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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

"On paper, my life seemed great. I had a dream job, a swanky apartment, and a loving girlfriend. But something was off. I couldn’t bear being chained to my desk in a stuffy office any longer. "

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.

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> GO FUCK YOURSELF

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.

The thing is, this satire misses the point.

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.

For a big part of the population, savings of 5000 to 10000 are not meagre.

if you're a decent programmer, shouldn't be hard.

Work at a valley company, live in a shoebox, bank maybe $500 a month, if you are lucky. Please explain to me your equation for making a lot of money.

Step 1: don't live in the valley.

apparently this is where all the stuff happens, It has been a year and I have realized how backwards life is here.

Save that $500 a month, and you'll have enough within a year.

It's not a LOT of money, but enough to travel if that is what you want to do.

I travel, I just think that saving money is difficult to do for 80% of America. The gap widens as you expand to different countries worldwide.

Move out of the most expensive real estate in the country. Remote work is a thing in many organizations.

I have been begging my management to let me work remotely, but they have been pretty negative towards the idea.

"We would like to keep our team close" -- Management "Half of our team is in India" -- me ":shrug: go back to work" -- Management

Invest wisely and the equation will be "the exponential function."

> Please explain to me your equation for making a lot of money

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.

If you can only bank $500/month working as a programmer in the bay area, something is very wrong (or you're just not living frugally at all). I bank way more than that as a mid level developer, granted I work at the big G, but I also support a non-working wife and kid.

I work in Santa Clara, live in rental townhouse in San Jose. I have a 20 minute commute and reliably save 15% of my take home income. I have a wife who works part time and goes to school. She saves all her money.

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.

I feel like this line should be in the article.

decent programmer? you must not really know how tech works, shitty programmers make over 100k..

But neither is it trust fund territory - someone with a median income could aspire to this and accomplish it without too much struggle.

Exactly what I was thinking. Especially when you have monthly obligations to pay bills that don't go away when you quit your job.

The comments are on an article about someone with "a dream job". Not hard to get to 5000-10000 in that situation if you're highly motivated to leave.

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.

That part of the population can take the other route proposed -- like thousands of "hippie travellers" each year: go at it with just the ticket and the kindness of strangers. Having some skill you can use to make some small money here and there (like playing music on a street corner) helps.

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.

So let me get this right...

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)?

Not everything is a dichotomy.

Adjust the sliding scale of your combined travel budget/ rest-of-your-life budget as you need/want.

That I can most certainly agree with.

Some people live to travel and to constantly have exciting new experiences and care more about that than having enough money to buy the latest iphone, enjoy artesian bread for breakfast, or have a nice apartment with a view and plush furniture.

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 :)

I don't think I ever used the terms fake or meaningless. My point is that the lifestyle being referenced might not be appealing to a majority of people, hence the reason most don't do it.

it's whatever your priorities dictate. If you want to spend all of your money where you are, don't cry that you haven't been able to save any to go travel the world. $5K-$10K is not a small travel budget for a single person if you spend wisely. If you're expecting to stay at 5 star resorts and party like you have a trust fund, then yeah, good luck with that.

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!

You're not seeing any complaints from me about traveling. I'm fine where I'm at. I'm just pointing out the flaws in the parent's reasoning, and explaining why it might not be appealing to people that do have a genuine interest in traveling.

The parent's reasoning is meant for people who do have a "genuine interest in traveling" so I fail to see the flow.

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.

I'm trying to do it, and I make less than 18k a year(lovely third world country :)).. and manage to save about 5k in a couple of years.

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.

Your last statement is exactly the kind of reasoning that I'm arguing against. Besides being an absurd generalization, it's also not necessarily true, at least if you're conflating needs and wants, which I suspect is what you're doing here.

If you don't like it, or can't stand to not buy a new car every few years and go out on bars, don't do it. Some appreciate the traveling more than "having fun" by spending money for "nice things" (which for a lot of people are BS throwaways, but they still moan that they can't afford to travel).

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.

amen.

I have a friend who saved $15,000 in 1 year selling cars and low quality marijuana (he made $1000/month from it).

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.

How is it possible to make $60,000 driving for Lyft/Uber in 6 months? Can someone do a rundown on the numbers for this?

Can you really earn $120k/yr driving?

He might have found a lot of new weed customers.

i could believe it if he slept in his car and drove 18h/7d for 6 months.

