(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi! My name is Tim Wenger and I’m from Denver, Colorado. I’m an Editor at Matador Network and run a digital media company called Wenger Media Services, which specializes in SEO-optimized web copy. The media world is perfect for digital nomads, as long as you’re willing to put in the time it takes to grow a career/business. I’ve been working fully online for two years and mostly online for nearly eight years now. Prior to founding WMS, I worked as an editor and reporter at a local magazine in Denver called Colorado Music Buzz.

In the past five years, I’ve been to 17 countries, primarily in Europe and Southeast Asia but I’ve also spent time in Canada, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

2. How have you funded your travels?

It’s been an interesting ride. My first paid writing gig came in 2010, doing a weekly column for a website in Denver. It paid $50 per story, and now and then they’d assign me additional stories to cover. At that time I was working at a bar/venue and playing in a punk band, so I had my hand pretty heavily in the music scene. I was out covering a show for the website one night, talking with a guy sitting next to me at the bar. He pointed to a guy behind me and said ‘That’s the publisher of Colorado Music Buzz right there.’ I introduced myself and got his business card, then emailed him the next week about contributing. About six months later, they put up a call for an editor and I basically showed up at an event that I knew he would be at that weekend and pleaded my case. A couple weeks later I got the job.

It wasn’t the best paying job, I made about $800/month plus cuts from any advertising leads I sent their way, but it allowed me to cut back on bar shifts and focus more on media work. College and then being in a punk band on the road taught me to live super cheap, so I slowly ramped down bar work as I ramped up income from media work, doing some freelancing for other publications to make extra money.

I started traveling more during these years (2011-2015) because most of my work was online. It was kind of funny because I had never heard the term ‘digital nomad’ until I started writing for Matador in 2015 but I was super drawn to the freedom I had to work from wherever. I worked my butt off at the magazine and anywhere else I could get my work published and started making decent money, about $30-40k per year. Still not a ton of money but enough that I could pay my bills and be able to travel.

I bought a condo for $128k in a suburb west of Denver back in 2014, which saves us at least $1000/per month in rent because the cost of living in Denver has skyrocketed in recent years. By late 2015, I was working fully online and could travel whenever. The first longer trip abroad I took, meaning more than just a week or two, was to Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia with my wife on our honeymoon in May 2016.

I haven’t been in a position where I’ve had to save a large lump sum to travel. I didn’t start traveling extensively until I was making a comfortable living online, and I’ve always been pretty minimalist as far as possessions and overhead expenses. If you’re trying to grow a blog, or build a brand around your travels from scratch, saving a large sum and then quitting a day job seems to be a more common route, but in my field the work has been online so it took more of a willingness to just go than it did a large amount of money.

I get the other approach, but for me, the practice of ‘ramping up X while ramping down Y’ has been absolutely pivotal to my ability to get out of dodge and see the world. I tested the waters while I still had one or two bar shifts per week, doing shorter trips and gaining some basic knowledge of international travel, then down the road (2016) I started doing longer trips and being gone for 100+ days per year.

3. Tell us about your budget.

Monthly bills: $1000

Food/Drink: $500. This varies a bit depending on where I’m at, or if I’m at home where my wife and I cook most of our meals. We’ve gotten a lot better about cooking in hotels/hostels/AirBNBs when we can, and we both love street food, which saves a ton of money in places like Asia and Mexico. But a good meal is something we’re willing to shell out for now and then – we went to Pujol in Mexico City and don’t regret it for a minute.

Saving: 20%. Right now, I’m earning a little over $5k/month after I account for outsourcing, which I do a fair amount of with WMS. I transfer a lump sum into my savings accounts/investments at the beginning of each month. These accounts include a personal savings account, an IRA account, and a bit of investing in renewable energy and other causes that I firmly believe in. One of my goals over the next couple years is to learn more about investing and up my game, because I’m certainly not an expert.

Taxes: 25%. The way I handle taxes is similar to the savings. I transfer a lump sum at the beginning of each month into my Business Savings account, and file quarterly estimated taxes with the US government four times per year. There’s a great app for those who struggle with being disciplined on tax savings called Track, which automatically transfers a percentage of your income into a savings account for taxes.

Travel and free spending: This is kind of on an as-needed basis. I don’t really buy much “stuff,” but as I get older (I’m 34) I’m gaining more appreciation for things such as a great carry-on bag, shoes that aren’t going to fall apart after three months, and good outdoor gear. I’m a diehard snowboarder, and my wife and I are both outdoors-type travelers, so we spend a fair amount of our expendable income on gear and the adventures that come with it.

To track the budget, towards the end of a month, I’ll list out my estimated expenses for the following month. This includes what I listed above, as well as stuff like flights/lodging and anything I need to buy or replace. I come up with the total and make sure it’s within what I can handle. Then, as each spend happens, I cross it off the list. Pretty basic, but it works for me.

