The Williams family’s BigOE
In March, Daniel and Anya Williams packed up their Auckland home, rented it out and went on a 10-month overseas adventure with their four kids, aged 1 to 12.
What inspired your move, and how long have you been there?
My father worked for Air New Zealand, so my family travelled a lot when I was growing up and trips overseas are some of my fondest memories from childhood. I wanted my children to see something of the world outside our New Zealand bubble, and to experience what I did when I was younger.
It was a major push out of our comfort zones, but once we booked the first flight out of New Zealand, it all became real and things quickly fell into place once we’d made that commitment.
Looking back, it’s been one of the greatest adventures of our lives, and I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished as a family.
Did it take long to settle in?
Within the first few days, we were asking ourselves if we’d made a huge mistake because our children just wanted to watch TV and play on their iPads – which is no different from being at home. Eventually we banned their iPads, but we let them have them on longer flights.
It took us a few weeks to get into a good rhythm and routine with all the day-to-day activities and also regular road trips and flights.
How do you fund your travels?
We own an online Lego store at home (brickstore.nz) and we have a fulfilment partner that prepares and ships our orders. So we just manage the business while we travel, answering customer emails and dealing with our suppliers.
We also have rental property at home which we acquired after selling our website hosting business, Web Drive, in 2014. We worked really hard to get our businesses in the best shape possible before we left and it’s worked really well, giving us the freedom to be away from New Zealand.
What are the biggest advantages of living this way?
We’re getting to tick off so many places on our bucket list, and our children are experiencing so many different cultures, languages and ways of living. They’re seeing the good and the bad – for example, the opulence of Beverly Hills contrasted to the homeless on Hollywood Boulevard, just a few blocks away.
Any disadvantages?
Looking after ourselves has been hard, and sometimes your plans go entirely out the window. Even with the best intentions of packing daily lunches and cooking dinner most nights, it can be extremely hard to look after our diet. We are constantly on the move and sometimes it’s easier to just get fast food, which does get expensive and makes you feel yuck.
How expensive is it compared to New Zealand?
We’ve definitely found it is more expensive almost everywhere we’ve been. Some places more than others. Spending in euros and US dollars is painful as it’s typically 1:1 for spending, and the exchange rate hurts.
How have your children got on in terms of education?
Covid taught us that trying to keep kids on a schooling schedule is really, really hard. We had plans for them to write in a journal daily, and they were going to do daily exercises on maths and reading apps, but this didn’t last long as it became exhausting trying to keep them ontask.
Eventually, we gave up and figured that they are getting enough of an education with all the things they’re seeing and doing around the world. We know that when they return to school back home they’ll catch up soon enough.
What are the top three things you recommend visitors check out?
Our top destinations would be: Dubai – we couldn’t stop saying “wow”. The architecture is mindblowing and there’s no shortage of things to see and do.
Japan – a beautiful country and beautiful people. Everyone is so respectful of each other. There’s no litter, it’s very clean and safe. Santorini, Greece – the clifftop architecture and colours are just stunning.
What advice would you give to someone considering doing something similar?
For anyone thinking of doing something like this, my advice is to just go for it and make it happen. Like for us, there were so many reasons not to go, but I felt like this was something truly worth doing for our family.
It’s been a great change of scenery for us and made us appreciate what we have in New Zealand all the more. We made daily videos of our travels – just three to five minutes each day – to share with our friends and family back home, and it will be great for our children to watch these in the future to remind them of how lucky they were to see so much of the world all in one go.