Why I Quit My Job to Travel the World
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
But after a while, the places all start looking the same, and every place gives you the same experiences, more or less. There are buses or subways, hotels, or hostels, interesting people who like meeting foreigners, museums, parks, points of interest, foods, drinks, restaurants, bars. Something starts growing inside you saying "I want to build something, I want to belong to something." That something could be a tech company, a school, a network of friends, a business, a non-profit, a family, or anything else.
When you get to that point, your traveling days are limited, and you start making plans for how satiate your new appetite. You will probably travel again someday, but with a new objective, and with more experience guiding where you go and how you spend your time in the places.
If you're up for it, I'd love to connect some time and talk life. I didn't find contact info in your bio, but my email is in mine. It'd be great to connect.
As a result, in the past 6 months, I've taken 3 overseas trips (4th in a few weeks), bouncing back and forth between home and overseas.
I've always found that attending any festivals/events that are on is a great way to enhance the experience.
On the flip side, every day life keeps you so busy - figuring out how and where to do laundry, what time something opens, where can eyeglasses get fixed, is there a better, cheaper place to stay than the current one, etc. If there is a will there is a way.
After 11 months on the road, I've found it very difficult to do project work. Too much of your day is devoted to figuring out the basics of living -- lodging, food, and transportation. Then of course you want to experience some of the destination you worked so hard to visit. Then you spend time figuring out where you're going to go next. Not to mention the work itself is often hindered by lack of Internet or electricity.
Because of this, I changed my mode of travel to stay in places for at least one month. You won't cross as many destinations off your bucket list or have as many adventures, but I find the depth of experience more than makes up for the breadth.
Tips: - use nomadlist for city ideas - book 3 or 4 days short term in the spot to confirm you like it, get adjusted, and figure things out - use this trial period to scout real estate for the month+
One advantage of this approach is it can often be cheaper. Monthly contracts and cooking.
One thing from my travels is this: I hardly have any decent stories about fancy places we stayed. All the memorable stories happened in hostels, sketchy hotels, or plain resorts. We met interesting people and workers and they tended to be in interesting neighborhoods. All the fancy stuff is good for R&R, but it is mostly boring and forgettable.
After some point, I guess I got tired of just being a "consumer" of experiences. Also, it starts to get pretty damn lonely. Pitching up in a new place, trying to make some friends, then moving on is a grind that started to wear me down emotionally. For other more self-socialising/individualistic people this may not ever become a problem, but it did for me.
For me it helped me realise how privileged I was just by virtue of my birthplace and (non-wealthy) parents. It directly lead to me pursuing a career in education-tech, where I can use whatever skills/upbringing I have to affect some sort of positive impact on the world. Im no philanthropist, but actively choosing positive work has certainly made me happier.
For about $5000 a person, my friends and I bought a car in California, shipped it to London and drove to China. I was poor at the time and put most of it on a credit card. I also kept my job-- I saved up 3.5 weeks of vacation and lobbied my boss to give me a few extra days on top to give me a full month out. It was one of the best times of my life and something I always love to reflect on.
I guess what I'm upset about is, along with this article, no matter what you say there will be people trying to convince all of us that we can't have a happy life without a trust fund. Not Madison Ave... people on these forums. 'Not everybody has $XXX', 'Not everbody is as lucky..'. Shut up. Either start pursuing your dreams or shut up. Stop bringing everybody down with you. Travelling the world is a series of small easy steps that anyone can do. It's vile to try and convince people otherwise.
What this NYer article should have done is depantsed the fake Instagram pushers who do have trust-funds or well heeled partners. The dream is really difficult for those who've gone past a certain point in the debt cycle, but with a bit of discipline and wisdom, you can clear your current situation and Live Differently. But that will seem, and quite possibly be, impossible for a lot of people with less flexible/resolvable life circumstances.
Same goes for health.
In all of these articles and discussions, there's this lingering, implicit assumption that everyone dreams of "travelling the world," which is one of the vaguest and least creative dreams I can possibly imagine.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with either, the ladder tends to oversell their cultural immersion and misadventure (at least in stereotypes) while calling great attention to the experience. I do think that does somewhat cheapen it for the people who do what you mention above and travel & experience are very inportant goals it took a long time to plan and save for
says the guy who took a 4 week paid vacation.
most americans dont get ANY paid vacation, those who do often cannot accrue it over time.
you got to return to a job you kept, a home you likely kept, health care coverage that never ended, etc etc.
this is simply not possible for the vast majority of people, your pull yourself up by your bootstraps argument mightve held weight if you werent an outlier.
