I’m one of those who work 5 days a week to earn a living. We have our vacation days to enjoy whatever we want to do in life, but we still need to go back to work because people like me will struggle in life if we lose our job.
So I’m curious how some people like the guy in the video can travel around the world for almost a year without working. There are also other vloggers out there who left home to go on a travel and they are still young. Do they already have savings enough to support until they retire?
I have travelled for very little money in the past, hitchhiking my way around, sleeping behind gas stations or in nature, or utilizing sites like Couchsurfing where people can host you for free (in exchange for cultural exchange). I’ve crossed all of Europe and into the Balkans this way, as well as went up and around the western states in the US. While I realize this isn’t the most fun way to travel for many (but for me it is!), travelling is still doable on a very low budget if you know how to travel and prioritize the concept of travel before your own comfort. I’ve done a lot of regular backpacking as well. Of course, the situation complicates itself if you’re from the US, have a family, lots of student loans or health care debt to pay off, and have very little PTO. In Sweden at least, as with many other countries in Europe, we have a minimum of 5 weeks PTO. And either way, it’s customary for people between high school and university to go on a gap year travelling the world.
With some proper budgeting and staying at hostels, or doing things like Worldpackers where you volunteer at hostels for room and sometimes food, you can travel the world for $10-15k per year easily. If you only do half a year or whatever, it’s really not that much money if you prioritize travelling and saving up before other stuff. For some it might still be a lot of money, but it must cost something if you want to go for such a length of time. Otherwise you’ll just have to become a busker and a vagabond, hitchhiking around. Australia even has a working holiday-visa for 1-3 years up til the age of 31 that is very popular for people to go on, where people work odd jobs in agriculture and what not, often with accommodation included and very good pay (even if the work can be tough), which then is used to continue travelling.
For the guy in the video, biking around is quite cheap compared to flying and whatnot. If you’re camping by yourself, your only expense is food, if you’ve done off with all the other obligations in life like rent and loans. This means you can do it very, very cheap as well. I don’t know his situation, but he probably sold off everything else, gave up his place or rented it out. Travelling that way inherently means some risk-taking. And for many people it’s worth it.
I kinda did this with my wife a very long time ago, so long ago I doubt any of my experience is still relevant. And we had saved up considerable money before we left and still had a nest egg to return to. So, not exactly low budget but not trust fund either.
I met a lot of people who had almost no money however. The principal I learned is that if you have a) enough money or b) enough time, you can get to almost anyplace you want to go to. The people with no money had enough time. They would often stay in one place and work for two or three months to earn enough money to move on to their next destination. These people were pretty chill, except for the ultra minimalists who had like one pair of underwear and would ask to “borrow” yours. Those people sucked.
It really depends on a lot of factors.
I just came back from 10 month overland travel of South America. It is cheap over there - much cheaper than back home most of the time. We saved with my girlfriend for couple of years, rented our house and went for it.
On the road we met all kinds of people. A LOT of European retirees. You can live quiet the life over there with the couple thousand euro western European pensions. Some of them go for a few months each year, some have been traveling for years already.
Lots of younger people just did what we did - saved for some time and then went for it. Average salary in countries like Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, etc can be just a few hundred dollars a month, so not that hard to do better than that.
It’s similar on other continents - Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam in Asia; Kenya, Morocco, etc in Africa - popular destination with lower standards of living that makes them easy to travel to for longer.
When you travel for weeks and months it also gets cheaper per day compared to when you go on a vacation for 7-10 days - you cook, you can find deals, you travel a lot - not just to the tourist hotspots and traps. Bali can be just as expensive as a western country, but the Indonesian country side is cheap as hell.
Having an own house also helps immensely - you do not pay rent in the months and years prior to leaving and after that you collect rent.
Then there are of course people with inheritance, daddy money, trust funds, etc. In all my travels I have not met any yet. They do not tend to go on the longer trips usually.
You can pretty much forget about making it solely through vlogging, blogging and writing for magazines and websites. It can add something every now and the , but there are single digits few normal people that have made it work full time.
Besides the “rich” answers here, there are some others as well — some people save up to afford a round trip ticket and then work where they go.
And I know one guy who had a call center job that let him work from home… so he used his air miles credit card to save up miles, and then “lived” in cheap hotels in tourist destinations around the world — anywhere with a dependable Internet connection.
And then of course the YouTube vloggers get sponsors who pay for their travel expenses. The videos ARE what they’re being paid for.
You don’t have to be super rich or be a trust-fund baby to travel around the world for months. I find the general estimates for a more frugal world-traveling for a year are $20.000 to $30.000. This is obviously not doable if you really live paycheck to paycheck, but if you have a relatively well-paying job and live very frugal it is not impossible to save this amount of money. Also there is the more irresponsible solution of taking on debt.
