People always ask me how I find the time and money to travel as much as I do even though I have a full-time job.
Back in 2010 - before I'd ever left the U.S. - I visited Boston with a friend. We stayed with her mom’s ex boyfriend who turned out to be an adorable old man and Harvard professor who’d unknowingly become my new kindred spirit/life’s inspiration.
He’d refurbished a big old house near Walden Pond with stove pipes and original fixtures. Being there was like stepping back into the early 1900s. The place was full of antiques, maps, globes, books and walls lined with dozens of eery African masks.
My kind-of scene.
So, I asked him where he got all of that great stuff, and he told me he was a frequent traveler. That it was his life’s passion and he’d been almost everywhere -- war zones, Antarctica, you name it.
My eyes lit up, and even though I hadn’t been much of anywhere yet, I knew that travel was what I wanted to build my life around too.
Collecting masks was one of his biggest passions (I now collect masks and tribal stuff) and he walked me through the house telling me stories about each one. Then we dug into his photographs, and I bombarded him with questions.
I found out that Iceland was his favorite place in all the world, and that he had a method to his travel madness. Mostly, it’s the same one I use today with some small tweaks.
First, find a job with a bunch of flexibility.
The guy I met worked full-time, but always found gigs that would allow him to take off one to two weeks every three months.
With that time, he’d visit three or four new countries a year. In between, he’d work his butt off, saving up every dollar he could and sometimes holding two jobs to make it happen.
That’s what I do too, and have been doing for the past five years.
While I kind-of stumbled into sales and tech, I quickly realized that my main motivation to stay in my career is travel.
Many tech start-ups offer unlimited vacation policies. My perception is that a lot of people don’t take advantage of these awesome European-esque policies that enable you to re-charge and see the world.
But I most certainly do.
Admittedly, it’s much easier in sales where you are held to a quarterly quota.
In sales, a lot of managers coach you to pretend that the quarter is ending two weeks early so you can be sure to hit your quota and anticipate any legal hold-ups or delays.
That’s what I do -- but mainly so I can bust out the last week or so of the quarter when everything’s typically wrapping up.
When I return, I focus very aggressively on work for a good month and a half or so.
But I’ve got travel friends in plenty of other careers too. Friends who wait tables at high-end restaurants during the busy Winter rush, and then leave for the slow summer. They supplement their income by subletting their apartments.
Teaching friends who, though often cash-strapped, have the vacation months to go live and work abroad.
Friends who code. Friends who hold jobs in graphic design, video editing, photography, copywriting and other arts that can work remotely.
In Ivan’s career (medicine) there are often opportunities to work abroad in places like South America and Africa. Ditto for nursing and dentistry.
Traveling the world is not everyone’s dream -- but if it’s yours, choosing a flexible career is crucial.
Master a skill that’ll help you make money remotely.
I went to school for advertising, but it wasn’t until I was cash strapped trying to move out West after college that I realized my two college jobs (tutoring & waitressing) weren’t going to cut it. And almost no one would hire me until I got there.
Luckily, I discovered Elance.com and started making $150 - $250 extra bucks a week copywriting for small companies who needed blog content to improve their SEO rankings.
That’s money you can live on for two weeks in many countries.
I fell in love with Elance and even continued to do it on the train down to Mountain View when I got my first salaried job. Like an Uber driver, I became somewhat addicted to the side money and liked that if I had a down hour and a computer, cash was there to be had.
And I saved it all up in a travel fund.
There are a ton of sites like Elance now where providing services like language translation, tutoring, transcription, web design, animation and more can make you decent money. On top of that, you’ve got Uber, TaskRabbit, and Craigslist for manual tasks.
I don’t need to use Elance anymore, but it’s definitely my fall back plan should I ever travel for an extended period of time.
I also recently bought an HD video camera so I can start learning how to shoot and edit video footage -- something that I dabbled with in the past, but know is a great skill set for the future.
With YouTube videos, almost any of this stuff can be self-taught. And these skills can provide a traveler’s much needed workplace flexibility.
Always live on a budget.
I’ve been lucky enough to grow at my current job and money for travel is not an issue anymore. But I still live off of a budget and save constantly.
One day I might want to take an entire year off (or two, or three) to travel. I might want to buy an RV. I might want to bring my parents and family members along with me.
Who knows?
What I do know is that even though I’m in a better place financially, that Prada purse is still not worth it (in my humble opinion).
Sure, I splurge a little more on higher quality stuff that will last. I eat out. I’ve stopped box dying my hair.
But I still follow the same philosophy I did when I was broke a few years ago.
Add up all of my expenses & overestimate them by 10-20%. This includes rent, utilities, phone, student loan, insurances/medical, and transportation
Subtract from my monthly earnings
Subtract another $250 - $500 for monthly savings (I’ve been requiring myself to save this much, at a minimum, for years and used Elance jobs to supplement if I couldn’t make it. Today I also save all of my sales commission and bonuses)
Divide by the days in the month.
