A mum who has two small children has explained how she manages to travel the world as a– visiting spots like Mexico, France, Portugal and Morocco with her little ones.
Sara Young, 41, a mum of two from Humble, Hampshire, works as a business development director while travelling the globe. As UK searches for ‘digital nomad visas’ have skyrocketed by 5000% in the last year, according to Omio, she explained how she does it.
A digital nomad, for those who don’t know, is someone who has no fixed workplace – they can live anywhere in the world and work from their devices while hopping from place to place. What makes Sara a little different is that she manages to balance this with having two small children.
READ MORE: ‘I visited sun-soaked city just 3.5 hours from UK with 26C weather in February’
READ MORE: Brits can visit 30 countries using just 25 days annual leave for less than £2,000
Speaking to Daily Star, Sara explained why she decided to take up a nomadic lifestyle. She said: “My boyfriend is a professional yacht captain and he’s always had a nomadic lifestyle with his work. So it made perfect sense that we needed to become a digital nomad family so that we could all be together.
“We also all love travelling and so it made perfect sense and wasn’t too much of a transition. Cameron, our three year old went on his first backpacking adventure when he was four months old to Mexico for two months.”
Sara continued: “I work for a tech start-up in the sales team. On a daily basis I have online meetings with potential customers and demonstrate the platform to them, hold negotiation calls, finalise contracts. Most of my customers know I work as a digital nomad and take an interest in where I am at the time of our call.
“I flex my contracted hours depending on where we are so that I can fit my work hours into the UK working day, as my clients are UK-based. For example, I’ll work three full days when we’re back home in Hamble, but when we’re in Antigua, I’ll work five mornings due to the time difference.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking – it must be impossible to find such a flexible job! However, Sara sought hers out and explained to the Travel team how she did so.
The mum-of-two commented: “When I was looking for a new role near our home in Hamble on Indeed I saw that there was a tech start up that looked really interesting I was still pregnant, but arranged a call with the CEO, in case something came up that I could apply for. We kept in contact and a few months after Cameron was born I went in to an interview.
“I happened to mention to the Tris, the CEO, that Carl was a yacht captain so we got talking about yachts and sailing, I casually mentioned that we’d like to travel as family with his sailing, and Tris said that shouldn’t be a problem. When Carl got his new job, it turns out that Tris and the other co-founder had heard of the boat and owner, the sailing world is small!
“They’ve enabled me to travel with my work since then which has been fantastic, I just let them know when I’m travelling and I adjust my hours to make sure that they work for UK working hours and we go from there. I’m very lucky how flexible my role is!”
The family has been to some pretty incredible places to far – something many of us wouldn’t be able to fit into our annual leave. The mum noted: “We’re a UK family of four that has travelled to 14 countries, starting with our first family trip in 2021 to Mexico for two months. Since then, we’ve done a road trip around Eastern Europe, been back to Mexico, and skied in France. We’ve also spent two months exploring Portugal and Morocco on a road trip.
“We spend our winters in Antigua, where Carl, my boyfriend, works as a yacht captain. When we aren’t travelling, we have our home in the UK, where we live on the south coast in the sailing community of Hamble. Depending on what the yacht itinerary is, we can stay in one country for days, weeks, or even months, but usually a month or so is standard!”
However, despite her work being easy about her travels, that doesn’t mean it’s always simple to have two small children in tow. Sara said: “The time difference can be hard, and finding appropriate childcare, but we always find ways of making it work. We generally do two months away, two months at home, to ensure our oldest son, Cam, can still have a strong relationship with his UK friends.
“Currently, we don’t homeschool. Cam is 3 years old and attends a local preschool in Antigua, and our other son is a baby. We’d always want to get them into some local education, as it’s the best way for them to meet other kids and make friends. When Cam starts school in September 2025, we’ll have to make a plan for what we’ll do then – we might need to consider some homeschooling.
“Because we follow Carl for his work, I can see us living this lifestyle on some sort of level for quite some time. We just have to work out how we’d manage the boys’ education, and we’d always take our lead from them, as we wouldn’t do it if they suddenly said they didn’t enjoy it. Cam loves our lifestyle though. He already has so many cool stories that he tells people, like when we were with friends and they jumped off the boat to swim with wild dolphins or the time we went quad-biking in the Sahara.”
When it comes to choosing where to travel, they tend to follow Carl’s yachting schedule. The mum explained: “We always follow Carl with his work, at the moment he’s on a regular contract working six months in the Caribbean in the winter and the yacht is based in Antigua.
“In the summer he’s still paid and has lots of time off as the boat remains in Antigua and he just needs to be contactable and to visit a few times. In the summer we decide where we want to visit based on what’s happening and what sort of trip we fancy. Last summer we had our youngest Dylan who was 3.5 months old at the time so for our first trip we wanted to keep quite local so did Portugal and then decided to head over to Morocco.
“This summer we wanted to do some summer skiing and try somewhere new that neither of us has been to, so we’ve decided to head to Norway and Sweden tick the box. Next summer we’re thinking of New Zealand, and eventually the boat might head to the Pacific so we’ll eventually head there too.
“Our next trip is in June and July when we go to Sweden and Norway, and he can’t wait to see orcas and bears. We’ve always said that we’ll carry on for as long as they enjoy it, and if it comes to a time when the boys don’t want to be travelling all the time, we will cross that bridge when we get to it.”
The family sometimes stay on Carl’s yacht and other times choose to book an Airbnb. Amazingly, they also manage to save while travelling. Sara said: “We aren’t big spenders and always budget when we travel. For instance, in Norway we’ll be wild camping so that we don’t spend much if anything on accommodation. We typically don’t buy things new and borrow what we can as we travel, I’m a big fan of sites such as Vinted for all of our clothes. We get most of the boys toys free from Facebook groups.”
