Want to pursue your passion for travel, retire early, linger longer and live like a local?  Discover why house sitting is the ultimate way to travel.

You may have heard of house sitting before.  You or your teenager may have even looked after the neighbor’s cat when they went away last year. However there is a whole lot more to house sitting than you ever imagined.

Really, like what?

How about 3 months living rent free here?

Or here?

There are many house sitters– Michael and I included–who live full time in stunning properties like the above. In exchange for caring for a few pets and keeping the property secure, we live rent free with our only expenses being air fare and feeding ourselves.

That’s right. International house sitters get free accommodation and they don’t pay for power, internet, the cleaner, the gardener or for using the car. In fact some of them even get paid to live there. Does this sound like a sweet gig yet?

After five years of house sitting we can attest that it is indeed the sweetest gig we know of.

During those five years we have enjoyed renovated 15^th century Tuscan farmhouses, Spanish casitas, French vineyards, Belizean jungle retreats, luxury villas with maids in Costa Rica & Ecuador. We regularly spend months at a time in ocean view villas in St Lucia and St Vincent. We live like millionaires  in million dollar properties and pay nothing towards their upkeep. Shocking isn’t it?

What’s even more shocking is that we spend less. In fact 50% less, than we used to back in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada.

Yes you read that correctly. Back in the ‘burbs’ our typical monthly expenditure was about CAD $4,000. Two cars, heating, electricity, phones, internet, feeding ourselves and occasionally eating out, cost us at least that.

If we went on vacation, that budget was blown to smithereens. We didn’t stay in luxury ocean view villas on those vacations either, just the usual beach hotel for a couple of weeks here and there.

I can’t see us going back to those types of vacations though. Not when house sitting allows such a fuller more in depth way to see the world.

Instead of a poky hotel room, imagine having a whole home to yourselves, often for months, not weeks at a time. Long term house sits of 3 to 6 months are the way to eliminate accommodation costs. This allows you to linger longer and get a true feel for a new place or a new lifestyle.

There’s yet another perk as well.

Instead of arriving as a tourist. You are greeted as a friend, introduced to a few neighbors, given a guided tour of the area and told the best places to shop or to eat out.

It’s the fastest way to becoming an insider, a resident…….. not just a casual visitor, or one of those ‘pesky’ tourists.

Ready for another shock? House sitters often retire early!

At 44 and 53 years young, we gave up our careers, divested ourselves of most of our belongings and became nomads. This was without access to any pension and with limited savings.

We weren’t born with ‘silver spoons in our mouths’ either folks, so how did we do it?

Our home in the burbs became our ATM; we rented it out to long term tenants and resolved to find a way to make the regular monthly income cover the majority of our living expenses.

We came across house sitting by accident, in fact we almost discounted it, I mean house sitting……… why we would do that? We weren’t interested in caring for a couple of dogs in yet another suburb of Vancouver or Edmonton or god forbid, Toronto in the depths of winter. I would rather carry on working the 9 to 5 thank you.

That was before we discovered the world of international house sitting. There is a world of house sitting opportunities out there, once you know how to tap into it.

Fancy spending a North American winter in Australia, New Zealand or South America, or perhaps an extended period exploring Europe?

A quick glance at any of the house sitting platforms (they work like match making sites) such as HouseCarers or Nomador. Will show you just how many attractive options are available.

Before you get too carried away, be aware that not all sitters manage to secure the plush, million dollar mansions or the ocean view villas. Securing those kinds of sits takes more than a little experience and a lot of know how.

With the right know-how, a little work and  time, you too can take advantage of this growing trend and secure your own luxury assignments.

All the strategies and tips that we have discovered over the last five years have been compiled into an easy step by step guide. It’s yours with our compliments, just click here and you can start enjoying your own millionaire lifestyle.