One thing that I’ve developed, which helps immensely in sticking to a budget as well as working through my task list for work each day, is a severe sense of anxiety when I feel like I’m off-track. I hear people say things like “I could never work remotely, I’d just end up taking a nap or cleaning all day.” I could not be more polar opposite of that. If I have stuff to do, I can’t sleep. If I crack a ceremonial end-of-workday beer and then two minutes later remember I didn’t do something for a client, I’m back on the laptop immediately (beer in hand, of course. Perks!)

The same is true for my budget. I’m not perfect – I go over sometimes, and when it happens, the sorrow I go through in my head has me swearing not to spend a dime for the next two weeks.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

Even before I traveled a lot, I was an ‘experiences over possessions’ person. I’ve never owned much stuff. But traveling has opened the door to so many new experiences and things I never would have thought that I’d enjoy so much. It’s crazy – it’s actually not more expensive to travel than to stay at home once you get good at it. You form a routine just like at home, which involves working, eating, sleeping, socializing – and realize that there is a huge difference between ‘traveling’ and ‘vacationing.’ When you slow travel, the money you’re spending isn’t necessarily in addition to your home expenses, it’s instead of them, or in a way that works in tandem with them.

Travel taught me how to say ‘no,’ or at the very least how to be more selective about what I say ‘yes’ to, when it comes to spending money. I don’t need to buy a ticket to see a band that I’ve seen play 10 times before.

Spending a good amount of time in Bali last summer taught me that I actually enjoy spending money on my health and stuff that makes me feel good. I don’t have to reserve every last dollar of expendable money for happy hours and dinners, and it’s ok to buy a massage or guided hike to summit a mountain. I used to quaff at stuff like that, thinking they were completely unnecessary. These days I actually feel better about myself when I spend money on that stuff and upset when I spent $50 going out drinking.

This is one of the biggest differences between traveling and being at home for me and part of why I prefer to be on the road as much as possible – at home, my social life pretty much revolves around doing the same stuff my friends and I have been doing since high school or college. On the road, that money instead goes to new experiences with new people, and with each passing year I appreciate that more and more.

 

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

I’ll re-emphasize the ‘ramp up-ramp down’ technique that I talked about earlier. I wouldn’t be where I am without it. Additionally, these are the two biggest things that have allowed me to build a growing and profitable online career:

• Network. Network. Network. Talk to people. Go to functions. Watch webinars. Never be afraid to ask for a business card or send a friend request. I’ve built my entire career on networking. Everything – absolutely everything – comes down to who you know. Be willing to put in a multi-year time commitment to grow your business, your career, or whatever it is that is going to finance your travel-based lifestyle. You’ll be so glad that you did.
• On that note – do what you say you’re going to do. The internet is full of people that are completely full of it, and it’s actually not that hard to stand out and be a shining light. It’s incredible how far a simple dose of follow-thru will get you.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

My parents gave me a great book as a graduation present when I finished college: The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman. Some of what he talks about is outdated now, with the need for SEO optimization, the invention of platforms like Upwork, and the rise of the digital nomad – but the principles are still in place. He talks about getting started with a writing career and how to go about doing outreach.

Outreach. I have done extensive outreach to find clients. I have a folder on Google Drive of outreach templates for a number of different situations. On Excel spreadsheets, I (or a VA that I hire) will research a bunch of outlets in my target market and then send the outreach template email that I’ve written up. You can be the best writer on the internet but if you can’t outreach, you’ll make no money.

For SEO: There are a bunch of webinars and websites that cover the basics of SEO. The blog at Moz.com is incredible for staying on top of trends. You can learn all about SEO best practices by reading online sources, but for those doing copywriting I recommend taking a basic writing course, even if you consider yourself a solid writer. A modern course will refresh you on active tense and the undying power of short, punchy sentences. Udemy has a number of options.

For saving money: Qapital app. This app has triggers you can program to transfer money into your savings account. It’s incredible how fast it piles up!

For finding clients in a bind: Upwork. This comes with a caveat of sorts, as many freelancers hate Upwork. But it’s been a good source of leads in dire situations for me. Here is my profile – build one like mine and start pitching! They take a 20% fee up to $500 earned on each client, 10% after that up to $10,000 earned. This much to high, but keep this in mind – they are saving you many hours of cold outreach time. Most of the people who complain about Upwork are more upset about their own lack of success than the actual fee itself. I don’t recommend putting all your efforts there, or basing your entire freelance business there, but it’s not a bad place to have a name.

Evernote. I have entire trips planned out in Evernote, in addition to notes, photos, and other goodies that I think up on the road. When I get an idea, I’ll put it in Evernote real quick so I don’t forget.

Coworking spaces. If you’re in a space long enough, or even just want to hit up a good networking event when in a city for a few days, coworking spaces are incredibly valuable. People talk, become friends, and hire each other for projects at a rate that is almost unbelievable. Outpost Coworking in Bali is my all-time fave.