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.

He worked 80 hours a week. In SF, you can make up to $3000 in one week driving for Lyft.

I don't understand how you're glossing over the fact that your buddy was homeless for 1+ years or however long it was.

Even if you don't have a family, people don't want to sleep outside.

I'm not saying I would do it and I don't think he was homeless more than 2 or 3 months.

It takes someone special to live like a drug dealing homeless person. Most people are trying to avoid that lifestyle at all costs. Obviously if you have zero bills, saving money is easy. But be realistic.

It was more a comment on discipline. And selling small amounts of weed is hardly equated with "drug dealing".

Again, the point was the will to do it not necessarily how he did it.

Selling drugs is drug dealing.

Is this more satire?

Well that was depressing.

If we're going to open the possibilities to criminal behavior, we should include even more lucrative activities like counterfeiting and loan sharking.

Yes because selling $50 worth of weed is equal to a federal crime like counterfeiting.

You seem like someone who has little life experience.

Probably a lot more than you. How do you get from $1000/month to $50? Or did you just make the whole thing up? You can get 5 years in the federal pen for dealing trivial amounts of pot if you manage to piss off the government.

My point was running a criminal enterprise isn't really an acceptable option for most people.

See the book "Vagabonding", by Rolf Potts.

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of ... - Amazon.com http://goo.gl/f8Ue7

http://www.thenewsminute.com/lives/503

I'm about to do exactly this on meagre savings from my software developer job. Last day of work is 1st of July. Let's see how that works out for me :)

Good luck man! Where are you headed?

I haven't actually booked anywhere yet as I'm largely going to wing it. It's likely that my first stop will be Las Palmas (https://nomadlist.com/las-palmas-gran-canaria-spain/scores). It's not too culturally different to where I live now, so it should be a more gentle introduction to the nomadic lifestyle, but the cost of living is also relatively cheap.

No shit, I'm doing the exact same thing at almost the exact same time. I've got a few months savings in the bank, and I'm heading off to Las Palmas... stopping along the way in Europe. See you there!

Same here. I'll be joining ya! Last day June 30th :)

Hi fellow soon-to-be-homeless person! Any idea where you'll go first?

Ha! I'm heading over to northern Spain where wine flows like water and everything is super cheap. :) I'll be there for a little over a month slowly making my way to west coast to enjoy the ocean. Then... I don't know. Maybe head north to nordic countries or fulfill a life-long dream of exploring Tasmania (if i can get there on the cheap). I don't plan to "travel the world." Just backpack for a few months to reset. I do this once every several years. How about you? Where are you headed?

It's a first for me. I'll probably start out in Las Palmas and then go east as I feel more adventurous (China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam). Should be a blast!

Ah the Canaries! Met a lot of folks from there when i was on my last adventure a few years ago. What an awesome start, man! If you're going to be in Spain in July/August hit me up. My email's in the profile. Good luck and enjoy it man!

> Some have meagre savings (like $5.000 - $10.000) and use all of them to fund the trip (like year-long).

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...

> The average family does not have $2,000 in savings, much less 5 to 10.

OP wasn't talking about an average family, but a single "decent programmer".

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. when you can find everything you need for a comfortable material existence used on craigslist, cook at home, etc. It's possible if you have gainful employment and discipline. I didn't have either of these in my 20s. Now that I do, I'm focused on avoiding the seemingly inevitable "I deserve it" lifestyle inflation and "It's only $xxx per month" debt.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...

> Rent to own furniture, a leased lexus, dinner and drinks out multiple times per week etc.

You really think that's how most Americans live?

no, most Americans live worse than that. They finance their entire life. The education, the house, the cars, the furniture, the food, the everything. If you want it all, and have the cashflow, you can have it all for a set of minimum monthly payments that leaves you with little actual cash in the bank and an increasingly large debt to pay.

It's the eternal blind optimism of Americans. What's the monthly payment? Oh, I can swing that! My salary is X and always will be, or higher! Never mind that these been a recession about every eight years during my lifetime!

[citation needed]

https://www.google.com/webhp?authuser=1#authuser=1&q=america...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/...

Your first link is about credit card debt, and your second link is about a family with no credit. You can't link the two. What point are you trying to make? You said this:

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.

