Off grid house sitting and travel is becoming a popular way of life for many. Let’s face it, most of us want to switch off from the craziness of the world today. Living off grid is also an opportunity to practice a more sustainable way of living. When we had the chance to chat to Annemarie – an Aussie based in South America and living this lifestyle, we jumped at the chance.
Off grid house sitting and travel – living the dream?
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, we meet Annemarie, an Australian who has been slow travelling through Central and South America for the past few years. Annemarie offers wonderful tales of travels and friends made along the way. And, she shares excellent advice on what it takes to survive and thrive living off the grid.
If you’re wondering what the off-grid lifestyle looks like, Annemarie says it is a dream for her. BUT it’s probably not for everyone. That’s where house sitting is a great chance to dip your toes in to see if it is for you.
Getting into off-grid living
Annemarie’s initiation to off the grid living came about by chance.
A friend asked her to come to Costa Rica to help him set up an off the grid art eco events centre on his permaculture farm. Her off-grid experience there lasted seven months where she quickly learned what it takes to survive.
By definition, off-grid living usually means you’re relying on your own energy and water supplies. It also comes with nurturing your own food and learning to truly appreciate all living things around you. An attractive proposition for many of us!
To become accustomed to jungle life, like in Annemarie’s case, you need to be able to cope with isolation, be good with your hands, calm and adaptable.
“You are off grid. There’s no shop, there’s no letter box, there isn’t anything,” explains Annemarie.
Find out more by watching her interview – click to play above
Annemarie shares that it’s important to continue to develop and foster relationships with locals where you live too – often leads come in that way.
Additionally, join community groups in your area, on and offline. Let people know what you do – tell them you do house sitting and people will soon reach out to you. “House sitters are in demand everywhere,” Annemarie tells us.
Annemarie’s top house sitting and off-grid travel tips
Anne Marie’s biggest tip to finding work and getting involved in the community is through WhatsApp.
She tells us that in many countries, including South and Central America, many businesses don’t have a website, they utilise WhatsApp.
A few key ways to finding work on the road:
Join community groups in the region – network and get to know people
Groups (including online like Facebook, or offline in networks) are the best way to find out anything
Tell people what you do – you can’t sell a secret
Engage, develop relationships and opportunities open up!
Join us on our podcasting adventures as we hear inspiring stories from amazing people traveling the world. They’re living their best life, often with their pets in tow!
Subscribe now and never miss an episode featuring excellent tips on how to slow travel, successfully work remotely or as a digital nomad, and house + pet sit. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or your favourite podcasting app. Search ‘Freedom and Four Paws’
Freedom and Four Paws is brought to you by Travel Live Learn.com.
As a valued audience member, enjoy 10% OFF at our affiliate partner Cloudy – relieve stress throughout the day straight to a soothing sleep at night, visit trycloudy.com and use the code FREEDOM10.
And if you’re a fellow traveller and pet lover who is keen to share your story and inspire the world, visit exhalemediagroup.com and mention FREEDOM20 for 20% OFF any purchased service including personalised storytelling coaching.
Are you looking for how to travel on a budget, cheap or for free around the world?
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, we meet Frugal Travellers Mandy and Lee. They have been travelling the world on a budget for over 30 years and over 100 countries. These avid adventurers have mastered how to travel the world on a budget. Mandy and Lee share fantastic advice on how to get the most out of your money while exploring the world.
The Frugal Travellers were recently featured on CNN Chance Encounters, a show which highlights real life stories of couples who met while travelling.
How to travel on a budget: top tip, house sitting
One of the most popular topics on this website is house and pet sitting. Lee and Mandy lean on house sitting as a way to travel cheaply. Their introduction to this mode of travel came about by chance while living in Australia. At first, friends asked them to look after their pets. Word quickly spread that they were lovely and trustworthy and then referrals started to flow in.
In the years to come, Mandy and Lee joined several paid and free services that also enabled them to secure house sits.
They now house sit full time.
How to travel cheap and keep costs down
One of the couple’s success tips is to make a game out of sticking to a slim daily budget. These are a few key ways they save money while travelling:
Localised entertainment booklets which offer discount vouchers e.g. 2-for-1 deals
Following where locals in any destination buy cheap food, services and goods
International travel is available to everyone – you don’t have to be rich!
Through Lee and Mandy’s YouTube channel, their intention is to prove that you do not need to be a millionaire to enjoy a life of travel. The pair themselves embrace slow travel and the freedom it brings, and their inspiring content shows how anyone can do it.
Join us on our podcasting adventures as we hear inspiring stories from amazing people travelling the world and living their best life.
Subscribe now and never miss an episode. Each includes excellent tips on how to slow travel, and successfully work remotely. Search ‘Freedom and Four Paws’ on your favourite podcast service.
As a valued audience member, enjoy 10% OFF at our affiliate partner Cloudy. Relieve stress throughout the day straight to a soothing sleep at night. Visit trycloudy.com and use the code FREEDOM10.
