A Realistic Guide to Traveling the World

So, I feel like in the past couple of years more and more articles are popping up on social media and on “news” sites (especially in Cosmo) about women in their mid-to-late twenties who have quit their jobs in order to travel the World, or move to some beautiful, exotic, island to pursue a career such as scooping ice cream for bratty children or helping baby turtles find adoptive parents, or whatever the hell type of job that maybe one in a thousand people can live off of.

The truth is most people who are able to quit their job and travel the world are travel bloggers or writers, meaning their job becomes exactly that – they are being paid to travel to places most of us only dream of visiting, and write about it.  ***Unless your last name happens to be Kardashian and you actually are able to travel because you get paid just to remind yourself to breath every few seconds.

Unfortunately, for most of us the dream of becoming a travel blogger, one who is paid to travel and can go on all expenses covered trips is merely that, a dream.  However, this does not mean that you are forced to erase “travel the world” permanently from your bucket list, and you also don’t need to wait until you retire either.  But, doing so may not be the most logical path to life either – it’s not for everyone….

Quit your 9-5 Full Time job for something more flexible.  Unless you have a lot of Vacation Time or actually love your job it’s just not worth it.  A year ago, I was working a job I absolutely hated but I felt like I needed the stability, fortunately I was laid off but my boss decided to continue to pay me for the following month (Lucky, right? It was basically his fault tho, he asked me to open an e-mail that turned out to be a virus which was then forwarded to all 500 contacts in my “work” address book. Oops.)

Save your money!  Cut out unnecessary expenses, you really don’t need to be buying as much clothing as you do, to wear to the same shitty bars and attempting to impress that same loser guy that you have been trying to impress since high school.  But, really.  You also don’t need to go out to eat every week or buy 8$ beers that taste the exact same as the beer you could drink before you go out.  Hello, remember flasks anyone?  Or you could always lie at the bar and tell everyone it’s your birthday.

Pick up a second job, just for the money.  Now, I’m obviously not a life coach so taking my advice may not be a good idea but screw it – I have been able to afford to travel to Colorado, New Orleans, Florida, California, London – Twice, Croatia, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Belgium all in the past year.  So obviously something is working for me.  I do have other expenses besides travel, but I also do still live at home with my parents – you have to make sacrifices.  I have lived on my own and with my parents and fortunately they will still have me, so I figure why not live with them for the time being and pocket the extra cash?

Set realistic travel goals and stick to them.  Look at budget airlines, Kayak Explore is great, sky scanner.com, and spirit airlines all provide flights for reasonable prices!  You can balance a full-time job and still have time to travel, plan your trip accordingly and utilize your vacation time.

Aim for traveling outside of the country! I swear some flights within the United States are almost as much as traveling to another continent.  You can fly to Moscow, Iceland, and Peru for 400-500$.  Flights to L.A. from Chicago usually range around 300$ so there is no excuse there.  Hostels can be a nice and fun experience if you look into reviews before you book a stay – hostel world or hotels.com or ebookers are all great sites for information on where to stay for cheap.  There are also sites such as airbnb and couch surfing now!  OR you could always make life long friends in other countries, if I were to travel to most places in the U.S., Germany or London right now I have friends I could contact that would more than likely put me up for a night or two.

I knew girls when I studied in London who paid for the entire study abroad trip on their own, (I can’t speak because I paid for half of what I used, working three part-time jobs, and did receive help from my parents – thanks guys!)  These girls were smart about their spending habits, they knew that they could get the same food for 5$ cheaper if they bought it at the grocery store down the street as opposed to the chain fast food store.

The bottom line is if you think you don’t have the time and you don’t want to try and make the time then you obviously don’t want to see the world enough – I have a friend who is currently living in Australia because she decided to sign up and become an au pair over there, she loved it so much she decided to stay.  I have another friend who has actually written for my blog about Iceland, Hilary, who is currently backpacking through all of Europe and then Asia and Australia!

There is no ‘free pass’ to seeing the world, unless you win the lottery and even then you’re going to have to buy that lotto ticket and all of the losing ones beforehand.  I’ve said it before and will repeat it again, you will have to make choices in life, is travel that important or would you rather begin to establish a family?  Would you want to continue your education, and don’t want to utilize online education…

In further news, this post was probably not any help to anyone and I’m so tired I don’t even know what I am writing, goodnight.