But American people prefer Clinton and Trump, lol.
Roughly 23% of Americans get no paid leave.[2] Furthermore, that 23% is almost exclusively located in the lower wage range. Vacation truly is a luxury for the rich in the United States.
[1]http://bigthink.com/praxis/why-do-americans-have-less-vacati...
[2]http://www.epi.org/publication/millions-of-working-people-do...
But again, to truly understand one needs to be a non-Westerner.
That is not something I would ever do, but I will criticize people for falling for the cynical belief that only the rich can have a good life.
That you would say "Maybe the problem is you and not your lack of trust fund" is absolutely hilarious. You think everyone is as spoiled as you with free months of salary? Sorry to shatter your world view....
As a citizen of the world, I rarely get lonely. Everywhere I go, I meet such diverse groups of people. In hostels, I’ve shared beers with friendly British and Australian twenty-somethings. In hotels, I’ve sipped wine with friendly British and Australian forty-somethings. We all became lifelong friends, despite the language barriers.
People are always mystified at how I managed to do it. They think traveling the world is expensive beyond their wildest dreams. But the truth is, for much of the world the most expensive part is the plane ticket. You can live shockingly well on $10 a day in some parts of Asia, for example. It ruins you for when you return home: "Wait, a burger at a sit down restaurant costs $12?!? That's crazy!" Meanwhile you're meeting fascinating people and observing different and sometimes surprising cultures.
The time I spent traveling became the most significant and formative part of my life. What this satire portrays cynically, I experienced joyfully, and with a profound impact on my sense of place in the world, in society, and in history.
For Americans in particular, travel is one of the most important things we can do to get some perspective on the insularity and self-satisfied back-slapping that goes on at home. Suddenly you realize how homogeneous American culture can be, and, for all the praise we love to heap on ourselves, how far we have left to go to catch up to the rest of the world in so many aspects.
I spent many years traveling the world alone. If you have any questions, or if you're interested in doing it yourself, I'd be happy to give guidance.
Other side of the coin
A friend of mine once showed up at my house to tell me, "I'm leaving for China. If my girlfriend asks... tell her I'm at my parents'". I stared at him for a moment, then said, "Ok," and he left. They made up some time later, but he's still over there.
btw if you have an urge to do this do it before you have kids - after that, well, not going to happen probably.
I felt this way because that's exactly where I'm in now and I don't seem to find a way out. Need some advice here.
Moral of the story - if its bad for you, its always worse for someone else. Not something that may make you feel better, but its important to try not to lose some perspective.
Seriously though, it sucks that you're going through a rough time. I don't think there's a magic bullet - you just have to keep on moving and see where life takes you. If you end up having to move back to your home country, will that really be the worst thing imaginable?
Even if your standard of living takes a hit, your family will survive and you'll be together. I've been down a similar road before, and although it seems calamitous at the time, eventually you adapt and it's just life.
Having kids just means that, at worst, you have to wait until they're 18 before you run off globetrotting. In the meantime you can still see the world, but you might be limited to their holiday periods.
If you're on a H-1B then don't forget you've seen more of the world than the majority of people who don't leave their own countries, ever.
Aging parents are trickier, but this comes down to how much money you have and how important it is that you are the primary carer. It sounds cold to put it in those terms, but if it comes down to it, that's the decision you're making - 24/7 care is certainly something you can buy (and might actually be better than what you personally are be able to provide).
I don't know that I can give you a lot of advice, since your life is bound to be so much different than mine, but I can tell you what we did.
I own a small business (14 employees, <1MM in revenue) that does essentially technology-oriented bookkeeping. I'd say we're a startup, except that we're bootstrapped and capital comes from customers, not from VCs--not sure if that excludes us or not. A couple of years ago, my wife and I decided to move with our 4 children to Sweden for a year, where she has two sisters. We wanted our children to be able to speak Swedish, not just English, and I wanted to see the world a bit more. (I actually commented on a hacker news piece while there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731296)
Things got a little crazy when we found out before we moved that she was pregnant with number 5--and that if we moved he was going to be born in Sweden. We had only 10,000$ saved up, but we decided to take the plunge knowing that I could work remotely on my business here and I had 60k income. Note that her being a dual citizen was critical--we knew she would be able to take advantage of the free health care.
It was an awesome year, with some powerful struggles--living above the Artic circle in a foreign country made me look at things in a whole new way.
The three things that made it possible were 1) We had a support group (her sisters) in Sweden willing and able to help us 2) I had a remote job and 3) she was a citizen.