If you’re a fellow traveller and pet lover who is keen to share your story and inspire the world, visit exhalemediagroup.com. Mention FREEDOM20 for 20% OFF any purchased service.
Discover important info on how to house sit in a foreign language destination: be prepared with safety tips for you and the pets in your care!
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, we share our experience around preparing for house and pet sitting in a foreign language destination – that is, for us, a place where English is not the first language spoken.
Watch on and discover some of our favourite resources, tips and tricks for learning the language, experiencing the culture, facing embarrassment, and importantly, surviving in an emergency or crisis situation.
How to house sit in a foreign language destination
Ultimately, our top five critical tips for house and pet sitting in a foreign language destination are:
Know where you’re staying. Make sure you have the address written down and with you both on your phone and on your person. This is important in case you you lose your phone or the battery dies.
Make sure you know what the emergency services number is in the country where you’re staying, e.g. 000, 111, 999.
Download key apps before you head off so they’re ready to go on the ground. For example, Google Translate, and your favourite language app.
Always ask what you should do if you get locked out, and what to do if the pet gets sick. Make sure you know what the plan is! Also that there are emergency contacts who will be able to communicate with you.
Just practice: give it a go, say hello, or hola, as the case may be.
We’d love to know what your tips and experience is in this space – let us know in the comments
Join us on our podcasting adventures as we hear inspiring stories from amazing people travelling the world. They’re living their best life, often with their pets in tow!
Subscribe now and never miss an episode featuring excellent tips on how to slow travel, successfully work remotely or as a digital nomad, and house + pet sit. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or your favourite podcasting app. Search ‘Freedom and Four Paws’
Freedom and Four Paws is brought to you by Travel Live Learn.com.
As a valued audience member, enjoy 10% OFF at our affiliate partner Cloudy – relieve stress throughout the day straight to a soothing sleep at night, visit trycloudy.com and use the code FREEDOM10.
And if you’re a fellow traveller and pet lover who is keen to share your story and inspire the world, visit exhalemediagroup.com and mention FREEDOM20 for 20% OFF any purchased service including personalised storytelling coaching.
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, we share some insight on how to make the most of a house and pet sitting and digital nomad community.
Your digital nomad community and house sitting friends!
We cover three key aspects:
the people you meet along the way;
networking in like-minded online spaces;
and getting involved at niche in-person gatherings for travellers or digital nomads.
As house and sitters ourselves, and the group admins of a popular Facebook Group on the topic, we’ve experienced the very best of what this exceptional travel niche has to offer.
Our eyes were originally opened to this wonderful house and pet sitting community when we first took to the road for about eight months travelling, house and pet sitting throughout the UK and Europe.
Each sit saw us meet fun, interesting, smart and creative people. We are actually still friends with all the home owners that we’ve sat for. Some of those people we are actively in touch with on WhatsApp and Messenger three years later!
We went into this for the pets, as you’ll see in some of our other videos. But what we didn’t expect was to come out with so many friends – all with a wonderful story of their own. Take Teresa and Geoff in Malta, or Andy and Helen in Sharnbrook for example.
Getting your doggie fix
When we were living in London, we desperately missed having a dog. We did sign up to a new service called Borrow My Doggy. It offers animal lovers like us the chance to connect with people who want to share their pups for a play in the park or walk. The service was so popular that the ratio of borrowers to doggies available was out of proportion. Lots of people want a furry friend, it seems.
Later on, we came across TrustedHousesitters, and the rest is history!
We started out doing short local sits in the city to get our pet fix and build our reviews, then we took the show on the road.
Building the community – pet sitters, nomads and wanderlust
We got so into the house sitting scene that – just for fun – we started a Facebook Group to attract like-minded souls. Our intention was to connect with people who saw the world the way we did: through dogs, travel and a search for freedom that sees us living and working wherever we want, whenever we want.
COVID obviously put a cold hard halt on our dreams for a couple of years, especially as we ended up in Australia, which was one of the last countries to open up a good two years after the pandemic began.
Our Facebook Group continued to thrive though, and at time of writing is very near to 15,000 members! The Facebook community has offered great conversation, and it’s so heartening to see how many people swap services on there, find their next sit/sitter and help each other with advice.
Travel communities and learning more
Another of our favourite ways to build community in the travel space is by attending conferences.
One of our very favourites is TBEX where you can meet like minded people and learn how to better your craft.
It’s well worth the investment attending something like TBEX. The learning is inspiring and motivating. The travel is extraordinary. But the unexpected benefit is the international friends you walk away with!
Of course, the next one we shall attend is in Greece in 2023… can’t deny we are really pumped about that!
Join us on our podcasting adventures as we hear inspiring stories from amazing people travelling the world. They’re living their best life, often with their pets in tow!
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, find out about how valuable a global travel community can be for your work and wellbeing.
Have you found a community through house and pet sitting? Let us know about your experiences in the comments and tag those who you have met along the way.
Subscribe now and never miss an episode featuring excellent tips on how to slow travel, successfully work remotely or as a digital nomad, and house + pet sit. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or your favourite podcasting app. Search ‘Freedom and Four Paws’
Freedom and Four Paws is brought to you by Travel Live Learn.com.