What to avoid: Writing groups and other ongoing meetups where nothing of value actually takes place. Writing groups, in my experience, typically consist of a leader – who may or may not be a successful writer – and a bunch of people sitting around talking about stuff that is never going to happen. Making a living as a writer happens by doing, not by dreaming and planning and making 500 revisions on your query pitch. I find business-centric meetups to be much more productive.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

A moleskin notebook – as a journalist and writer, I’m constantly taking notes and writing outlines. Nomatic offers the best I’ve found, as it stores your pen so it’s not constantly lost.

Noise cancelling headphones – Since my band days, my #1 rule of travel has been this: ABH. Always Bring Headphones. I’m a light sleeper, and a good pair of headphones has saved my nights’ sleep more times than I can count.

Portable battery for charging my phone – This is ideal for long commutes, hostels, backpacking in the wilderness, anywhere where your charger isn’t at the same outlet every night. 

 

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi! I’m Shelly Madan. I’m 23 years old and born and raised in Los Angeles, California. After I graduated from college, I was in a bit of a “lost” phase. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and definitely wasn’t ready to move back home after being independent for so long, so I chased my dream and started traveling.

I saved my money for four years and had two jobs while in University. No one prepares you for reality. Even with a bachelor’s degree, it’s so hard to find a job that can provide you financial freedom to be independent.

I decided to start traveling solo to South East Asia and discovered how exciting and fulfilling seeing the world and experiencing different cultures was to me. I’ve been to Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Italy, Vancouver, England, Seattle, Portland, Israel, Miami, New York, Germany,  Austria, and Switzerland so far. My next trips includes Havasu Falls in Arizona and a year long trip to Australia.

2. How have you funded your travels?

Last year was when I first started traveling full time. Before that, I was working two jobs while in university to save up for my travels. Before I left on my adventure, I had $4000 USD saved up in my bank account.

In South East Asia, I started running low on funds around my second month and decided to start working at hostels. I was a party coordinator and got paid with free meals and accommodation to coordinate events and socials for guests staying at the hostel. This allowed me to extend my stay in South East Asia for a couple more months and was also a fun way to meet more like-minded individuals.

After my South East Asia trip, I went back home to explore LA, my hometown. I worked as a hostess and in retail, and now I work at a school with autistic kids, which allows me the freedom to travel on weekends and any holidays. This year I traveled to Vegas, Utah, Arizona, Toronto, Vancouver, and San Francisco.  

At the same time, I have been saving up for a Working Holiday Visa in Australia. I’ll be staying there for a year and will fund my travels by working throughout different cities. Many people who go to Australia tend to work in a farm and fund there travels that way. I’ll be searching for jobs on Gumtree (Australia’s version of Craigslist). This will allow me to find jobs in the cities I am staying in, but will also give me the freedom to explore Australia as I can move on to the next place and find a job there.

3. Tell us about your budget.

My budget always varies depending on where I go. On my recent trip to  Southeast Asia, I stuck to an average of $1,000 a month as food was about a dollar to three dollars, transportation was 3 dollars, and accommodation was about 10 dollars a night at a hostel.

I planned my activities I knew I definitely wanted to do beforehand so I could budget correctly. For instance, I knew I wanted to get my padi license, which was $300. So the month I got my padi license, I accommodated my budget by eating at local shops instead of Western shops and didn’t go out as much so I could stay within my budget.

In order to track my budget, I move the exact amount I’m allowed for the month from my savings account to my checking account and stuck to the budget that way. This allows me to be strict with how much money I spent on tourist attractions, partying, and even flights.

If you are good with Excel, I’d suggest making a spreadsheet to help you see where you are according to budget, as each person is different.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

When I first started traveling, I wanted to go out every night since I met so many amazing people. After a couple months of this, most of my funds were disappearing due to partying excessively. Once I realized this, I stopped drinking as much and got to spend more money and time on other activities and attractions I wanted to see.

I would also try to get everyone a gift, but realized they either wouldn’t use it or it was a waste of money to begin with. So now instead of giving gifts, I send postcard back home so my family knows what I am up to but it also counts as a journal for me for my travels.

I also try to only buy one souvenir in each country I visit instead of buying a bunch of little ones. This makes it easier for me to actually stick to my budget that I created for myself. I think when picking out a budget make sure its a good one for you and only you.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

My biggest tip would be to try and work in hostels while traveling. I got my hostel job simply because I was talking to the owner, saying I was bummed my funds were low already, and he said they were looking for a social coordinator. I volunteered to work for 2 months in the same location so I could afford to travel for longer. If you are looking for a similar idea don’t be afraid to ask the hostel you’re staying at if you could work for free accommodation or if they are hiring.

I’d also suggest looking into Working Holiday Visas. A working holiday visa allows me to be flexible with where I want to travel next while still providing myself income to continue my travels. If you are running low on money, go to places with working holiday visas, as you can travel and see the country while still making a steady income.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

If you have a skill like building websites, check out Fiverr or Upwork. These are amazing websites where you can find freelance work to help fund your travels. At first I started using Fiverr by helping people grow their Instagram, but then I realized that I could fund my travels by having a Working Holiday Visa.