We came home broke, and I lost a few customers by not being able to focus as easily, but I have no regrets. My company didn't go bankrupt, both me and my children now speak fluent Swedish, and we have an amazing circle of close friends that we would otherwise never have gotten to know.
I can't say it's easy, but the moment my wife & I decided _as a team_ to do it, I knew it was possible.
You mean you have a trust fund and all? Ask your advisor then.
Almost lost my shit until I read further and realized it was satire. What a great line.
This is hilarious!
Most people probably can't do it (spouses, kids, non-remote work, drawbacks to living in an RV), but its possible on a budget and if you're in the right situation. I'm sure it'll get old soon, but so far its fun, albeit stressful. I've seen more in a few weeks than I've seen in almost my whole life.
Perhaps it was better satire than you realized?
One could have easily written this article:
"People with trust funds are the worst. All they do is travel the world, not really talking to anyone, and posting pictures of ice cream on Instagram. Man I hate those people. They're the worst."
The author took a different approach and let you decide whether or not you hate that type of person.
Should we have taken that money and bought that house in Palo Alto? Financially the answer is yes. But 20 years later we are still very, very glad we took the trip. You can always make money.
I love that. Reminds me of all the "minimalist" ex-entrepreneurs who only have a laptop and a credit card to pay for taxis and restaurants.
Good books are essentially empathy writ in text. It's easy to travel a lot and still have a shallow view of human nature.
My parents are financially modest. My parents did their best to help me and I'm sure I got more help than many - but after the handful of years after HS I received no help whatsoever and in fact have lent both of my parents money over the years.
There are two big secrets:
1: Make it a priority. 2: Find a job that lets you travel.
It's easier now that I work remote, but I used to travel for extended periods of time back when I worked in restaurants. For a couple years I worked summers and would take the winter off to travel.
If travel is a priority, you can make it happen, and you don't need a trust fund.
Brilliant.
The default mode of our economy and society is not at all defensible. Going to work 5 days a week to make somebody else rich is entirely, completely inhumane. Articles like this are supposed to make you feel smug about being stuck in what is, objectively, a complete nightmare of a life. And I am tired of reading this crap.
Also, as other commenters have pointed out, it's entirely possible to travel the world with savings of sub $5000 without a trust fund (or sleeping outside), but I imagine whatever terrified little baby wrote this article wouldn't be able to handle the level of trust you have to put in your fellow humans to pull it off.
what next, argue with john swift about eating babies?
I'm ashamed to admit I didn't recognize this as satire until I reached this point and burst out laughing. I failed to notice the URL, too. This kind of article is so common, I just figured it was yet another. I hate the apparent trend of titling articles "Why I [insert activity here]," which made this all the more amusing.
There isn't really anything glamorous necessary, aside from having some resolve to do what you want, some resolve to make sacrifices, and the fortune of being born somewhere globally relevant
Yes yes, this is sounds just like me!
"So I decided to quit and travel the world, bringing only my passport, a small backpack, ..."
Yes yes! This is what I dream of doing. How did you do it? I'll leave tomorrow.
"... and my enormous trust fund."
GO FUCK YOURSELF
Yes, I recognize that this is satire. But there are real people out there for whom this is their real life. That is who I am waving my finger at.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/2uhnhd/as_a_hobo_that_...
Everybody (author of the satire included) always jumps to conclusions that people doing such acts always have some massive fortune or cushion in the bank to wait them.
That's far from the truth. Thousands of people do the same thing every year without anything in the bank (and no sure job awaiting them when they get back).
Some have meagre savings (like $5.000 - $10.000) and use all of them to fund the trip (like year-long).
Others just go at it with nothing, and survive on the kindness of strangers and odd gigs here and there.
I know a few personally doing the latter, but many more doing the first.
Heck, if you have $10,000 in the bank, and are a decent programmer that can manage to find work when he gets back from the trip) you can quit your job, spend 3-4 months in Asia and Africa for dirt cheap, and still have like $2-$3.000 spare to get you through a month before finding some new gig.
It's not a LOT of money, but enough to travel if that is what you want to do.
"We would like to keep our team close" -- Management "Half of our team is in India" -- me ":shrug: go back to work" -- Management
It's easy, "live beneath your means". Move away from the valley and give up that lifestyle. If you're a decent-ish programmer, you can make a bunch of money in any of the other medium sized cities in the US with a reasonable cost of living.
Its about budgeting. We each keep a budget for our hobbies of about $100 per month. We spend about $200 at restaurants (eating out less than once per week). Most important is keeping a tab on your spending. UsBank has a download spreadsheet function that keeps track of your last export so it is very easy to download one month at a time.
