You all know the story: cubicle-dweller dreams of travel, saves up money, and eventually waves adios to desk job and embarks upon a global adventure.
It's a pretty standard story among long-term travelers — and especially amongst travel bloggers.
Go to many of the “big” travel blogs out there, and you'll probably find a post titled something along the lines of “I Quit My Job to Travel the World.” With so many travel bloggers being digital nomads and working as they hop from country to country, I feel like readers sometimes assume that this is the only way to do it; that the only way to travel the world is to quit your job, sell your stuff, and buy a laptop to take your show on the road.
Well guess what? You definitely don't have to quit your job in order to travel the world.
I've written before about the fact that you CAN, in fact, have your cake and eat it, too. You CAN fit travel into a more “normal” lifestyle — one that includes a job and a fixed address.
And so I'm here to tell you about why I DIDN'T quit my job to travel the world.
To be fair, I HAVE quit jobs before. I quit a waitressing job after college in order to take a “big kid job” at a newspaper in 2009. And I quit that newspaper job in 2011 in order to go back to school once I decided to get my master's degree. After I finished graduate school in 2013, I chose not to look for a new job right away. Instead, I decided to try my hand at blogging and freelancing full-time — so I could travel more, of course.
This might *sound* like quitting a job to travel the world — but in reality it was taking on a completely different form of employment.
Right after grad school, I took off on what was supposed to be a 7-month trip around the world. I was going to lay on beaches in Greece and play with elephants in Thailand and eat ALL the pasta in Italy. I was going to visit markets and soak up history and meet all sorts of cool people.
I decided my blog was at a point where it could support me financially (as long as I picked up some freelance work along the way, too), and only saved up a small amount before flying to Europe.
You probably think this sounds awesome. And, in many ways, it WAS awesome. Traveling is the single best thing I've ever done in my life, and it's changed me in so many ways.
But, before you idealize it too much, let me tell you that this sort of lifestyle is HARD, guys. Like, really hard. Yes, I got to see some amazing places. And yes, it was nice being my own boss and making my own hours. But, in the end, I just couldn't hack it.
Flashback. It was the summer of 2013, a couple of months into my epic around-the-world trip. I was in a hostel bar in Florence at 1 p.m. on a Friday, ripping my hair out as I fought to connect to the hostel's woefully weak wifi signal. It only worked in the afternoons (when nobody else was trying to use it), and so naturally getting any work done meant skipping out on other things like art museums and walking tours.
I cried myself to sleep one night because I was so stressed out about meeting my deadlines when I couldn't find a decent wifi signal — it almost ruined my week in Florence.
Flash forward a few weeks to me on a bus in Poland, close to tears once again because I was down to less than $100 in my bank account as I waited for nearly $2,000 in freelance invoices to be paid — of course they were ALL late.
Living this way was beyond stressful, and by the time I hit the 3-month mark of my trip, I realized that this sort of lifestyle wasn't really for me. I couldn't deal with hustling so much for work, and never knowing when I would get paid (and having to chase down money I was owed) gave me my first gray hairs.
I decided to go home early — mostly because I was broke, but also so I could spend some time re-evaluating things. For so long, I thought that the whole “I quit my job to travel the world” thing would become my story, too. But, as it turns out, my story was about to take on a slightly different plot.
I knew I didn't want to stop traveling, and I knew I didn't want to give up the freedom that goes along with being location-independent (i.e. not bound to an office). But I also knew that being permanently nomadic, jumping from city to city and freelance gig to freelance gig, wasn't going to work for me.
Yet, I knew I couldn't stop traveling, either. I've been bitten by the travel bug, and, as Michael Palin once said, “I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.”
Giving up travel was not an option — so what was left to do?
Eventually, I decided to take a few months off from traveling and focus on finding work that I could do remotely but that would guarantee me a steady paycheck each month.
And that's exactly what I did. I GOT a job instead of quitting one.
Taking time to search for work that would still allow me a lot of flexibility paid off — I'm now working part-time for an awesome social media startup. The pay (coupled with the other freelance work I'm doing and the occasional blog ad or brand partnership) is enough for me to feel secure, and the fact that I work remotely means I can put in my hours from anywhere in the world.
GETTING a job instead of QUITTING one was actually the best thing to happen to me.