People here are all saying rich or trustfund or something. But in my experience people who do that are often still young and living with their parents, which allows them to save a lot of money and have no rent to pay.
And where I’m from many of them travel to backpack countries like Thailand or Indonesia. Plane tickets to those countries are not cheap but once you’re there you can live really cheap if you want to. You can get pretty decent hotels for 10-20 euros a night in those countries (can be even cheaper if you’re willing to sleep in hostels. And food and activities can also be really cheap. So if you save up a couple thousand bucks you can live/travel in these kinds of countries for quite a while.
A friend of my wife won a scholarship for a top European university, got her masters degree and then came back. With that masters, she got a 6 figures job, worked 2 years while living with her parents and spending a little as possible. Quit her job, traveled the entire world for 2 years using that saved money, converted to Buddhism or some or other of those oriental religions. Nowdays is married with a really talented artist she knew from her religion (the guy have illustrated Magic cards, and hit big on the first wave of NFTs) and they both keep traveling the world with his money. Hope she returns to the labor market before Stable Diffusion take her husband job away.
Great question. It is impossible for anyone living paycheck to paycheck. Hell, everything outside the hamster wheel is impossible in that case, so first thing is to make a savings account and a budget that allows you to put any amount into savings. If that is not possible, you seriously need to find another job or at least ask for raise. Otherwise you’re wasting your life making money for someone else.
It doesn’t necessarily cost a lot to travel for a long time, but it does require a return ticket and a way to cover the cost of starting a new life when you return. Depending on how easy it is to get a job on return you’ll need savings to do that. I noticed that the backpackers I’ve met have all ended up in larger cities where jobs are easy to get. Even if it’s only temporarily that is a good plan. Just be careful to always keep a surplus so you can advance out of fast food jobs later on.
Anyway that’s my suggestion. Plan and enable the return and you’re good to go. All you need then is to save up as much as you’re willing to spend on your travel.
Some people are able to do it with a whole family and that requires a whole other situation in which you should have a job as you travel. I know a pair who managed to it by landing a hotel review service. Their job was basically to take pictures and make descriptions of hotels worldwide. Unfortunately that is more of a job than leisure and it’s hard to get that kind of job. Some of the YouTubers are probably doing something like that.
Being a travel guide is also a really good way to experience different places while working, though it’s badly paid and less free. It allows to see some of the more popular tourist locations.
If you have children in school ages it requires a lot more effort and a job and location that is more fixed, but that is also an option if you can find it. Large companies might want a local representative which could be a pretty neat job. Most countries have school programs for international visitors. Much research is required.
I once met a guy from England who had his whole family along, while he was teaching English on a small unknown island in the Pacific Ocean for a few years. I have no idea of how he got that job, but that’s also way to see more of the world, though it’s more of an immigration than travelling. I think it shows that you don’t have to keep running in a local hamster wheel. There are hamster wheels in other places too. :)
Being rich is often the answer, but also, it is possible to travel much more inexpensively than most tourists do if you don’t care so much about comfort and predictability. Go in off seasons. Ride the cheapest class of public transport to get around. Couchsurf or stay in sketchy hostels. Cook your own food or eat where the locals eat instead of at the places where the staff speaks perfect English.
Do they already have savings enough to support until they retire?
No reason to assume they won’t get jobs after they’re done traveling.
My former landlord did that, quite simply: he inherited the building and he paid for his travels with our rent. Just how our society is structured. I still liked him more than my current landlord, cause that is a company and it‘s straight impossible to even find out where this money goes. Maybe some billionaire who won‘t even appreciate it cause among 1000s properties it‘s almost a rounding error. At least with my former landlord I could hear some of his stories of what he experienced.
I’ve seldom met travellers with a trust fund. And I don’t have a trust fund myself, nor have received loads of money from parents to fund my travels. This is just such a bullshit answer that always pops up.
It’s rich kids living off of daddy’s money i.e. trust fund babies (trust funds are their own separate thing but you can look that up). It’s not like these people were working as a food server then one day decided to travel the world and make videos about it. They needed a nice financial cushion in order to do that. There are exceptions, but it takes a lot of capital to start your own brand, promote it, pay for the traveling expenses, and somehow get a return.
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I have travelled for very little money in the past, hitchhiking my way around, sleeping behind gas stations or in nature, or utilizing sites like Couchsurfing where people can host you for free (in exchange for cultural exchange). I’ve crossed all of Europe and into the Balkans this way, as well as went up and around the western states in the US. While I realize this isn’t the most fun way to travel for many (but for me it is!), travelling is still doable on a very low budget if you know how to travel and prioritize the concept of travel before your own comfort. I’ve done a lot of regular backpacking as well. Of course, the situation complicates itself if you’re from the US, have a family, lots of student loans or health care debt to pay off, and have very little PTO. In Sweden at least, as with many other countries in Europe, we have a minimum of 5 weeks PTO. And either way, it’s customary for people between high school and university to go on a gap year travelling the world.