I also like the book The 4-Hour Work Week to help you get the inspiration and motivation to continue funding travels.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Microfiber towel: This towel is tiny and compact and dries completely in less than 2 hours. I always bring one for the beach and one for the shower when I’m traveling.

Gregory Deva Backpack: This backpack opens up like a suitcase and allows me to find everything I need super easily. This backpack also has a bunch of small pockets to allow me to store things like my battery charger in easy accessible spots.

Belkin Power Strip: Since I stay in hostels this allows me to have more than one plug to charge my electronics on the road

Pacsafe: I use this to lock my bag when I am waiting for a train or even sleeping at an airport or on an overnight bus.

Packing cubes: This saves my life when I pack as everything is sorted and it allows to me to easily find things.

All in One Travel Adapters: This is essential for when traveling to a lot of different countries, as you don’t have to fidget to find which one will fit in the plug. This comes all in one and is super easy and convenient to use.

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hello world! My name is Maria and I was born in Mexico, but I’ve called New York City home for 25 years. Being an immigrant in the USA shaped my travel experiences from the beginning. I remember vividly going through travel magazines when I was younger but being torn inside because I knew my immigration status wouldn’t allow me to travel anywhere outside of New York. I even kept a plastic piggy bank since the age of 13, where I would save my allowance for my dream trips!

In April of 2011, when I was 20 and still in college, I finally got my green card – it was like getting the golden ticket in a Willy Wonka chocolate bar. My first trip was that summer to Mexico to visit family I hadn’t seen in 19 years. That Fall, I met a guy through friends who was going to eastern Europe that Christmas and was looking for people to join him. I begged my parents to go, and reluctantly they let me go with the savings I had in my piggy bank. That’s when my travel bug was born! A few years later, I’ve been to 38 countries, over 200 cities, on five continents and even lived in some countries for months on end!

2. How have you funded your travels?

I told you guys about my beloved piggy bank growing up – I think it’s always been symbol of how good I am at saving and prioritizing travel above all other hobbies. I’ve always been working, since I was 15, whether it be for a fashion photographer, a celebrity, or dog walking or interning at MTV. I’ve always been a hustler. So, my financial travel journey has definitely depended on what point I’ve been in life. For example, while in college, I took every opportunity to travel after my green card came. I would travel in between semesters, on holiday breaks, and I even took a summer-long internship in India. I paid for all of these by saving, saving, and more saving. I even applied for scholarships my college offered so that I could get reimbursed.

It had been my plan for many months prior to travel the world for a year once I graduated college and before I started working full-time. At this point I had saved up $18,000 throughout the years. Amazing what a little piggy-bank-habit could do huh? I traveled around for a bit, living in some of the most beautiful cities for months, and when I came back home I still had some money left over (more on that a little later!).

Life after college has also proven to be different. I was lucky enough that my job allowed me to work remotely and also gives me the opportunity to travel a bit for it. I work in the fashion industry. So yes – fashion involves traveling to some of the “prettiest cities” in the world but I’m a backpacker at heart so I can always appreciate an adrenaline-packed “grungy” trip to mountains or kicking back at a hostel to meet other backpackers. I guess I’ve just been really lucky with my traveling path in life where I continue to be put in scenarios that allow me to travel while still allowing me to build a “normal working life” at home. My most asked-question from friends and family back home is always – how on earth do you get to travel so much?!

3. Tell us about your budget.

Budgeting is my middle name. Literally. OK, maybe not literally but it is the bread and butter of all of my travels! I don’t think all of my travels would’ve been possible without budgeting. Most of my trips I travel solo so it’s quite easy to maintain my budget. But I always have friends or family join me mid-trip because they want to “escape their corporate lives”. In these special situations is when let my budget opens up a bit because I know it won’t be for more than a week.

I do travel with my boyfriend sometimes (he’s in finance but is also a backpacker at heart) and I think doing things in two’s always makes for a cheaper experience with certain deals. For example, Airbnb can be cheaper for two people sometimes than getting a hostel, and not to mention more privacy and cleanliness.

One of my golden rules is to ALWAYS write down my expenses on my phone in the Notes section. I break everything down by day and input the amounts as soon as I have purchased anything. I have symbols that remind me when I paid for cash and when I paid with credit card. I specify how much cash I’ve converted at a money exchange place and at what rate. I also carry around a specific folder to maintain all of my receipts when I can get them (can’t get a receipt for a street food for example, but you have the record in your Notes to match the purchase).

I think also budgeting according to the place is crucial. For example, perhaps I could get away with eating out for $2 in Thailand, but that budget would never work for France. It’s always possible to stay on budget even in places that are thought to be expensive. You just have to have patience to look for deals. For example, in France, for 6 euros, I would get a tasty hearty sandwich, a dessert, and a drink from a local patisserie. I didn’t even find those kinds of deals in Costa Rica, which would be deemed a “cheaper country to visit” by most people.