It means I have more balance; more stability. I don't have to rely on advertising on my site quite as much anymore to ensure that I can pay my rent (or my new health insurance bills — yuck). I can plan bigger and cooler trips. And I can be more selective about which companies I do and don't work with.
For me, it's the ideal situation. In 2015, I'll be visiting at least 2 new countries, and will be going back to about 4 more that I've visited and loved in the past. I know I won't have any of those crying-in-my-room-because-I'm-so-broke moments any more, which will mean I can tell even better stories than before.
I'm not saying you have to table your dream of ditching the cubicle to travel the world — feel free to keep that inspirational calendar on the wall and to keep squirreling away money in that piggy bank. I'm just saying that the travel lifestyle you've been dreaming of might not actually exist.
Instead of quitting your job and selling all your stuff to travel when you don't even know if you'll LIKE that lifestyle, find out how to pack more travel into the lifestyle you already have.
There are plenty of ways to travel a lot that don't necessarily require you to completely quit your job. The 9-5 doesn't HAVE to suck.
Here are 5 ways you can keep your job AND spend more of your time traveling:
- Maximize your paid vacation time — In the U.S., I know that our paid vacation time sucks. Companies aren't actually required to give you ANY, so most people are pretty happy to get 2 weeks of paid vacation per year. If this is all you get, try to maximize it by planning travel around other paid holidays and weekends. If you're able to work holidays and “bank” extra days off, do it and extend your travel time even more.
- Ask if you can do your job remotely — In a day and age where smartphones and wifi are the norm, many jobs can now be done from home — or remotely. Even if you've worked in an office all your life, that doesn't mean that your job HAS to be done from an office. If you have a good relationship with your boss, consider having a chat to see if your job might be able to be done remotely. You would still have to work, but this would give you a lot more flexibility when it comes to travel.
- Ask if you can work remotely for a few weeks out of the year — If working remotely permanently isn't an option, see if you can negotiate a few weeks per year. You could then pair this with your paid vacation time to go on longer trips abroad.
- Look for a job that requires you to travel — If you're not tied to your current job, consider looking for a new one that would require you to travel for work. A business trip on a Thursday or Friday could easily extend into a long weekend in a new city — and you could probably rack up a decent amount of frequent flyer miles, too.
- Consider if you have skills/knowledge you could leverage into a freelance position — Lastly, take stock of your skills. Do you have any specialized ones that you could take advantage of? Maybe start a part-time business on the side and, if it does well, do what I did and go freelance! Now, don't get me wrong — being a freelancer can be more work than a normal 9-5 job. But getting to be your own boss and travel whenever you want certainly makes up for the extra hours.
And, at the end of the day, just remember that you don't HAVE to quit your job in order to see the world. I didn't, and it's working out pretty well for me!
So what do you think? Have you ever considered quitting your job in order to travel?
Amanda Williams is the award-winning blogger behind A Dangerous Business Travel Blog. She has traveled to more than 60 countries on 6 continents from her home base in Ohio, specializing in experiential and thoughtful travel through the US, Europe, and rest of the world. Amanda only shares tips based on her personal experiences and places she's actually traveled!
Love this post. I am all about traveling on weekends so I don’t have to quit my job because to be honest, although I do make quite a bit freelancing, I can’t support the lifestyle I’ve come to enjoy with only freelance income. And I know ALL about the late invoices! (GRR). Last week I went to Oslo for 36 hours over the weekend thanks to a super sweet deal on Norwegian. If you want to travel the world on weekends, you’ve only got to sacrifice a little bit of sleep 🙂
I’m totally with you! Sometimes I actually prefer shorter trips anyway, because they force you to just focus on one place rather than hopping from city to city so much. And yeah… I’ve grown out of the “staying in the cheapest hostels I can find” phase – I like a little more comfort when I travel, and freelance-only income really doesn’t cover that!
Something’s in the air. Tides are changing. I wrote a post on this exact post about a week ago, and it’s so nice to see that many people agree that we don’t need to give everything up. You can still travel, love travel and write travel without being a full time traveler. I personally would miss my cats too much (trying not to be a weird cat lady here) and I love my job too much. I like being able to have both. For some people, I get that work is somewhere they put in time for the paycheque, but that’s not my job and I recognize how lucky I am. I think getting to have both and being able to afford the way in which I’d prefer to travel is the best option for me.
Great post.
I’m definitely on the same page – I want to have my cake and eat it, too!
