We are Ella and Flash – a couple who have been traveling with our baby for the past 10 months! We were born in Russia and Kazakhstan and moved with our families to Germany when we were children. Flash grew up in the north of Germany while Ella grew up in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg.
There was 500km between us so we never met each other. So, how did we meet in the end? Funnily enough, we met in Spain when we both decided to spend our holidays at the exact same hotel at the exact same place at the exact same time. That is how we met each other, where we fell in love and when we decided to keep seeing each other on a permanent basis.
When Ella met Flash, he was the “I will be married at 25, become a dad, buy a house and work at the same company for the rest of my life” type of guy. While Ella was the total opposite. She dreamed of seeing the world, exploring the unknown and experiencing it all. So when Ella told Flash about this dream, he thought she was the craziest girl in the world!
It wasn’t just because Ella dreamed big, it was more that Flash had never met someone before who wanted something totally different in life. When he saw how much this dream existed within Ella he knew that she was serious about it. Ella can still recall the day when she stood at a train station and Flash told her: “Okay Ella, I have thought about it, let me tell you”.
He continued, “I have realized that I have two choices. Either I hold onto everything I have and let my dream girl go or I go with you and let everything else go”. During this moment, where everything around Ella got blurry, she just remembers seeing his eyes and nothing else. It was the turning point of everything and a moment we will never forget.
How we Travel the World Full-Time
We started this travel journey in January, 2015 so we have been traveling the world together for over seven years now. We started off as backpackers and used Work and Holiday Visas in certain countries to be able to work and live for one year at a time. Although, we realized that funding our travels this way didn’t give us the real freedom we were looking for as we still worked 40 hours per week but just in a different country.
That was the moment we joined different mastermind and mentor groups who taught us step-by-step how to work online. That was in September, 2019. Today we have six different income streams and five of them are online. Ella helps people take their first steps into the online world and helps them find the right mastermind and mentor for their own journey.
She also does emotional support coaching for business owners and even wrote her own children’s book! Flash, on the other hand, is an investor. He coaches people on various investment topics. Additionally, we both host live mentoring experiences all around the world for people who want to get out of the “system” and start their own independent lifestyle.
Visiting 50 Countries and Counting
Over the past seven years we have traveled to over 50 countries together! We started in New Zealand, Australia and Asia. Then we traveled all throughout Europe and went all the way across the Atlantic to the United States – making our way overland to Central America and South America.
Our favorite places are those where we made deep and meaningful connections with the locals, and had special experiences. This happened for us the most in Australia and Mexico. To be honest, every single country has its own beauty and everything depends on you, your vibe or state of mind, and your current situation. That is the beauty of travel – you choose!
Traveling as a Family with a Newborn Baby
Traveling as a family was one of our biggest dreams. We talked about it for months before Ella got pregnant. Visualizing this situation clearly helped a lot. We dreamed that with Samira, our daughter, we could continue traveling as a family. This was the main reason we started to take the steps to invest in online income streams and build up our knowledge base.
Learning how to work from anywhere has helped us so much. Earning money on the road while still having free time to do the things we love is awesome! The idea of traveling as a family gave us the strength and vision to learn, to do and to become. In June, 2020 Ella made a “baby proposal” to Flash and asked him with our wedding ring: “Will you baby me”? She was pregnant! Our daughter Samira is the biggest blessing of our lives.
Biggest Highlights & Challenges of Traveling with a Baby
There are many highlights and challenges when it comes to traveling with a baby. First of all, seeing the excitement in the eyes of your own baby is very special. She reminds us every day to live in the present, appreciate life and be grateful. Both of us have seen so much and experienced so many things but doing it all with our baby is experiencing travel on a new level.
Will we travel forever as a family of three? Who knows. The way we live now is to just remain in the present and go along with what feels good to us in the moment. We talk about our feelings and adjust the situation each time we want something different. We will continue doing that as a family too.
The biggest challenge is that your life changes. Your number one focus becomes your baby. You want them to feel good. Everything gets slower. Every mom will agree that leaving your house takes so much longer! In the past we would arrive at a place, throw our backpacks into the room and off we would go! With a baby it’s like: “Did you take the diapers”? “Do we have snacks”? There is so much more to think about!
And when you combine that with traveling and online work, it all needs constant focus and attention. However, we manage this by communicating clearly with each other, managing our time efficiently and supporting each other. We run a pretty smooth ship at the moment. It just takes practice!
How Expensive is it to Travel with a Baby?
Traveling with a baby costs a lot more than you might think. And it’s not just that the baby itself adds costs but that also your lifestyle and priorities change at the same time. For example when we started traveling as backpackers we would hitchhike a lot, work for accommodation and food, slept on the couches of locals and pretty much just ate street food.
By adding online work and our baby into our lifestyle, we both need our own place – and a comfortable one at that! That adds costs. With our baby, we prefer taking a flight instead of a 20 hour bus ride. That adds costs. We prefer going out, having good food and taking a taxi. That adds costs.
As backpackers we loved the challenge of trying to save money and seeing how far we could travel with it. But now we simply enjoy being in a different part of the world, rather than constantly traveling to the next place. In numbers, we went from getting along with €500 – €1000 a month together as a couple to needing €2,000 – €4,000 a month as a family.
Will our Baby Grow Up to Be a Big Traveler?
90% of people’s character and belief system is formed in the first seven years of life – how we view the world, others and ourselves – so we believe our daughter will have a big passion for travel! We believe that growing up traveling, seeing different places, connecting with people all around the world and experiencing new lifestyles, religions and cultures will make our daughter see things from a different, more tolerant perspective.
These experiences will make Samira more open-minded, more creative and a better communicator. Most importantly, it will make her realize that no matter where you are in the world that everything you need resides in yourself. You can take these learnings with you everywhere. We see it with Samira already – the way she interacts with and observes her surroundings.
She is only 10 months so it’s hard to say what her passions will be in five, ten or twenty years from now. That is just too hard to predict. But she will always have the choice and she will know that anything she puts her mind to she will be able to achieve. Her life is totally her choice after all.
Final Thoughts on Traveling with a Baby
If you are thinking of traveling with your baby, be it for a short trip or full time, remember that traveling with a baby is not just possible but that it’s also one of the most joyful experiences on earth! Seeing your baby grow up and be part of your life is the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced.
Sometimes adults can overthink things, while our children keep it super simple and just do things! What is most important for you to know is that we learned everything as we went. We didn’t have a plan. You need to know that you already have everything you need in the world. Ella traveled for her entire pregnancy and she always felt safe and happy.
Moreover, traveling with Samira has taken our experiences to a new level. The way we connect with people and learn is more intense now. Children are natural learners and we get inspired by this mindset. We believe children learn more when they travel as the world acts as their teacher – these experiences are greater than what is found in a classroom.
Traveling gives you the opportunity to create new memories as a couple, as parents and as a family as a whole – and that is priceless! We truly encourage you to go traveling with your baby. If you have any specific questions or uncertainties, feel free to get in touch with us and we will be happy to help. On our live mentoring experiences you can soak in all of our information on how to travel with a baby. We highly recommend it!