More generally, saying (or implying) "your advice is useless because many people couldn't do it" invalidates a sizeable chunk of useful advice.
Yes, many people don't have 5000-10000 and couldn't. But many do or could, and yet they imagine they couldn't possibly travel/leave job, etc.
For the rest, those making $50.000 a year or more, $5000 to $10000 is very doable to save in 1-4 years -- if you actually want to visit the world that is, and not just want it to fall on you lap while you enjoy everything else at the same time. Rent a smaller house, don't buy a new car, spend less on bars, restaurants and other BS, dont buy that iPhone, etc.
Don't spend my money on anything nice, having fun, or treating myself to something special in the hopes that I can travel the world as a beggar or poor person (5k-10k as is a substantially small travel budget)?
Adjust the sliding scale of your combined travel budget/ rest-of-your-life budget as you need/want.
There's nothing wrong or right with either way of life, it's just different personalities.
Travelers may call your lifestyle fake or meaningless, you may call their lifestyle fake or meaningless, but the lifestyles are as real and valid as the person wants them to be.
It's ok to not want what other people want :)
If I were still single (and younger), I would have taken that $10K and lived an awesome 6 months abroad. But 15 years ago my priorities were a fast-ish car, a nice apartment, eating out every night, and trying to impress a girl (now my wife). It's worked out well for me regardless.
[edit]Your attitude comes off as very entitled BTW. You complain about "...don't spend my money on anything nice, having fun, or treating myself to something special". Oh woe is me, I can't travel the world and buy that latest iphone and fancy new clothes...sheesh!
I did say: "if you actually want to visit the world that is, and not just want it to fall on you lap while you enjoy everything else at the same time".
The observation that (advice about travelling) "might not interest those who are not interested in travelling" seems redundant to me.
And no, you don't abstain of having fun or having "nice things" And no, you don't travel the world as a beggar.
Most north american people just expend too much in things they dont need.
It's not like somebody put a gun on your head.
5-10K is by no means a "substantially small travel budget". In fact many middle class families in other parts of the world make it with that or less for the whole year.
Now, if you want to travel the world first class and stay on 5-star hotels, get the budget for it.
Not everybody needs or cares for that -- but we can still travel for months on end on far much less AND have fun.
He traveled to 50+ countries and slept outside everywhere except poor countries where it was cheap to get a bed.
When he returned to the US, he sold cars and was homeless. Literally he slept outside but still worked out and ate well. When he got a car, he still slept outside.
He recently just made $60,000 driving for Lyft/Uber in 6 months and saved $30,000 (assuming a lot went to taxes).
He then moved and slept in hus car for 1+ month while having 30k and perfect credit, and still driving. Now he's taken a month off to pursue creative and side projects.
If you don't have a family, then anything is possible.
Can you really earn $120k/yr driving?
nobody would do that for more than a few months but i'm sure it's possible if you're really dedicated to raising some money in an unsustainable way.
Even if you don't have a family, people don't want to sleep outside.
Again, the point was the will to do it not necessarily how he did it.
You seem like someone who has little life experience.
My point was running a criminal enterprise isn't really an acceptable option for most people.
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of ... - Amazon.com http://goo.gl/f8Ue7
You really don't understand how bad it is these days. The average family does not have $2,000 in savings, much less 5 to 10. In fact, [the average American household with debt owes an average of $130,922][1]. Over $15,000 of that is in credit card debt alone.
Being broke is actually doing pretty well nowadays. We live in a world built on debt, where the financial sector makes up over 30% of the economy and almost everyone is beholden to large banks. In a few decades, we'll be right back to feudal system, if things don't change.
[1]: http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/05/08/the-averag...
OP wasn't talking about an average family, but a single "decent programmer".
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
You really think that's how most Americans live?
Maybe this goes without saying, but the average family in North America lives well above their means. Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus for the wife and ginormous pickup truck for the office job husband, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc.
But none of your links actually back that up. If we're trading personal anecdotes, fine, but otherwise you're caricaturing the average family as struggling because of (I would guess based on your implication) stupidity and greed. This doesn't seem to match my experience of the "average" family, but it is common dog whistle language.
I try to work hard these days to pay off my mortgage early and save for retirement. Using my current savings and loosing one of my good years of income seems like something that should at least be mentioned.
As for the median, I can't seem to find that statistic, but I would argue that it's actually a less accurate picture than the average.
[1]: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/abigail-wilkinson/pew-69... [2]: http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-we... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i...