YES!! There are so many different ways to travel, and everyone is different, so what works for one person won’t necessarily work for someone else. Andy has always been a web developer in some form, and just under 2 years ago, he switched to doing it on a freelance basis. Sometimes that means he has contracts that are remote (like now) and sometimes it means he has to go into someone else’s office. But it provides both flexibility and a decent amount of stability. Last year I started doing freelance writing, and while I couldn’t live on what I make if I were single, it’s still a nice chunk of money to add to our lives. Big bonus that it doesn’t involve going into an office and I can work from wherever. BUT what we’ve learned over the past almost 5 months of traveling and working from the road is that is TOUGH. It takes time to adjust to the new location and figure things out, and so much time is taken up by that and work and the frustration of trying to cook in a cr*ppy kitchen that suddenly there isn’t much time left for sightseeing and fun stuff. I’ve never really thought being a permanent nomad would be my thing, but now I know for sure, that is not the lifestyle I want. I like having a home. I like my work, and I wish I could find a more stable job or contract like you have, but none of this is stuff I’d want to do from the road for very long.
Working from the road is never easy. Especially when you’re traveling, too (i.e. exploring new cities, going on day trips, etc.). I’m always SO TIRED at the end of a travel day that I never have to energy to get a lot of work done!
Thank you! Finally someone has said it! Reading those “I quit my job…” articles gives me anxiety just thinking about it. Traveling the world has caused me to be basically poor and stressed out for the last 7 years but now that I have a well-paying full time job I couldn’t imagine going back. Yes, it’s awful the lack of vacation time and the lack of ability to travel when you want to travel but it’s worth it to be able to pay for better trips, splurge when I want to, and have a house to showcase all the amazing stuff I bring back from foreign countries!
Not everyone would feel that way, but I tend to agree – sometimes the security is more valuable than the freedom to globetrot.
I’ve never quit a job to travel, but I did take a leave of absence for a year to travel/volunteer. It was the best of all worlds: I had a job to return to but didn’t have to worry about work, vacation, ect while in south america. Over the course of a year, I rented two apartments and stayed in volunteer housing for 10 of 13 months. The other 3 months were mixed in so I was never without a home for more than a couple weeks. I did not mind being away from the US for that long, but I DID mind when I was between places and stayed in hostels and lived out of my backpack for more than a week.
I doubt that I will ever be location independent as my job requires other people in order to perform it, but as long as I can take three weeks off at least once a year and mix it with long weekends and a week off here and there, I’ll be satisfied.
That sounds great! And is further proof that many companies will be willing to work with you if you want to take some extended time off!
This is a great blog post.
If you really want to travel, you can do a decent bit of it while still working a “normal job”. Take advantage of long weekends, travel deals, and actually take your vacation days! I’ve read surveys saying that ~40% of Americans didn’t take any vacation days last year. Plus, if you can’t afford to travel as much as you’d like or don’t have as many vacation days as you’d like, then explore your local area! There are usually lots of things going on nearby (if you make the effort to look into it), and if you’re an expat it’s even easier to check out new stuff regularly!
It makes me so sad to read those stories about how many Americans don’t use their vacation days each year. 🙁 The reasoning is often along the lines of them fearing that they will lose their jobs if they take their vacation days. Which just baffles me. If they are PAID vacation days, you should be allowed to take them without worrying about getting fired! Ugh. America.
I know the feeling of dreaming of what your life will look like when you travel. I’ve been in Australia for nearly one year, and I didn’t come with a lot of money, which was so unbelievably stressful. I somehow made it work, but it was not easy. I’ve been thinking a lot lately if long-term travel is for me.
Glad to hear you made it work, Priya! And, believe it or not, long-term travel isn’t the right fit for a lot of people. So don’t feel bad if it’s not right for you!
I feel like this is becoming a new trend in itself that is taking shape within the travel blogging world. The shift has gone from people hustling to make ends meet with advertising and stressing themselves out over freelance work, to realising that they actually like having a base and a more steady income while still being able to travel frequently. I’m also one of those people. I also got a new job towards the end of last year that provides me a stable income while still allowing me to work remotely should I want to travel. I think it’s the perfect balance. And, like you, I don’t have to feel like I’m selling my soul on my blog just to make a living (it’s very stressful!) Good luck in your future endeavors and travels!
