16 ms·

Why I Quit My Job to Travel the World

• Apreche 10y ago
  "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.
  • nickthemagicman 10y ago
    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_lives_on_the_road_these_are_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/2uhnhd/as_a_hobo_that_...
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • sandworm101 10y ago
    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.
    • konschubert 10y ago
      The really rich don't have jobs, they have capital. And until they give away their capital, we are still working for them.
      • sandworm101 10y ago
        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.
  • coldtea 10y ago
    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.
    • konschubert 10y ago
      For a big part of the population, savings of 5000 to 10000 are not meagre.
      • stuff4ben 10y ago
        if you're a decent programmer, shouldn't be hard.
        • gabrielcsapo 10y ago
          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.
          • shigawire 10y ago
            Step 1: don't live in the valley.
            • gabrielcsapo 10y ago
              apparently this is where all the stuff happens, It has been a year and I have realized how backwards life is here.
  • dougk16 10y ago
    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.
    • shogun21 10y ago
      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.
      • otoburb 10y ago
        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.
      • dougk16 10y ago
        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.
      • n_coats 10y ago
        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.
  • melling 10y ago
    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 http://spanishschoolplfm.com I ended in Buenos Aires.
    • jlg23 10y ago
      > 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).
      • leojg 10y ago
        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.
        • jlg23 10y ago
          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.
  • mbrd 10y ago
    You might be interested in this guy from my home town: http://onestep4ward.com/ http://onestep4ward.com/ He travels the world, but without the trust fund!
  • zem 10y ago
    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 https://catapult.co/stories/my-indian-passport-is-a-bitch is a good read on the subject.
    • vthallam 10y ago
      I know right! Came across this blog before, it was a good read on how big is the Visa problem in reality!
  • dang 10y ago
    > 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.
  • vinceguidry 10y ago
    > "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.
• humbleMouse 10y ago
  This is a garbage fluff piece that borders on being a satire. Maybe it is? Either way the New Yorker should be ashamed for publishing this. >>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.
  • warfangle 10y ago
    Daily Shouts is a humor column... it's definitely satire.
  • perezdev 10y ago
    That's the line that made you think this was satire?
• joslin01 10y ago
  > and my enormous trust fund. Almost lost my shit until I read further and realized it was satire. What a great line.
• mladenkovacevic 10y ago
  This line killed me: 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.
  • nibs 10y ago
    Soul-crushing truth to this statement.
  • junto 10y ago
    He forgot to mention the groups of Israelis who travel together in large swarms with at least one guitar player, taking over hostels before migrating to the next one!
• eric001 10y ago
  "Then I reserved a business-class seat, sent a quick text message to my girlfriend telling her that I was leaving the country forever, and was off." Brilliant.
• xapata 10y ago
  > sent a quick text message to my girlfriend telling her that I was leaving the country forever, and was off. 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.
  • kafkaesq 10y ago
    That's some "friend" you have there. Life is short, you know.
    • xapata 10y ago
      We had some good times. I try not to judge, though I get your point.
• xbeta 10y ago
  How about with kids? With a family? With aging parents that needed help while you are the only child? With a H-1B visa on the edge of being kick out because I'm heading to the 6 yrs limit? 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.
  • darkmouth 10y ago
    Many might be jealous you got selected for an H1B visa. 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.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      Agreed. I always try to keep things in perspective. Most problems I end up complaining about are really first world problems. The thing is I remember growing poor in a different country, so I should know better. But after all this years I find myself complaining my internet is slow, my water heater doesn't heat enough water, I had to wait in line getting a plane etc. My younger poor self would slap me on the head and laugh at me for complaining.
  • gervase 10y ago
    As long as you have a $60,000/mo trust fund, these aren't difficult problems to solve. Just take your entire family with you when you travel! No need to renew your H-1B since your income from that job is a pittance compared to your monthly stipend anyway. And you can always hire a full-time aide to care for your parents! </s> 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.
  • gamache 10y ago
    Advice: read the article, it's satire.
• avalexandrov 10y ago
  > As I left town, I cast one final glance back at Greebo. One of his friends playfully tossed him to the ground and thumbed his eyes as the others snatched all the money I had given him. I couldn’t help but smile. It felt good to make a difference in the lives of these simple people. This is hilarious!
• deleted 10y ago
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• Xcelerate 10y ago
  I've read too many real articles like this that I actually didn't realize it was satire.
  • joesmo 10y ago
    That's probably simply because terrible satire. I read the whole thing and had to come to the comments to verify. I actually thought the author was just an asshole. That's just bad writing.
    • wavefunction 10y ago
      Ah, it seemed quite obvious to me from a sentence or two in. Perhaps it was better satire than you realized?
      • joesmo 10y ago
        Only if your definition of good satire (or any writing) is one that fails to get its point and meaning across.
        • jrockway 10y ago
          I think the point of satire is that it doesn't try too hard to get the point across. 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.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • dwaltrip 10y ago
      I honestly thought it was a bit overdone and should have been more subtle. Meh.