And it’s always important to remember that not every day will be the same. Some days I’ll literally spend less than $10 a day, and other days I’ll spend $100. I don’t buy souvenirs for family or friends, luckily I have a group of loved ones that rather hear about my stories than receive their millionth key chain. In some countries though where I know I’ve fallen in love with a souvenir, I won’t deprive myself of that little “splurge” (think, a $8 third-eye ornament from Turkey, or a $12 hand-carved wooden map of Africa from South Africa).

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

Never say no to a good experience. That’s been my golden rule. When you travel long-term it’s easy to get into the notion of doing things cheaply and forcibly missing out on amazing experiences because you believe your budget “isn’t cut out for it”. This could not be more wrong. You know the old saying “money comes and goes but memories are forever”? I learned that the hard way. My boyfriend is always there to remind me of this when I begin to focus too much on my budget rather than splurging a little on an experience that he knows I’ll regret not doing.

After traveling to such an array of different places that all require such different budgets from each other, I’ve learned that money should NEVER be the excuse of why you don’t grab your passport and just GO somewhere. I have friends who will spend $1,500 on a weekend drinking trip from New York to Miami but would never hop on a plane abroad because they say it’s “too expensive”. False, false, FALSE! There are so many flight deals online these days that it’s impossible to not have an amazing time internationally on a budget. I’ve spent the same amount of money on week-long or 2-week trips to Central America or to Paris! I love Miami but for the same price, I’d rather go somewhere international if you ask me!

Lastly, there are certain experiences that will be worth every penny. Don’t forget to remind yourself that you might not be in this destination ever again, so don’t cheat yourself. For example, I was recently in Reunion Island off the southeast coast of Africa. Food had been relatively cheap throughout our time there (~$20 for the both of us, daily). THE must-do thing on the island was to take a helicopter ride to see everything from above. Prices were in the $400’s p/p for 30 minutes. We wanted to do it so badly, but we knew something with that price tag was WAY out of our budget. We sat down and did our research one night and happened to find an HOUR-long private ULM flight for $190! We knew we would not be coming back to that part of the world for a very long time, so we decided to treat ourselves. And it was the best thing we ever did that entire trip. See what I mean? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We still managed to see the island from up above, but we did it on our terms. All it took was a little extra research, some phone calls, and some determination. There are certain experiences that you won’t be able to recreate in other places, so just go for it when your gut is kicking you to go!

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help! One of the biggest reasons why I’ve continued to travel for so long without spending so much is because I wasn’t afraid to reach out to friends of friends of friends. I live in New York City. It is literally the biggest culture hub of all time. This has helped me immensely. Whenever I’ve traveled anywhere, I ask my parents or friends if they know anyone in said country who would be willing to spare a couch or even if just to catch up over some drinks. It always works. I also end up finding out that I have family living all over the world! Not only do they provide me with a lovely bed and company, but they also help me save a ton of money on meals because they’re so excited to have someone over for dinner – a meal they would’ve cooked regardless of me being there.

I’ve learned how kind people really are in this process. There are people who have opened their homes to me without asking for a dime in return. I’ve stayed with people who were friends of friends or family of friends – people I had never met before the trip, but still welcomed me with open arms. I have even asked friendly next-door neighbors of mine if they knew anyone who wouldn’t mind a companion for a few days in the country I would be traveling to.

Or in places that I’ve lived long-term like France, obviously I couldn’t expect to get free stay for three months at a time. But through my network, I’ve found an empty apartment (of friend of a friend of a friend of my dad’s) that I go back to every time for only $15 a night!!! Not even a good hostel is that cheap!! Networking works miracles I tell you!

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

The beginning to a great planned out trip always begins with flights. That’s what I always start for trip research.

Scott’s Cheap Flights – His newsletter has been a great resource of getting information on when and where to go for cheap. You can choose what region of the world you’d like to receive flight notifications for, and voila: you can be flying to most places across the glove for $300-$600 (on noteworthy airlines for flights that would normally cost $800+!!!!)

Google Flights – An amazing resource that literally gives you an idea based on a calendar of when flights will be the cheapest. Being flexible on your travels is always helpful. For example, if you’re set on going to Italy, you can go to Italy and GF gives you concrete numbers of cheapest times to go (you don’t always have to compromise the season in which you go, which a lot of bloggers will tell you to do).

 

Momondo – I only use Momondo once after I’ve toyed around with GF for a bit and have gotten some insight on specific travel times through SCF’s newsletter.

Once I’ve narrowed down a destination, that’s when researching the meat of the trip begins! For that, I use Instagram, Google, different blogs, etc. I will spend hours just on this. Because I do like to visit a lot of off-the-beaten-path places. I’ll cross reference multiple websites at once, etc.

PS. Make sure you research money exchange places before arriving! Trust me, it will save you so much time and money!

