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Seems a little silly to compare the cost of travel with living cost - I guess if you rent you can give up your apt. and put everything in storage? Otherwise you still have to pay rent and many times can't sub it out...if you have a home, you must pay the mortgage and taxes on it. It's easy to say "rent it out" but if you live in the middle of nowhere no one will want to do that and you might end up with your home trashed!
So, you have to keep up your home (and have someone look in on it at least) as well as fund your travel. Once you're out of your 20's few want to live in hostels and backpack and you still at least have airfare to get where you're going to start with even if you use cheaper trains or buses once there. So yeah...it IS hard. Expense-wise and job-wise. I could never keep my job and do extended travel and I would NOT enjoy travel knowing I'd have to look for a job when finished and possibly be unemployed for months...get real.
I think I get the points that both you and botticelli were making; I think botticelli was simply sayin it 'can' be cheaper than living in the US which is true (but didn't state it would 'easy').
I get your points that it could be a difficult thing depending on your living situation. I think in order to make it easier it probably requires many people sacrifice some things (literally). Instead of putting stuff in storage how about having less stuff (only rent furnished places so when you travel you don't need to sell furniture or move it into storage)? Rent from more temporary places (i.e., be the person that rents a room in a home) so you're not in the predicament of having to try to find someone to sublease a place every time you're ready to leave? If travel is that much a priority and you have to own a place consider living in a city that's popular for home exchanges thus eliminating the cost of accommodations in the destination you exchange to? I joined an exchange site last year in Chicago and got quite a few requests to exchange here; I actually just came back from Madrid and got a request to exchange with someone in....Madrid just a few days ago! Sadly I'm moving from here though.
Yes there are cons to doing anything I mentioned above but I think the point to stress would be 'if' traveling the world is a true priority to someone, that will find a way to do it within their means.
I'm someone that really really wants to incorporate more travel into my life myself, and I have been debating the barriers you mentioned and trying to come up with ways to overcome them. For me the biggest barrier right now is time (how do I travel 3-6 months out of the year with a full time job?). The money part I am learning to be more creative with (using credit card points to pay for flights, joining a Home Exchange site to hopefully cover some future accommodations, etc). Because I was just recently approved to work remotely (in another state), I'm hoping that I can then parlay that into being able to work remotely abroad (eventually, but sooner rather than later I hope). That would allow me to keep working and making money, but by working a few months out of the year in say, Spain, I'd have weekends to check out other European cities and travel. Not my first choice of living a life of travel but I am just not open to giving up my current income at this time. So I think this 'may' be an option.
A little off topic, but right now I am trying to decide if buying a home soon would help support this life or be more of a hindrance. If I could find a nice 3 br cheap enough to get a roomie or 2 to cover the mortgage expenses I'd then (a) have a place to come back to without (b) the worry of paying double accommodations for those times I do travel abroad. Trying to figure out how to get all of this to work. I do realize some of the things I've mentioned aren't options for others and just downright not doable for some....but for many I think if you (1) get a little creative and (2) depending on how much you are willing to sacrifice, you can at least travel more even if it's not 'living a life of travel' or taking an entire year off to see the world, etc.
I would give almost anything to be able to do this. We could easily afford it and would be able to pay outright for it with no credit involved, but we are both state employees and even a two week vacation is very much frowned upon, even though we get tons of leave given to us by state law. I have over 1200 hours of accumulated leave on the books (and that's even with having had three major surgeries and taking off 2-3 weeks each time in the past 6 years) but it's not easy to be able to take more than a day off. To ask for a sabbatical of a year, and still come home to a job, isn't even feasible. We could quit our jobs, of course, but then finding something equivalent upon return would be impossible because we both have very specialized careers of 20+ years.
in the meantime, we fight for those 2-3 weeklong vacations and ones about a week in between, and travel the world. I only have three continents to go (one is Antarctica, which will be for my 50th birthday in 3 years) so we are doing pretty well for now.
So, it will have to wait until retirement in a few years. Luckily, our careers afford us retirement in our 50s-60s, so we won't be too old to do something like this.
Again...time restraints (see my post above).
So how do people with jobs in the US travel more and keep their jobs with just a few weeks off a year? It's a good question. Some people choose to leave their jobs and teach abroad as an example which I understand doesn't pay much. Some people become au pairs (is that how you spell it?)-that really doesn't pay. Some are lucky enough to have high paying IT (programming?) jobs that they can work remote abroad wherever they want. Others are travel bloggers (but I feel like are usually pretty job folk).
But I understand these aren't options for everyone.
I'm going on 38 and currently also just taking advantage of my 3 weeks off a year but I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied with that and finding it's not nearly enough time for me to explore the places I want. (Yeah, I know, first world problems.) But I don't want to be 70 wishing I had seen and gone to a bunch of places I was never able to because of time off from work either. (Side note, even on the trip I just returned from a few weeks ago in Europe, I started to become aware of how I'm 'already' moving at a slightly slower pace than I was traveling in my 20s. So I want to see as much as I can while I can.)
