A lot of people come to me and ask how I quit my job to travel. Even more come to me asking how they can travel as much as I do. Here’s what I have to say to the ‘quit your job, see the world’ types: Just because I did, doesn’t mean I want you to quit your job to travel. In fact, don’t.
You may daydream about walking out of your office for the last time or spending countless leisurely days on beaches in places you can’t pronounce. We all do, it’s called retirement.
However, retirement on its own is completely unfulfilling, and you don’t have to quit your job to achieve your travel goals.
If I don’t want you to quit your job to travel, what DO I want? I want a world full of inspired, educated people. People like you, who can find a balance between and experiencing the world firsthand.
I’m going to cover a few things in this post:
- Why I Quit My Job to Travel Full-Time
- Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Job
- What You SHOULD Do Instead
Why I Quit My Job to Travel Full-Time
I’ve known since college that I didn’t want to spend time in corporate America. In fact, I even knew that I wanted to visit every country and slow travel long-term. I just didn’t know how to avoid the corporate world while being responsible about my finances.
With that in mind, I finished school and got a job. I put myself on a weird, intense budget so that I could pay off my debt and start saving as quickly as possible. In fact, I paid off $55k+ of debt in 3 years – and visited 20 countries in that time (read about the budget/debt/travel here)!
After some time in the traditional workforce, I began to create my exit strategy. Well, I tried to be strategic. However, quitting came as more of an entrepreneurial seizure than a tactical move, but that’s a different story.
My point is – I always knew I’d be an entrepreneur and long-term traveler. I knew my travel goals and knew that I had to quit working for others to truly be myself. If your travel goals aren’t the same as mine, that’s ok. You may not have to quit your job to travel the way that you want to.
Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Job
Honestly, I can’t think of a single reason.
That’s because YOU have to.
If you want to travel long-term
If you want to take some extended time to travel while keeping your job (or a job), I have a few ideas for you:
- Take a sabbatical
- Take a leave of absence
- Get a new job and push out your start date so you have time to travel in-between (I did this between my first and second job and it was great!)
- Take a job in education abroad so you can spend your summers & breaks seeing a new part of the world
- See if your current job will let you go remote
If you do feel that you should quit your job to travel, let me be the first to tell you: it isn’t all rainbows and beaches.
Traveling, especially as an entrepreneur, is stressful. Your next paycheck might be iffy. You might learn that you hate working outdoors. Perhaps you learn that moving around is exhausting for you.
The bottom line is, don’t quit your job to travel if you don’t have a fallback. Being broke and stuck halfway around the world isn’t glamorous, it’s gross.
What You Should Do Instead
Okay, so maybe I haven’t painted a beautiful picture of traveling. But I want you to be serious about WHY you’re traveling. Not only that, but if you want to quit your job, you probably have some stuff to work out. It’s ok, we all do.
I just want to be crystal clear that just because I quit my job to travel, and just because I teach people how to travel well, does not mean that I only want people to travel exactly how I do.
So, consider the following:
- Think about what you want to do, not where you want to go. Can you accomplish that in your allotted PTO?
- What is your purpose for traveling?
- Do you have a purpose in life beyond your job? A surprising amount of people quit and then just start drinking around the world until they run out of money
- Consider your values. Do you need to quit your job to live a life better aligned with who you are?
If you simply want to travel more – do it. There’s an avenue for you. If you hate your job – figure out a different place to work. If you want to quit your job and travel the world – figure out a way to do that, too! But don’t do it because everyone else is.
Don’t Quit Your Job To Travel
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