• conorh 10y ago
  Hah. It is true that a lot of the people traveling are 'privileged', but probably not with 60k a month trust funds :) They are just privileged by where they were born, the value of their currency and the support they might have from family. A lot of the people I met when I did my traveling had little savings, had worked their asses off to save up for the trip and didn't have any employment lined up for when they get back. As software developers we are doubly lucky to have jobs that are portable worldwide and in demand, I did a little consulting on the way to help pay for things. btw if you have an urge to do this do it before you have kids - after that, well, not going to happen probably.
• 55555 10y ago
  I fled from USA to the third world with very little money because I was so poor I couldn't really afford to move to anywhere else I wanted to be within the USA. I continued to be poor and lived on rice and chicken for several years before starting to make decent money and was able to return to the USA. I also really enjoyed this satire and just shared it on my Facebook.. lol.
  • 55555 10y ago
    I guess my point is that many of the people you meet abroad, like myself, are absolutely not trust fund babies. You obviously don't need money to travel to third-world countries where most people have less money than USA. At the same time, a lot of the people you meet traveling absolutely are trust fund babies and they are pretty insufferable.
• bitL 10y ago
  Don't quit your job and travel the world. Hint: look for "REMOTE" keyword @HN. Stay 1-2 months at one place at a time via AirBnB to get cheaper rates and use Hipmunk's chained flights to avoid returns. Did that for >1 year, best time of my life!
  • sjclemmy 10y ago
    I'm in my 40s, I've got a kid in college and another about to go, and I'm considering doing this with my wife. We have a bit of a joke that we'll write a book titled: 5 years, 5 cities.
    • partisan 10y ago
      Lucky you. I'll be in my 50's when my kids head off to college. I have no clue how I am going to pay that off!
• stevecalifornia 10y ago
  Why do we let people sell us cynicism? What benefit is it to us? Does it make you feel better for not pursuing your dream of travelling? Maybe the problem is you and not your lack of trust fund. 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.
  • turar 10y ago
    Well, you can start with the fact that being able to dart from country to country without first begging for a visa at the consulate of each country is a huge privilege in itself.
    • stevecalifornia 10y ago
      We did have to get visas at any country that spoke Russian or Chinese which was about eight.
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • turar 10y ago
        It might be hard to explain, but the process and odds of an American/Westerner getting a Russian or a Chinese or an Indian visa are not quite the same as the other way around. But again, to truly understand one needs to be a non-Westerner.
  • 10y ago
• sankyo 10y ago
  Traveling around the world for 6-?? months is really eye opening and gives you a lot to think about. Solving puzzles about getting money, how to get to places, crossing language barriers, trying to tap into the underground, cool scene, not being limited to the tourist kitsch, learning how things are done in ways you had never thought of, these all require creativity and are rewarding. There are also many hardships on the road too, and sometimes you wish you could teleport home, if there is such a place. 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.
  • kcole16 10y ago
    Nailed it. Traveling is amazing, but it certainly loses its luster after a while. I must say we're extremely fortunate to have been able to even make it to this point though.
  • AVTizzle 10y ago
    Sankyo - I'm sitting here almost at a loss for words. You've managed to articulate something deeply relevent in my life right now, in a way I just haven't quite able to put a finger on myself (having just moved back to the US after 3 years living/working abroad). 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.
  • sockgrant 10y ago
    True, but this isn't unique to Traveling. Doing anything in long unbalanced timeframes becomes monotonous.
  • 10y ago
• Overtonwindow 10y ago
  Yep, like others, I quit reading at the moment I saw the words "trust fund".
• aurelianito 10y ago
  It is satire. But a guy just like the one portrayed in the story is now the president of my country. It is really sad. Do you want to guess where am I from?
• ausjke 10y ago
  Do whatever before you have a family and kids. And hopefully pay some due taxes to wherever you live while you're travelling, after all if young-work-age people do not contribute some taxes the only hope to sustain the society is to keep printing paper money.
• jonstewart 10y ago
  I don't really think this should hit the front page of Hacker News since it's obvious, and not even particularly clever, satire. That said, I also don't think any of the articles that this one skewers should ever be on the front page of HN, either, and they still pop up regularly.
• temarsden 10y ago
  Was at first disgusted then highly amused once I realized it was satire. Well done!
• joeguilmette 10y ago
  I have spent the last 7-8 years traveling regularly. The past 5 years I've been traveling more than I have been at home, especially the last 2. I am not paid an exporbitant salary, although working remote helps with travel. 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.
• zippy786 10y ago
  > 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. 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.
• gnarcoregrizz 10y ago
  Its possible if you have a remote job, even if you don't have a lot of money. I ditched the apartment, bought an RV and have been traveling across the US for a bit. Its cheaper than flying and hotels, and the RV cost about a year of rent where I lived, and older used RVs depreciate about 6% a year. So, overall, I'll come out ahead financially from where I was (incl travel and gas costs) 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.