 

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card – It is my savior. My holy bible! It has saved me a ton of headaches with international rates and all the nonsense that comes with other credit cards. I’ve never been charged a dime for any international purchase, plus its Visa so it’s widely accepted everywhere.

A good portable charger – When you’re out all day using your phone for pictures or for Wi-Fi, your battery will lose its juice so quickly. My portable charger has been so essential to not worrying if my phone or camera will make it all day.

A compact “important documents” pouch – I’ve had mine for a little under five years. There are things out there like a Running Buddy or a Buddy Pouch which most people would prefer, but I just found a small flat pouch in a local store for $5. I keep my passport in there and any cash I bring from home. I keep it inside of my pants very discretely at all times when I travel. Once I get to my destination, I leave it wherever I’m staying.

A mobile phone mini tripod – I always pack one of these! It has saved me in all of my solo trips when I’m nowhere near people to ask anyone for a photo.

And of course, a camera! – No need to explain this, I think every traveling soul has their preference with cameras. I don’t have a crazy fancy DSLR camera yet I managed to find one that’s compact, the zoom is out of this world, and fits just my needs. I get compliments all the time from professional photographers! It’s a SONY DSC-HX50V model.

I have a lot of other “musts” but they’re more catered to who I am as a traveler, they might not be important for everyone else!

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

We’re Pat, Ali, Ouest and Lowe Schulte. Ali and I are from Minnesota—our kids are from Mexico. I was a commodities trader in Chicago before we sold everything we owned and took off to sail around the world.

After that adventure we spent two years driving the PanAmerican and Europe in a ’58 VW bus, sailed Mexico for a few years with our young babies, then RVed around the States and Mexico for a couple years.

Right now we are in the Bahamas on our third boat. We’ve been traveling for 15 years now, and have visited somewhere between 60 and 70 countries—we lost track somewhere in the forties, and never bothered to tally it up again.

2. How have you funded your travels?

We made a good chunk of money in our twenties and decided to bail out before I lost it. Being a Chicago pit-trader there was always that risk. I paid myself a wage of $25,000/yr, and combined with Ali’s $50,000/yr we lived comfortably in downtown Chicago. Our real money sat in my trading account at work, always at risk, but growing quite large for a kid in his twenties.

When our friends started having babies and moving to the suburbs we veered off in a very different direction. Despite having never been on a sailboat before, we figured we’d go sail around the world for four years. After that we would move back to Chicago and do it again. By the time we hit Italy we knew that wasn’t going to happen—we were traveling lifers. Work as we had known it was a thing of the past.

I wrote a couple of books in my thirties, but aside from that, and my personal trading (now online instead of the trading pits), we skated through the decade without doing much in the way of earning an income. We had a large blog following, but never made any effort to capitalize on that, as we were doing just fine with my sporadic trading. Straight out of college I had taken a job in the lowest rungs of trading, and had worked my way up quickly until I was trading for myself at 25. It was all I had ever done, and I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. It was just how I made money—no better, worse, more or less interesting than the way everyone else gets by.

But a couple of years ago I sort of stumbled upon the fact that this wasn’t normal. I offered to be a trading mentor for five people, and the demand was so overwhelming that I decided to expand it.

Fast forward a little more than two years and I’ve now got a partner, dozens of subscribers to my active trade mentor program ($99/mo), and many hundreds of subscribers to my weekly Wanderer Financial newsletter ($799/yr), and trade alerts which have handily beaten the overall market. Because I don’t advertise my services, all my subscribers arrive organically through my travel blog, Bumfuzzle.com, which has the benefit that we are all very much of the same mindset. My subscribers are adventurers, travelers, and entrepreneurs—not Ferrari collectors. It’s a fun group, eager to learn, and supportive of each other’s trading and grand plans for the future.

3. Tell us about your budget.

When we first started out we kept very detailed books. For years and years we kept track of every single penny spent, and posted it on our site. It was extremely helpful in understanding where our money had gone. Without it we would almost certainly have spent more than we thought we were. Years later we no longer keep track of every penny. We don’t need to—we’ve become very good at controlling our spending well within our means. We are very good about distinguishing between a want and a need. We use the old trick—don’t buy anything until you’ve needed it three times.

On our sail around the world we spent an average $3,100/mo for 3 1/2 years, and driving around the world we spent $2,942/mo over two years. That was every single penny we spent—from boat and car repair, gas, shipping, food, medical and dental, to flights to visit family—not a single thing left out. These days, with two kids and a good income, we average $4,000/mo. We don’t have a specific budget any longer, but find our lifestyle alone limits our spending to well within our personal means.

