel, and what experience you are after. If part-time remote work enables you to depart on your adventure, do it!

Lastly, there is a huge amount of travelers out there who started with living the ‘normal’ life. They rented an apartment, bought a house, and worked from 9-5 to pay the bills. Although it’s not feasible (or allowed) for everyone, renting out your current apartment or house is a great way to generate an income that supports your overland trip. We know people who finance parts of their trip by renting out their apartments, but we also know some travelers who fully finance their full-time overland lifestyle by renting out one or more houses.

That’s a wrap

We hope you appreciate this behind-the-scenes look into the financial side of our lives. As you can see, it’s not as straightforward as you might think. Making it work on the road is about working hard on the projects we love, constantly pursuing new projects, and always looking for ways to provide value to others.

Want to support us? Shop around on our website and share our content. Thank you!