With some proper budgeting and staying at hostels, or doing things like Worldpackers where you volunteer at hostels for room and sometimes food, you can travel the world for $10-15k per year easily. If you only do half a year or whatever, it’s really not that much money if you prioritize travelling and saving up before other stuff. For some it might still be a lot of money, but it must cost something if you want to go for such a length of time. Otherwise you’ll just have to become a busker and a vagabond, hitchhiking around. Australia even has a working holiday-visa for 1-3 years up til the age of 31 that is very popular for people to go on, where people work odd jobs in agriculture and what not, often with accommodation included and very good pay (even if the work can be tough), which then is used to continue travelling.
For the guy in the video, biking around is quite cheap compared to flying and whatnot. If you’re camping by yourself, your only expense is food, if you’ve done off with all the other obligations in life like rent and loans. This means you can do it very, very cheap as well. I don’t know his situation, but he probably sold off everything else, gave up his place or rented it out. Travelling that way inherently means some risk-taking. And for many people it’s worth it.
I kinda did this with my wife a very long time ago, so long ago I doubt any of my experience is still relevant. And we had saved up considerable money before we left and still had a nest egg to return to. So, not exactly low budget but not trust fund either.
I met a lot of people who had almost no money however. The principal I learned is that if you have a) enough money or b) enough time, you can get to almost anyplace you want to go to. The people with no money had enough time. They would often stay in one place and work for two or three months to earn enough money to move on to their next destination. These people were pretty chill, except for the ultra minimalists who had like one pair of underwear and would ask to “borrow” yours. Those people sucked.
It really depends on a lot of factors. I just came back from 10 month overland travel of South America. It is cheap over there - much cheaper than back home most of the time. We saved with my girlfriend for couple of years, rented our house and went for it. On the road we met all kinds of people. A LOT of European retirees. You can live quiet the life over there with the couple thousand euro western European pensions. Some of them go for a few months each year, some have been traveling for years already. Lots of younger people just did what we did - saved for some time and then went for it. Average salary in countries like Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, etc can be just a few hundred dollars a month, so not that hard to do better than that. It’s similar on other continents - Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam in Asia; Kenya, Morocco, etc in Africa - popular destination with lower standards of living that makes them easy to travel to for longer. When you travel for weeks and months it also gets cheaper per day compared to when you go on a vacation for 7-10 days - you cook, you can find deals, you travel a lot - not just to the tourist hotspots and traps. Bali can be just as expensive as a western country, but the Indonesian country side is cheap as hell. Having an own house also helps immensely - you do not pay rent in the months and years prior to leaving and after that you collect rent.
Then there are of course people with inheritance, daddy money, trust funds, etc. In all my travels I have not met any yet. They do not tend to go on the longer trips usually.
You can pretty much forget about making it solely through vlogging, blogging and writing for magazines and websites. It can add something every now and the , but there are single digits few normal people that have made it work full time.
My wife and I are saving up to do something similar in about 5 years. Any recommendations/things you’ve learnt you’d like to share?
Besides the “rich” answers here, there are some others as well — some people save up to afford a round trip ticket and then work where they go.
And I know one guy who had a call center job that let him work from home… so he used his air miles credit card to save up miles, and then “lived” in cheap hotels in tourist destinations around the world — anywhere with a dependable Internet connection.
And then of course the YouTube vloggers get sponsors who pay for their travel expenses. The videos ARE what they’re being paid for.
deleted by creator
I met a vagabond recently, and he does as you say.
He saved money for a while before starting, and does pick up odd jobs on the way.
He visit cheap places. He’s been in Asia, Africa, and South America.
Also, he saves money doing couch surfing.
So many interesting people and conversations have happened from hosting couch surfers over the years for me.
You don’t have to be super rich or be a trust-fund baby to travel around the world for months. I find the general estimates for a more frugal world-traveling for a year are $20.000 to $30.000. This is obviously not doable if you really live paycheck to paycheck, but if you have a relatively well-paying job and live very frugal it is not impossible to save this amount of money. Also there is the more irresponsible solution of taking on debt.
I have known some people who worked as a teacher. During the summer, they would take off traveling and not come back until the school was nearly open.
I guess it depends on how much money you need to live day to day too.
Teachers definitely don’t make enough to do that lol
No, but they can get jobs teaching English in other countries all over the world. Had a cousin bounce around the world doing that.
People here are all saying rich or trustfund or something. But in my experience people who do that are often still young and living with their parents, which allows them to save a lot of money and have no rent to pay.
And where I’m from many of them travel to backpack countries like Thailand or Indonesia. Plane tickets to those countries are not cheap but once you’re there you can live really cheap if you want to. You can get pretty decent hotels for 10-20 euros a night in those countries (can be even cheaper if you’re willing to sleep in hostels. And food and activities can also be really cheap. So if you save up a couple thousand bucks you can live/travel in these kinds of countries for quite a while.