As a valued audience member, enjoy 10% OFF at our affiliate partner Cloudy – relieve stress throughout the day straight to a soothing sleep at night, visit trycloudy.com and use the code FREEDOM10.
And if you’re a fellow traveller and pet lover who is keen to share your story and inspire the world, visit exhalemediagroup.com and mention FREEDOM20 for 20% OFF any purchased service including personalised storytelling coaching.
Are you looking for house sitting tips? In this video, our inspiring guest, Lisa, shares awesome advice on how to score the perfect house sit and get paid to care for pets!
After stepping away from her life as she knew it to care for her elderly and sick parents, Lisa felt entirely lost on what to do next when that chapter of her life closed. She’s been an ‘animal person’ for as long as she can remember, so it seems fitting that as an adult, when she was seeking inspiration, that she should fall into her pawfect career.
House sitting tips – score great stays, get paid!
An avid house and pet sitter, Lisa’s since turned her passion into a paid job. She travels all over the States and Europe. One of the biggest joys for Lisa is her repeat customers, as well as making friends along the way on her wonderful house-sitting adventure.
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, meet the effervescent Lisa who shares some awesome house-sitting tips on how to score your perfect stay.
Her story is truly heart-warming and joyful – yet another example of how travel (and pets) can save you after challenges that life throws at you.
How to make money from sitting
Lisa started out like most of us, travelling Europe and America using a service like TrustedHousesitters. She made the most of her extraordinary experiences – initially in Europe – and when she came back to her home of America, she decided to keep going.
But, as time went on and she began to score repeat business, she fell into paid options.
A lot of Lisa’s paid work (and repeat paid work) has come via Rover in the USA. She was sitting at a property that is also a wedding destination. Her first ‘paid gig’ actually came out of being at this location and taking care of dogs during weddings.
From there though, she’s rolled payment into her business structure, so when she sits for friends, goes on repeat sits or on Rover, she charges.
For anyone considering this option, the next question is usually, ‘how much?’ If you’re starting out, look at the fees other competitors on your platform (e.g. Rover, Pawshake) are charging and start there. As you build experience, expertise and reputation, you can raise your fees to where they feel comfortable. As for any business, don’t be shy: charge your worth.
How Lisa finds her house and pet sits:
There’s a few key sits that Lisa has used to find her sits, they include:
Even with a lot of experience, Lisa recognises the business of house and pet sitting is competitive these days. She reminds us of the importance of maintaining great communication with homeowners, sending photos and prioritise the pets over travel. Our guests Kate and Dave gave similar advice. Find out more here
House sitting with her dog
We’ve met other sitters who travel and house sit with their own dogs. In fact, Freedom and Four Paws guest, Nicky, shared some fantastic advice for anyone considering this. Find out more here
Lisa highlights that if you want to do this, you need to make sure it’s right for your dog. Only agree to sits where your pup will feel comfortable. For example, one sit she did was on a huge farm where her dog loved it and the family there loved him! She knew her dog Ryder, was great with other dogs, so she felt comfortable with him being safe and taking charge. There was even a situation where her dog trained two puppies they were staying with – much to the amazement of the puppies’ owners!
A huge advantage she’s discovered from travelling and house sitting with her dog – admittedly, a chilled out personality – is that he kept everything calm. When she’d turn up to sits with anxious dogs (including those suffering separation anxiety or anxiety based on their upbringing, like never having had the chance to play with other dogs themselves), they were so excited to have a buddy that the dogs changed for the better!
Join us on our podcasting adventures as we hear inspiring stories from amazing people travelling the world. They’re living their best life, often with their pets in tow!
In this episode of Freedom and Four Paws, Lisa’s advice is invaluable.
She’s a true – and experienced – ‘dog person’. I’m sure you’ll enjoy her story as much as we did. You can watch on YouTube or find her episode on the Freedom and Four Paws podcast.
Subscribe now and never miss an episode featuring excellent tips on how to slow travel, successfully work remotely or as a digital nomad, and house + pet sit. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or your favourite podcasting app. Search ‘Freedom and Four Paws’
Freedom and Four Paws is brought to you by Travel Live Learn.com.
As a valued audience member, enjoy 10% OFF at our affiliate partner Cloudy – relieve stress throughout the day straight to a soothing sleep at night, visit trycloudy.com and use the code FREEDOM10.
And if you’re a fellow traveller and pet lover who is keen to share your story and inspire the world, visit exhalemediagroup.com and mention FREEDOM20 for 20% OFF any purchased service including personalised storytelling coaching.
Hi, we’re Sarah & Cooper. Welcome to Travel Live Learn! We’re Aussie expats currently living in the UK (for the third time!) with our adorable Westie, London. Our mission? To inspire you to embrace a life of adventure—whether it’s travelling longer, relocating to the UK or Europe, or exploring the freedom of remote work and digital nomadism. Enjoy your time on our site! We'd love to stay in touch: subscribe for our weekly stories, updates and remote work job opportunities direct to your inbox.
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