• alanaut 10y ago
  I have been traveling the world living out of my backpack for 10 years now. Once every 5 years an article like this pops up. There is nothing new or novel about quitting your job and traveling the world. When I see articles like this, I think 3 things: 1. Newspapers / Blogs / etc., are running out of things to report on. 2. Wait 5 years and another will pop up. 3. You are either very well connected with tons of money or know people in high places. There are many of us out there who travel the world with nothing but our backpacks - we don't need articles in the NewYorker.
• cloudjacker 10y ago
  This really discredits people who opened credit cards with a $2,000 limit and went off to work on a farm in Australia 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
• maxxxxx 10y ago
  "So I decided to quit and travel the world, bringing only my passport, a small backpack, and my enormous trust fund." 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.
• acabal 10y ago
  This is pretty unfair. I basically did just what this satire describes, minus the trust fund and eye-gouging. I did it by working hard and saving my modest salary for a pretty long time, finally having saved enough to take 6 months to a year off. 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.
  • notlefthanded 10y ago
    "San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis ... They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s." American Gods - Neil Gaiman Other side of the coin
• dendory 10y ago
  I'm not sure I get the point of this article. Travel nomads are a real thing, and more and more numerous. They typically don't have a lot of money and often work at local menial jobs or by doing freelance gigs online, but then again it's no coincidence that Tailand is the world's digital nomad capital. When your cost of living is ridiculously low, it's not impossible to work from the beach and spend your time traveling.
• beatpanda 10y ago
  I'm really tired of writers like this who project their resentment and dissatisfaction with their own lives onto people they're jealous of. See also: every article written in the mainstream press about how annoying Burning Man is, every article trashing people for being on Ashley Madison, or last year's shit storm of hate against that couple that spends their life LARPing the Victorian Era. 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.
• nolepointer 10y ago
  "As I left town, I cast one final glance back at Greebo. One of his friends playfully tossed him to the ground and thumbed his eyes as the others snatched all the money I had given him. I couldn’t help but smile. It felt good to make a difference in the lives of these simple people." 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.
  • return0 10y ago
    To be fair, they could have made it a lot more humorous. this is a juicy subject.
• cm2012 10y ago
  The most worldly people I know are the most well-read, not the most well-traveled. Good books are essentially empathy writ in text. It's easy to travel a lot and still have a shallow view of human nature.
• gorm 10y ago
  If you want to experience real travel on a budget, cycling is the way to go. You would be surprised how many people cycle the silk road between Europe and Asia. I know some guys who has been doing this for many years, just going home to work a year in Europe when money runs out.
  • kawera 10y ago
    My daughter is doing that right now. Left Paris in March and hopes to be in Hanoi by October - she's having a blast!
• return0 10y ago
  Oh the unbearable boredom of middle class youth. Now they even sneer at their former dreams.
• deleted 10y ago
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• vonklaus 10y ago
  Vast majority of comments here are arguing that a satirical article that lampoons a subset of wealthy travelers does not encapsulate 100% of their own travel experience. Its a satirical article poking fun at a population that is both wealth AND critically unaware of how much of a benefit is. what next, argue with john swift about eating babies?
• botswana99 10y ago
  My wife and I did a six month round the world trip. No trust fund, just saved the money over several years from our jobs. We were a software engineer and teacher saving up for a house down payment -- then my wife got laid off, we had too much Sushi and beer one night, and decided to blow the down payment money on the trip. 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.
• obelix150 10y ago
  Has no one seen the parallels and thinly veiled references to Anthony Bourdain's TV shows here? In fact its referenced directly but in quotes with the "no reservations" quip. Bourdain was frequently criticized for the fact that in extremely poor areas of the world he threw money around and caused unintended consequences for the locals. Take for instance his Haiti visit after the earthquake, when he tried to buy a meal for starving kids but then couldn't feed all of them when the word got out.
• faebi 10y ago
  Its not that hard if you are living in Europe, USA or some other County with a decent economy and currency. It might take a little longer depending on the county. For me it started easy, after backpacking for a month through Europe as European I could feel this desire to travel more. So 2013 I set my lifegoal to travel arround the world. One year later I specified it to travel for one year till end of 2018. I googled a little and found a Worldtrip costs 10'000-30'000 Fr.- per year. So when starting my first real Job I knew how much I need to save to make my lifegoal become true. So I addapted my life standards to this income. Fast forward, its 2016, I got a poor russian Girlfriend in Russia which I can't leave for a year. So know it means to save a little more and divide that through 2. So the base question, can you save 200$ a month? Then do it for 5 years. Can you save 400$ a month? Then do it for 2.5 years. Can you save 1000$ month? Do it for two years, because you can easily afford a nice world trip. Maybe its because most Swiss get raised to save money but its not that hard. Split the income as follows: 1/3 renting, 1/3 living, 1/3 saving. Put the money to save (automatically) on another account the day you get your salary. Its easier to save money you never had. So if a worldtrip is desires, set the goal of your near future life and live with the consequences to save those 200$.
• randevu 10y ago
  Have trust fund - will travel