A friend of my wife won a scholarship for a top European university, got her masters degree and then came back. With that masters, she got a 6 figures job, worked 2 years while living with her parents and spending a little as possible. Quit her job, traveled the entire world for 2 years using that saved money, converted to Buddhism or some or other of those oriental religions. Nowdays is married with a really talented artist she knew from her religion (the guy have illustrated Magic cards, and hit big on the first wave of NFTs) and they both keep traveling the world with his money. Hope she returns to the labor market before Stable Diffusion take her husband job away.
Great question. It is impossible for anyone living paycheck to paycheck. Hell, everything outside the hamster wheel is impossible in that case, so first thing is to make a savings account and a budget that allows you to put any amount into savings. If that is not possible, you seriously need to find another job or at least ask for raise. Otherwise you’re wasting your life making money for someone else.
It doesn’t necessarily cost a lot to travel for a long time, but it does require a return ticket and a way to cover the cost of starting a new life when you return. Depending on how easy it is to get a job on return you’ll need savings to do that. I noticed that the backpackers I’ve met have all ended up in larger cities where jobs are easy to get. Even if it’s only temporarily that is a good plan. Just be careful to always keep a surplus so you can advance out of fast food jobs later on.
Anyway that’s my suggestion. Plan and enable the return and you’re good to go. All you need then is to save up as much as you’re willing to spend on your travel.
Some people are able to do it with a whole family and that requires a whole other situation in which you should have a job as you travel. I know a pair who managed to it by landing a hotel review service. Their job was basically to take pictures and make descriptions of hotels worldwide. Unfortunately that is more of a job than leisure and it’s hard to get that kind of job. Some of the YouTubers are probably doing something like that.
Being a travel guide is also a really good way to experience different places while working, though it’s badly paid and less free. It allows to see some of the more popular tourist locations.
If you have children in school ages it requires a lot more effort and a job and location that is more fixed, but that is also an option if you can find it. Large companies might want a local representative which could be a pretty neat job. Most countries have school programs for international visitors. Much research is required.
I once met a guy from England who had his whole family along, while he was teaching English on a small unknown island in the Pacific Ocean for a few years. I have no idea of how he got that job, but that’s also way to see more of the world, though it’s more of an immigration than travelling. I think it shows that you don’t have to keep running in a local hamster wheel. There are hamster wheels in other places too. :)
Either rich or Only Fans models.
Lucky spawn point
Being rich is often the answer, but also, it is possible to travel much more inexpensively than most tourists do if you don’t care so much about comfort and predictability. Go in off seasons. Ride the cheapest class of public transport to get around. Couchsurf or stay in sketchy hostels. Cook your own food or eat where the locals eat instead of at the places where the staff speaks perfect English.
No reason to assume they won’t get jobs after they’re done traveling.
My former landlord did that, quite simply: he inherited the building and he paid for his travels with our rent. Just how our society is structured. I still liked him more than my current landlord, cause that is a company and it‘s straight impossible to even find out where this money goes. Maybe some billionaire who won‘t even appreciate it cause among 1000s properties it‘s almost a rounding error. At least with my former landlord I could hear some of his stories of what he experienced.
Think it’s called a trust fund
My landlord remortgaged the house to pay for a year-long trip around the world.
I guess it’s good he’s enjoying my money.
Yeah, sometimes the trust funds runneth low.
I’ve seldom met travellers with a trust fund. And I don’t have a trust fund myself, nor have received loads of money from parents to fund my travels. This is just such a bullshit answer that always pops up.
+1
Ok. I believe you.
Not necessarily. If you have a good job and you save up money you can go travelling quite a bit. Jumping to extremes is not the way to go here
Your right, rich people are just fabrications of the poor…
wow fast reply. thanks. hmm ok that’s a term i heard but not fully understand. i’ll check it out
They mean that they came from money.
On the other hand, come join us at [email protected] and learn about financial independence.
Is it just:
Step 1) get a tech job in California Step 2) FIRE!
I mean, that definitely helps, but it’s more: 1) Spend less than you make. 2) Invest the rest. 3) FIRE!
Investing the £10 I have spare every month doesn’t go far to retire early
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Think the actual term is “trust fund baby”
I like ‘trustifarians’
Yeah sorry, luck of the draw—be born into a family that has money. Else, make that money, retire early, and let your kids have a better life.
It’s rich kids living off of daddy’s money i.e. trust fund babies (trust funds are their own separate thing but you can look that up). It’s not like these people were working as a food server then one day decided to travel the world and make videos about it. They needed a nice financial cushion in order to do that. There are exceptions, but it takes a lot of capital to start your own brand, promote it, pay for the traveling expenses, and somehow get a return.