How Can You Afford to Travel?
That’s the first question everyone always wants to ask. They assume our travels are funded by family or we have some kind of trust fund to blow through. I am here to tell you that, while our families are supportive of our adventures, we have never been given money for our travels by anyone.
We work really hard to be able to have fun. When we aren’t traveling, we are both working full-time and then some. At times we have worked 2 and even 3 different jobs at once, putting in 60-70 hour weeks. Both of us are the type of people who have always had jobs and always saved our money.
It takes discipline to hold down good jobs and even more discipline to be able to save. This is what provided us with a lot of the financial foundation we needed to go travel. What really makes the difference though, is the ability to go beyond that. That means taking on extra hours every time they are available and finding side jobs to make extra money on top of that. Not only have we both always filled our schedules with as much work as we can, but we constantly look for other opportunities on the side.
Two Words: Side Hustle
On top of our normal jobs, Katherine works as a commissioned muralist and earns side income from selling her other artworks. In the past we have owned and operated a food truck while we were both working on top of that. I do freelance web-design and consulting, find craigslist gigs, buy and fix used cars, and the list really does go on and on. The key is really just to never turn down an opportunity to make money and never stop looking for those opportunities. It’s amazing how quickly you forget about those long work weeks when you have been sitting on the beach for a month straight.
An image of a food truck An image of a girl painting a mural on a electrical box An image of a painted piano in Fort Collins, Co A dreadlock man wearing a tie drinking yerba mate from a gourd.
Financial Discipline
It’s worth pointing out what I mean when I talk about financial discipline, because that is half the battle to being able to travel long-term like we have. You have to be smart with your money in order to save it. We both drive junk cars that we paid for in cash. That means no car payments and our insurance is cheap. We have credit cards, but we keep them paid off. We don’t carry any debt. We have a grocery budget that we stick to and we only treat our selves to dinners and drinks out on occasion. We don’t go on shopping sprees or buy ourselves new things every time they come out. We try not to participate in materialism at all, really. We save every little cent we can, so that when the time is right, we can do big things. When we do go on a trip, we bring that same attitude with us. Thats how you truly get you money’s worth when you travel. We eat street food and sleep in dirty bus stop hooker hotels. We walk 10-20 miles to save on cab fare. We hitchhike and camp outside. We are budget travelers.
Travel and Save
People often overlook one small detail about long-term travel: No Bills. When we have dropped everything to go and travel, we have dropped EVERYTHING.
No phone bills
No vehicle costs
No car insurance
No health insurance
No rent
No internet bill
No cable bill
No utilities
All of that goes away when we do. One of the easiest ways to save money is to stop spending it. Without the holes in your pockets caused by the endless bills and expenses at home, you will be surprised to find out that your money lasts a lot longer and goes a lot further when it is only being used for the essentials on the road.