For a couple of years we spent most of our time in an RV on the beaches of Mexico. Every aspect of our life was inexpensive during those times. Currently we live on a boat again, a 1986 Grand Banks 42′ Trawler. Boats are more expensive than RVs—there is no way around that fact. We’re also in the Bahamas at the moment where everything is a minimum of five times more expensive than Mexico. Fortunately, with this more expensive place comes the benefit of hundreds of islands, where anchoring is free, and entertainment—swimming and beach combing—is too.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

When we first set out we thought we could sail on $1,500 per month easily. We grossly underestimated cost of upkeep and repair, even to a new boat. We eventually settled into a $3,000 a month budget that allowed us to do absolutely everything we wanted to do and still earn enough trading sporadically to keep going. Can it be done cheaper? Of course it can. For instance, we didn’t even bring along the ability to cook on our VW bus trip. For two years we ate every single meal out—a terrible way to save money, but a great way to get immersed in a culture.

Overall, traveling has been slightly more expensive than we would have expected, but still a fraction of what a normal brick home in the burbs would be with a couple one-week vacations every year.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

Gather up enough money to make it happen for a year, and then wing it. You’ll be surprised by a couple of different things. One, just how many interesting people you’ll meet, and how many different backgrounds they bring with them. You can learn a lot from these people, and depending on who you make friends with, opportunities will present themselves. There are a million ways to earn money while traveling, and you’ll see a lot of them on display when you get out there. Two, you’ll amaze yourself with your ingenuity. By giving yourself that time to simply think, you’ll come up with a longer-term travel solution.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

If someone wants to do what I do, then the best resource is to simply join Wanderer Financial. It sounds like a shameless plug, but the fact is, this is how I’ve made a living for over 20 years.

My trading partner and I spend a few hours a day in a chat discussing trading, charts, setups, risk management, and everything else related to the markets. We write blog posts, we answer hundreds of questions a week, and we spend pretty much all our free time analyzing the markets just because it’s what we love to do. For years we did this in isolation, now we offer it up to others, and we all have a fun time doing it.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

There is literally not one thing that we own that we couldn’t also do without. I get that people are gear junkies. It’s fun to get shiny new things, but my opinion is that none of it matters. If you really want to travel, you’ll do it whether you have a 2 pound backpack or a 22 pound pack, a Macbook Pro or a Dell, a DSLR or a phone, whether you’ve got a 27′ monohull sailboat, or a 44′ catamaran—none of that makes a bit of difference. In fact, we’re such non-gear people that we haven’t even owned a phone in fifteen years.

I’d suggest that one of the biggest reasons we have been able to travel the world so widely, and on so many different modes of transportation, has been our ability to live light. After three years of living on a boat with two kids, we were able to pack everything we owned into a handful of boxes and fly from Mexico to our new RV in the States. After three years in an RV we were again able to pack up everything we owned in an SUV and move cross-country to a boat. Basically, by not being weighed down by possessions we are able to quickly and easily pick up and move from one adventure to the next. So, our gear recommendation is, less gear.

 

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

We are Heath & Alyssa Padgett and since our wedding day in May of 2014, we’ve been traveling North America full-time in an RV.

When we were engaged, we came up with the crazy idea of visiting all fifty states during our honeymoon. Heath was working in software sales and I had just quit my job at a nonprofit to move back to Texas to be with Heath. We knew we didn’t like the jobs we were doing and that we wanted to do something on our own, we just didn’t know what.

Heath came up with the idea to working a job in every state, finding a sponsor company to support his mission, and I filmed the whole adventure as part of a documentary, Hourly America.

Even after visiting all 50 states, we knew there was so much more in America to explore. We’ve been RVing for nearly four years now and really love the lifestyle. It’s given us so much freedom.

2. How have you funded your travels?

Heath and I currently run three businesses on the road: Campground Booking (Heath’s software company), Padgett Creative (our production company), and our personal brand of Heath & Alyssa. But when we started traveling back in 2014, we only had one source of income, the small sponsorship that funded filming our documentary, and a little savings. We ate up a good chunk of savings during that first year on the road.

During our second year on the road after we finished filming, we focused more on building a lasting business and paying off our student debt. We started consulting with a friend who was publishing a book with Random House. We helped plan his book tour, launch his first course, and market his book. We had zero experience doing any of those things, but we were eager to learn (lots of reading blogs and watching Youtube videos there) and it was our first taste of freelance work.

From there we built the film and consulting side of our business where we’ve helped various entrepreneurs build, film, and market their online courses. It wasn’t at all what we expected to do on the road, but it was easy to find clients and we were good at it. Looking back, we were severely undercharging, but it was an amazing learning experience. (We charged one client $1,400 for three months of consulting, a week-long film shoot, and two dozen edited videos. That’s insanely cheap!) But with each client, we streamlined processes, got smarter, and raised our prices as we learned what we were worth.

As that business started to actually provide steady income for us, we were able to focus more time on our blog. From before we ever started traveling, Heath and I both wanted to write books, and blogging is the best way to get there. In 2016, we started seeing traction with blog when we started sharing our journey of building a business while traveling. Heath then launched The RV Entrepreneur Podcast where he interviews nomadic entrepreneurs.

We started to get attention in the RV industry and have partnered with companies like Winnebago, Camping World, Outdoorsy, Going RV (the TV show), and Go RVing (the blog).

