Why the blog?

This blog has been created to record our real travel and life experiences and to keep in touch with our friends, family and those who have shown an interest in ‘The Experiment’.

We hope that you will enjoy following a ‘maturing’ couple as we attempt a change of lifestyle and to live life to the fullest on a very tight budget. We are aiming to provide entertaining, ‘warts and all’ tales, that we hope will raise a smile and perhaps inspire.

According to her optician, Jo Knight is currently a Travel Writer and Global Adventurer.

S he also happens to be a peri-menopausal Jack-of-all-trades, grafting from the age of 12 initially at Brighton’s Beach Cafe and then as an Insurance Loss Adjuster, Parent, Property developer, Pig breeder, Retail Manager and a Company Director of her own High Street fashion business.

Armand is of Anglo Belgian descent. He keeps an Australian passport in case of emergencies.

H aving spent his youth in Swindon Wiltshire, his first job was in an abattoir before he fled to spend his twenties working as a software engineer in Holland, South Africa and Massachusetts. Over the next twenty years, he worked as an itinerant business consultant in Europe, San Francisco, Islamabad and the Yemen.

Background

For 8 years, we were neighbours and good friends and we saw each other’s children grow.

Armand already being divorced, our friendship developed in 2012, after my husband ran off with a younger model, (an event for which Armand and I are now both very grateful). We started to share interesting and eventful adventures across the globe, encouraging each other to live life to the fullest within our financial limits.

I have always harboured a desire to have a total change of lifestyle when my children came of age. Our immediate parental responsibilities have now been relinquished. My son recently turned 18. A week later I’m commencing a five month trip to Asia with Armand..

We motivate each other and create a balance of wanting to do it all (me) and wanting to slow the pace and savour (Armand). It’s not all that clear cut as Armand too will suggest slightly crazy expeditions for which I need some encouragement and I too can chill. Both willful, some of our journeys are challenging as a result.

We have not lived together, but have been great travel companions and have shared a substantial amount of quality time. Our only joint financial commitment was made in 2018 with the purchase of a panel van which will become our home.

This is an experiment.

I have a house with a small mortgage and a small pension that can be claimed in 8 years time. No trust fund, no inheritance due, no family money to rely on should the experiment fail.

The plan is to travel the world for the next 8 years on the rent of my small three bed in Sussex. Net of mortgage and insurance, this will be in the region of £1000 a month.

Armand has savings and can claim a small pension in 2 years time, which should allow him to match my income of £1000 a month for the same period. Again, Armand has no assets or any other income available to him.

This is the experiment. Can a maturing couple, travel the world, chase the sun, live a healthy life and return to see their family a few times a year on an income of £2000 a month? We are prepared to top up our income by working overseas if necessary and have a nothing ventured, nothing gained attitude to the plan.

Fingers crossed for our health and the health and happiness of all we love and are important to us.

We are hoping to provide entertaining ‘warts and all’ blogs throughout the experiment.

Keep visiting this site to see what’s possible and what happens!