Not selling your soul is a great feeling. 🙂 Not that I feel like I ever did… but I definitely accepted ads and things in the past couple of years simply because I really needed the money. I don’t have to do that anymore, and it’s awesome.
I think I am in that place right now, the one you used to be in, crying at night because you don’t know how you are going to do without money. Well, I am in that place where I am wondering how I am going to keep on traveling!
I just came back home after an amzing trip of 1 year and a half, and for me it is clear that a desk job is not possible anymore. My plan at first was to find a job for 6 months and then leave again, find jobs on the road… But I am as well worried about my future. I am trying to find a solution that will allow me to continue travel like I want to but at the same time that will not send to waste the years I spent to get my diploma!!
Really difficult choice to make!
It IS a really difficult choice! And the only advice I can give you is to listen to your gut and do what feels right for you. Don’t do something you don’t love just because you feel like you’re “supposed” to.
I completely agree with your post!
I have a full time job and love it! I don’t think I could ever quit my current job, but would love to find more time to travel around. Luckily, I sometimes accumulate lots of holidays because of my weekend work, so I can occasionally take long holidays (sometimes up to 2 months!)
Being away for 2 months, but still getting paid the whole time I’m travelling the world takes a lot of the stress away, and I’m able to enjoy my time more. I also don’t need to find the cheapest places to stay or eat in order to get through the month.
Sounds like an awesome job! And that’s a good point about how traveling with a job back at home means getting to splurge a bit more when you do travel – that can hugely impact an experience!
I recently quit my job to travel and it didn’t take long for me to realise that this lifestyle isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m actually seriously considering cutting my trip short and going back to university next year. I think I’ll definitely be taking a leaf out of your book and just going on shorter trips when I can instead. Long-term travel really isn’t for everyone.
Nope, long-term travel won’t work for everyone. But that’s okay! If you do cut your travels short and go back to uni, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, you’ll probably feel a lot better if you listen to your gut and do what’s right for yourself!
I’ve applied for a course starting 2016 🙂 I still have this year to travel but I’ve now decided that I’m going to do shorter stints with visits home in between. I think 4 months is the magic number for me. I visited home last week and it was so good to see family and friends. I used to think that I didn’t have anything tying me there. Now I realise that I do. It’s funny how travel can teach you so much about yourself.
Awesome news! And yes… travel DOES end up teaching you so much about yourself! You don’t always realize it as it’s happening, but it’s definitely the truth.
This is such a refreshing post (as many others have said!) While I personally had to quit my job, my husband and I moved abroad for his job and we have loved every moment of it. For many people, quitting their jobs to travel just isn’t realistic. While I think I may love it, like you I also somewhat crave a routine and familiarity. You can definitely still travel without quitting your job, you just have to make it a priority!
Making travel a priority really is the key! If you decide you want to travel, there are almost always ways to make it work. It might mean making slight lifestyle changes, and it might take a while to save up enough money, but it’s definitely possible.
I completely agree with everything you’ve said here! So much so that I wrote this blog post a while ago which resonates with yours. It’s quite frustrating actually to always be told ‘drop everything and go travel’ because realistically, that’s not always possible. Thanks for sharing the same feelings!
https://aworldlyaddiction.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/why-its-not-so-easy-to-travel-the-world/
In fact, for MOST people it’s not possible. (Or at least, most people view it as not being possible for them.) But that certainly doesn’t mean that they can’t travel!
Great post- a unstable salary is definitely not for everyone (and not for me I don’t think- although I have yet to experience it). It’s nice to read an article about having a job whilst travelling with so many other posts out there encouraging people to quite their jobs to travel. Both are attainable!
Yup, both definitely ARE attainable, and both are valid ways to live/travel!
I loved reading this, Amanda! It’s relieving to hear that I wouldn’t be the only one to find the idea of freelancing and always hunting for WiFi abroad way too exhausting to ever make a living out of it.
I’ve thought about traveling long-term and sustaining myself with blogging after I graduated from grad school, but I got a job offer I just couldn’t turn down (medievalists don’t usually get job offers!), and I haven’t regretted my choice yet. Of course, sometimes it’s a little draining to be working and blogging at the same time — but at least, when I’m on vacation, I really am on vacation.
My work-life balance is still a *little* out of whack (especially when I end up working remotely when I’m traveling), but I definitely stress about it less now that I’m not relying on advertising and sporadic freelancing gigs to pay for everything. I definitely feel like I have more freedom!