I'm one of those "quit the job and traveled the world" types except I didn't travel the world, just did a healthy 6 month dose of travel but my friends and family look up to me like I did something they are completely incapable of and I might be because I had the self control not to have children and buy a home, go to bars regularly, eat out all the time, etc, etc.
I met tons of people who were doing the same with a lot less money then I had and they made the same sacrifices I did. Anyways, end rant. I agree debt is out of control and much of it designed but I also know people made a shitton of bad decisions with money.
I'm not talking about the average family. I'm not about people on HN level jobs.
In fact, I wasn't talking about a family at all -- only singles or at most couples. A family makes it non practical for several reasons (though it still can be done).
For the most part the qualifications are (1) a heartbeat and (2) English proficiency, and not even native level necessarily. No college diploma needed, no expert understanding of grammar, no upfront money needed.
Of course various countries and schools differ in the level of qualifications and visa requirements but my experience has been that these are not huge hurdles as long as you don't have some super specific place in mind. If "the world" is your destination, it's wide open.
It seems like if the students have questions, you won't easily be able to answer them.
For the most part I was limited to classes intermediate and above when I started out so there's some basis for communication. Of course the best part of travel is learning the native language. After a few months you can probably start teaching beginners, especially once you get a feel for the kinds of questions students ask. People usually have the same confusion points.
Some "immersive" methods such as the Callan method explicitly do not want you to use the native language at all, even if you know it.
I have two close friends (husband and wife) who spent the last 6 years teaching English in Thailand and Bali. In Thailand they taught at a private learning school and in Bali they taught at a school where the wealthier families sent their children.
Per the larger discussion: While there, they lived on one of their salaries and saved the other. I think they left with $15k and returned with roughly double that. I know during there time over there, they took off around a year and half total to travel and relax. They didn't live in glamorous places and eat at fancy restaurants. Instead they lived more like the locals to some extent, but this mentality/lifestyle allowed them to stay longer and ultimately come back home in a better place than when they left.
My wife and I visited them in Bali for four months last year (I am a remote software engineer). By association we adopted their lifestyle and had a fantastic/extremely affordable extended traveling experience.
Several years ago I spent nine months doing it. I wouldn't try to see the world in a year, unless you just want the highlights. Pick a continent.
I started in Antigua, Guatemala learning Spanish for a couple of months
I ended in Buenos Aires.
You are talking pesos, right? I've been doing this for 2 years now and the most expensive places in South America where French Guyana (about USD 2k/mo), Guyana and Uruguay (USD 1.5k/mo in each place) - both times in rented houses and with all food and transportation included. In all other countries you can stay in regular hotels without any discount for long term stays, eat out every day and still live on less than USD 1k/mo (I did this in Suriname, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay and Brazil).
The trick is simply not to use AirBnB or any other booking site except for the first one or two days in a new location and to buy flight tickets with cash at the airport. Having a clue about local economics also helps to evaluate offers and haggle them down from "clueless gringo" rate to "not so clueless gringo rate" (which is usually less than half of what one is asked for initially).
Just being curious, because the usual advice is to buy a couple of months in advance to find better deals.
But when one wants to fly next day in South America, in my experience the cheapest is to just buy at the airport, followed by online booking at the Spanish airline site, followed by the English site.
He travels the world, but without the trust fund!
This is the quintessence of what we don't want on Hacker News. Please don't "wave your finger" here. Yes, it's popular—but for bad reasons.
We can't have both reflexive rage and reflective conversation. On HN we want reflective conversation.
It isn't that we don't all feel these emotions; we do. The people you're waving your finger at do as well, and no doubt feel as justified. But the sine qua non of reflective conversation is to catch those reactions in oneself and then inhibit them before they hijack the cognitive apparatus. That is what allows the slower, subtler processes to engage—and that is what leads to interesting utterances, as opposed to bile.
> Yes yes! This is what I dream of doing. How did you do it? I'll leave tomorrow.
What do you mean, how? Quit your job, pack a small backpack, and buy a ticket. I did it, twice. Was ready to come back after two months.
Anybody who wants to actually do this should read Vagabonding.
Wow!!! Why is it a "why" question. A bit greedy to keep working if you already have 60k per month coming in your checking account. Why would anyone want be a slave ? I just have few grand in bank, 0 income and I recently quit my job to travel around until I run out of money.
>>That life style isn’t for me. Maybe I’m just a crazy dreamer who also gets a monthly no-strings-attached sixty-thousand dollars deposited into my checking account, but I won’t be tied down so easily.
edit: Realize this is satire now - still think the piece sucks.