Summary: great experience, be prepared for uncertainty and no security. I think it's superb. I've spent around 2.5 years overseas over my lifetime. Study exch

Summary: great experience, be prepared for uncertainty and no security. I think it's superb. I've spent around 2.5 years overseas over my lifetime. Study exchange in South Korea, random trips here and there, a month at a time, and most recently I quit my job and went away for a year in Latin America. My partner and I had been considering this for a while - a years travel before kids and marriage etc. Then my dad was diagnosed with a fatal illness, which put a fire under my ass and we got moving. We travelled slowly, a month or three in each country. We were planning on surviving by teaching English, but a 'work away' (try google) we did turned into ongoing paid work we could do online, so that funded the rest of our travel. Note - the pay was exceptionally poor, but enough for us to live on carefully while travelling without giving up major experiences. We met amazing, inspiring people. Our ideas of what's possible in life were expanded significantly. Now, the year's over and we're splitting time between living with our parents. This isn't a terrible thing, as it's temporary thing before we head overseas again - South East Asia this time. A return to 9-5 work looks like hell at this point, so we're busy setting up an online biz that will support us, first in developing countries, then the 1st world. If we decided to look for work, we'd be ok - a lot of friends and family have offered work (so much it was overwhelming) - so while we'd be fine, we wouldn't be happy.