Not sure why I'm getting downvotes. I can't reply to the person below, but yes, this is how most folks live according to the stats and my observations. Everything is financed. Working from home in a suburban Atlanta neighbourhood, at least once per week I see a rent-to-own furniture truck unloading something at a neighbors home. I don't even own a TV because my priorities are different.

Have some stats that aren't from mrmoneymoustache.com? You may want to give this a read in the meantime: http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decision...

I don't know about the details of what you said, but one more thing I find important is that even if you could afford it you take away at least one year of saving for the future.

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.

I can't help wondering how many of these mid-career vacationers the rest of us will be supporting when they run out of money later in life.

Or how many of those didnt-vacation-and-now-I-spew-bitterness -and-lost-my-savings-anyway-due-to-buying-a-house-or-other-bs we mid-career vacationers will be supporting...

I'll play the odds.

I wouldn't. The mid-career vacationing types tend to do better than the "go-with-the-defaults" drones, and they have some life experience to shelter bad times too.

No, they aren't.

These are not very informative statistics about the 'average' American. First of all, they only represent those who have at least some debt, with no reference to what percentage of the population that is. Secondly, they are means rather than medians, which are likely skewed by a long tail of people with extremely high debt (especially because they are ignoring the entire half of the distribution with no debt).

[80% of Americans have some form of debt.][1] The average total wealth for all Americans is actually positive. [It's a little over $300,000.][2] But that number is really the skewed one, as it's significantly shifted by the 0.1% of the Americans [which own 90% of America's wealth][3].

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...

[3] says the top 0.1% own "as much as the bottom 90%".

On the average household debt. I'm always curious what these families financials look like. My guess is they made a few common mistakes (that most of america doesn't view as a mistake) starting with buying a house (150-400k debt) assuming that's counted towards the "average", followed by having kids. Tons of people have school loan debt and medical debt but if you look at it objectively it's not "how bad it is" but how financially illiterate people are these days.

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.

>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.

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).

I have some friends who were 50+ years old with very little money in the bank. The rented out their old house and headed to Costa Rica and Puerto Rico for 2 years. They "Interned" on tropical farms in exchanged for food and lodging, he did some electrical work. But they had a ton of adventures. Prob saved their marriage to break out of the USA and their normal lives. They are now back living in their house again and working the same jobs.

If you're serious in your travel ambitions, one simple term: Teaching English as a Foreign Language

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.

Honest question: how do you teach English if you aren't bilingual in the foreign language?

It seems like if the students have questions, you won't easily be able to answer them.

TEFL is usually a term reserved for teaching English to [young] adults. The teaching methodology is almost always quite different compared to teaching English to primary & secondary students. Not being bilingual is rarely an impediment.

Sure, questions welcome!

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.

A lot of times you will end up teaching in a school where children or people know conversational English and are studying to become more proficient.

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.

most EFL/ESL schools it's actually official policy to not speak whatever non-english language is local.

as an indian, the first thing i think of is not the money, but the visa issues. https://catapult.co/stories/my-indian-passport-is-a-bitch is a good read on the subject.

I know right! Came across this blog before, it was a good read on how big is the Visa problem in reality!

You can travel through South American for a couple grand a month if you stay in a shared room in hostels and take cheap buses everywhere.

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

http://spanishschoolplfm.com

I ended in Buenos Aires.

> You can travel through South American for a couple grand a month

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).

Are you saying that buying the flight tickets at the airport is cheaper than... say, buying two months in advance?

Just being curious, because the usual advice is to buy a couple of months in advance to find better deals.

You of course can still make a better deal with promotions, but slow travel and "buying two months in advance" don't mix well since it takes away the liberty to spontaneously change destinations or to leave a place if one does not like it (or to extend a stay).

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.

Hahaha, Here you go. It CAN be done, just with some...minor..sacrifices.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/2uhnhd/as_a_hobo_that_...

> "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.

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.

You might be interested in this guy from my home town: http://onestep4ward.com/

He travels the world, but without the trust fund!

I see it the other way. We should encourage the rich to become more idle. Give their jobs to people who actually need them. So don't insult them. Laugh at their jokes and encourage them to fly to Ghana to commune with the trees. Once they are out the door, nail it shut.

The really rich don't have jobs, they have capital. And until they give away their capital, we are still working for them.

You are correct in that they don't consider themselves to have "jobs". They treat going to work more as a hobby. The problem is that regardless of their opinion on the matter, someone else really wants that job as a job.

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