This is my daily budget, and it’s a number I always have in the back of my head that determines how much I can spend.
If I rage on a Saturday and spend 2-3X my daily budget, I cut back the next week. It’s a balancing act.
Believe it or not, when I first lived in New York at 23-24 and wanted to juggle the expensive city with my traveling, my budget was $25 a day for food, fun and drinks.
So, I packed sandwiches more. I bought a big lunch and split it across two days. I drank cheap and cooked at home. I tried hard to rack up $0 days.
It worked.
Some habits never die. I still try to keep my lunches around $8-9 when possible and split all of my meals with Ivan when we dine out (who is admittedly much more money-conscious than me).
If travel is your dream, you should never forget that money is important and will often be the one thing standing in your way.
Buy tickets & plan ahead.
Even beyond money, my belief is that time is our most valuable and finite resource. Like the man I met a few years back, I won’t let 3-4MO slip by in which I do not travel somewhere for a few days, a week, or perhaps more.
This is a rule I follow in my life religiously, and I let nothing get in the way of it.
So I nearly always know where I will go next, to some degree. And more often than not I have tickets on hand.
For me booking tickets is making a promise to myself that I will not let this dream of traveling the world die. It just seems too risky to say one day, or maybe next year, or when I’m retired.
Time is not promised.
That doesn’t mean I always have the ability to leave for extended periods of time. But great trips can also be had in a 3-4 day period.
I’ve turned long weekends into truly epic, unforgettable journeys with the help of red eyes, good friends, fellow Couchsurfers, and other resources that will help me get a feel for the place quickly (see my write-up on Mexico City!).
Some of my favorite places to visit are also right here in our back yard. America is a treasure for travelers.
That’s why I often balance a big international trip (like my upcoming 1MO sabbatical to Asia) with a U.S. trip (likely Hawaii, Alaska, Yellowstone, or the Pacific Northwest this summer).
And before I got here, a low budget campground across the border in West Virginia would have sufficed.
But if you want to travel, you simply cannot let time be your excuse because it will not stop or slow for anyone, and it may never seem just right.
Leave the kids and lovers behind.
I most often travel with my fiancee Ivan. He’s about to start a grueling three year residency program, which is unfortunate because he’s super fun to travel with.
But I am fine with going it on my own.
In fact, some of my favorite travel memories are from the few times I’ve ventured a city and knew truly no one (mostly in Europe during my 2MO Eurotrip back in 2012).
I spent an entire day in silence in Germany eating brats, purusing markets and museums, reading books in Munich squares.
I met a guy at the bar cart traveling from Austria to Czech Republic who invited me to his summer cottage.
In less than 24 hours I had an entire group of Czech friends and was partying at a bonfire -- something I doubt would’ve happened if I hadn’t been alone with no agenda.
I’ve gotten lost in France and Sweden and Spain and found my way again -- experiences that were stressful, but toughened me up.
Six years ago I showed up in New York with too many suitcases and not a single person I knew by name in the entire city.
It wasn’t always perfect. I was scammed a couple of times. I came dangerously close to running out of money. But in the end, I made great friends, including my future husband, and had a new home.
So don’t be afraid to go it alone. If travel is for you, it’s okay to leave your loved ones behind for a couple of days or even more. And kids too who today are more smothered than ever and will certainly thrive with the breathing room.
They’ll be there when you return -- with their own independent adventures to tell you about.
In fact research shows that time apart strengthens relationships. There are two things that keep us attracted to our lovers felt universally across cultures:
One -- when our loved one is physically apart from us.
Two -- when we’re staring across the room watching them tell a funny story to an engaged audience, and we are not a part of that fun
Independence is sexy, beautiful, and invaluable. Perhaps even more so now that technology’s connected us 24-7.
Travel can provide it.
Bottom line.
Traveling means a lot of things to different people.
But to me, a big part of it is knowing the importance of self-reliance, dedication, hard-work, getting out of your comfort zone (where you will always grow the most), and taking control of your own destiny.
A couple months back I met a guy who said “now that I’m engaged, I probably won’t be traveling much anymore.” Ha! That’s a laugh.
Sorry buddy, but here’s to Southeast Asia next month, and many places after that. And one day if I have a family, you will find me perusing some exotic place with a baby strapped to my back.
If this is your dream too -- don’t ever let anyone, especially your own damn self full of excuses, tell you you can’t do it.
People (alone and with their families) have been crawling all over this earth one step at a time with far less for many years.
Just as then, you’ll need hard-work, skills, savings, a plan, and determination.
But travel is within reach -- if you make it a priority.