(Side note, even on the trip I just returned from a few weeks ago in Europe, I started to become aware of how I'm 'already' moving at a slightly slower pace than I was traveling in my 20s. So I want to see as much as I can while I can.)
You'll be fine and you'll keep going quite a bit even when you're older. We hiked (and it WAS a hike because we took the "hard" direction) over 5 miles up the Great Wall of China last year....I was 46, he was 56. :-) I think the difference is that you realize, as you get older, that you want to slow down a bit, meet the people, soak in the culture as opposed to "seeing things" and then rushing off to see the next thing.
as you get older, that you want to slow down a bit, meet the people, soak in the culture as opposed to "seeing things" and then rushing off to see the next thing.
We're getting older (both in our 40s same as you) and the biggest difference in how we travel is a slow steady creep in what we consider acceptable accommodations. These days we're looking for guest houses with a nice seating area to relax in (either room or on a balcony) instead of needing to sit on our bed or wander down to some common area filled with people playing on their phones. Probably a combination of priorities changing with age as well as a bigger traveling budget.
We also have different ideas on what is fun in the evening, 20 years ago we'd be off to the bar street to party with all the other backpackers, now we're buying beers at the convenience store and finding a nice spot to sit with locals and people watch.
I love travel and this website makes me drool with envy. But, I enjoy reading the journals, especially the ones that post a lot of pictures. For me, it is almost as good as being there. At 73, I probably won't do much more traveling. No money......lol
I have been reading the irish guy pedaling around the world but I have been away from the computer for awhile. Plus, once I start reading, any of them, I can't quit.
Hard for Americans because
1, they are mostly living paycheck to paycheck, how can you expect them to not work for ONE YEAR?
2, if they had the money, they need to BUY stuff and keep redoing their HOUSEs for whatever reason.
3, they are less interested in the "world" ("our states are like different countries") or afraid of it ("Paris is dangerous" "Do people speak English in Japan"?)
4, Work culture is different that it is almost possible to take an extended sabbatical. 3 weeks is considered an "extended" vacation almost imaginable in most work places in America (unless you are a teacher or something).
However, in reality, the most travelled people tend to be Americans. Unfortunately it is very few and the vast majority belongs to the people I described above.
This is accurate but I've also,found that people in the U.S. mostly only travel to resort destinations like Disney World, Hawaii, or Vegas or to visit family. I get looked at like I have lobsters crawling out of my ears when I say I want to go somewhere not like those places mentioned.
I think travel overseas for 1-2 weeks a year is sufficient. At the end of my 2 week vacation, I just want to go home.
I have been travelling oversea twice a year for at least 10 years, each last 1 to 2 weeks. I never repeated a destinations twice and I am running out of interesting place to go.
No, you're not.
You may think you are, but that's just because there are places with which you are unfamiliar and don't know how interesting they are.
I've been traveling internationally for 30+ years, and there are many places still that I want to visit and haven't as yet had a chance. I took early retirement 7 years ago at the age of 54 because I was tired of trying to fit my travel into 1 or 2 week blocks of time or other office priorities. Now my wife and I can travel for months at a time whenever we want. (I'd hate to spend 20 hours flying to Australia, or New Zealand, or Bali, or China, or Japan, etc., only to turn around and come home in a week or two.)
I'm going on 38 and currently also just taking advantage of my 3 weeks off a year but I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied with that and finding it's not nearly enough time for me to explore the places I want. (Yeah, I know, first world problems.) But I don't want to be 70 wishing I had seen and gone to a bunch of places I was never able to because of time off from work either. (Side note, even on the trip I just returned from a few weeks ago in Europe, I started to become aware of how I'm 'already' moving at a slightly slower pace than I was traveling in my 20s. So I want to see as much as I can while I can.)
You are only 38. If you plan to do one 2-3 week trip per year to a further away country and maybe a week trip within USA or Central / South America), you would have covered almost all the countries you wanted to see by the time you are 70. No need to quit your job. When travel is taken in small doses it is exciting. I am not sure how vacations that are weeks or months long will turn out. I certainly would not enjoy that. At the end of a 2-3 week vacation we are ready to come home and relax.
I'm considering a 'round the world trip starting next summer/fall. I spent the last 2 summers backpacking through Europe and it was the most amazing experience. I've never felt more free or alive. Both times when the summer was over and I had to get back to work, I went into a depression for some months.
We spent about $60,000 on our year long RTW and that was for a family of 4 and included health insurance. Our budget averaged about $100/day for eating, sightseeing, camping or hotels, and transportation. My 12 yo daughter kept a running tally in her head every day of what we were spending and warned us when we were getting too close to going over budget. We really spent about rock bottom for the trip but were still able to have fun and if we'd spent less, there wouldn't have been any point in going. Oh yeah, this was 10 years ago.
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