As our Heath and Alyssa brand started growing steadily, we focused on ways to monetize our website. Afterall, we were spending hours and hours each week creating content and sharing it for free and since we were still paying student debt, we needed the extra income. We started promoting affiliates (mostly through review posts and sponsorships on the podcast) and Heath launched his first book, and our first product, on our website. We started consistently making a couple hundred dollars a month by the end of the year.

In 2017, I really doubled down on making our website more “professional” with a content calendar, regularly scheduled email newsletters, consistent branding, starting our Youtube channel, etc. This helped us get more traffic, grow our reach, and most of all increased our passive income from the website. We make around $2,500/month consistently from our site now, but it took us a solid three years of work to get here.

We hosted The RV Entrepreneur Summit in February, our first ever in-person event and we sold out of tickets almost instantly. For us this really validating that our niche of talking about building a business while traveling is hitting a real need. We are currently sold out for our next Summit and we’ve doubled in size since last year.

With notable income finally coming in from our blog, we paid off our student debt in September (yay yay yay!) and it’s made the biggest difference, not so much in our wealth but in the stress we felt traveling with debt. Paying off debt while traveling is 100% possible—I mean obviously it is, because that’s exactly what we did—but we always had a little nagging feeling that we were being irresponsible because we were spending so much time traveling and exploring when we had this small mountain of debt to pay off. Now that it’s gone, it’ll be interesting to see if our travel style changes. We are going to New Zealand for the spring and renting an RV for the season!

Oh yes and our third business (yes, we do too many things) is Campground Booking, which is Heath’s software startup. He’s been working with two other full-time RVers on a campground management software that will allow people like you and me to finally be able to book campgrounds online. Most campgrounds you must call to book a site and you can’t see availability or sometimes even rates online. It’s super annoying. Heath is on a mission to fix it and is actually launching with 50 campgrounds next week!

That business hasn’t actually made any money yet, but hopefully should start making money in 2018 with this launch! Moving forward for me in 2018, I’ll continue focusing on our website and personal brand.

3. Tell us about your budget.

We don’t really keep a budget, but we do keep detailed financial records so we know exactly how much we’re spending in different areas. We typically spend anywhere from $2,000-$2,500/month on all our living expenses, including our RV payment, gas, lodging, food, internet, phones, etc.

Before we paid off our student debt (which we did in September), we were pretty strict about controllable expenses like eating out, lodging, and gas. We travel at slower paces when we need to save money or reach out to major campgrounds and ask for free or discounted rates in exchange for videos or posts about their park. That alone saved us thousands this summer.

I keep a running excel sheet (that dates back to May 2014 when we started traveling full-time) that records all our expenses and I look at it every two weeks or so. That way I always have a clear picture of our financial state so I’m never wondering how we’re doing or if there are areas where we need to improve.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

Travel, specifically full-time travel, is so much cheaper than we ever realized! With RVing, you can save money on gas by traveling shorter distances. You can “boondock” or “moochdock” which are different ways of parking your RV for free. We are actually moochdocking at Heath’s parents’ house all this month for the holidays, which saves us hundreds of dollars in camping fees (plus we get more time with family!).

We’ve also really learned what things are worth spending a good amount of money on. We pay over $300 a month for two iPhones with unlimited Verizon data and an unlimited AT&T plan. It’s pretty pricey, but worth it to always have internet access, which is a HUGE pain point for RVers!

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

I think if you have a remote job, or have any work that you can do while traveling, full-time or long-term travel is possible. For us the magic number was always $2,000. If you can make $2K a month at a remote job, you can afford to travel full-time.

Sure, this means that you’ll be working while traveling, but working with a view of the mountains out your window five days a week is better than staying home and only getting to travel one week a year.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

I would highly recommend my husband’s podcast, The RV Entrepreneur. Each week he posts two episodes: one interview with a full-time traveler who runs their own business while traveling and one “Test Drive” where he dives into more tactical advice for entrepreneurs. He talks to some amazing people who run crazy businesses on the road and it’s a great place to be inspired to travel more.

We also just launched our RV Entrepreneur School where we are releasing free courses based on the questions we get most often from soon-to-be travelers. So far we have three free courses on how to travel cheap, how to downsize before moving into an RV, and how to start a blog.

Follow bloggers like Pat Flynn, Michelle Schroeder, or Ramit Sethi. Those people are probably my favorite for business growth and financial advice, and for helping you get into the mindset that you can make money doing basically anything, even while you’re traveling.

I also follow Jon Acuff for writing advice and Chris Guillebeau for travel advice. Following people who are ahead of you or are where you want to be is so motivating and enlightening.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Blue Yeti Mic
This is the mic Heath has been using for two years to record his podcast.

Canon G7X
We’ve used this video production with film clients, but we also use this for vlogging, which we want to do more of in 2018. We only posted a few videos in 2017, but really love it!

AirPods
Honestly, my husband never takes his out. He’s practically always on the phone or pacing around so they are great for that.

Day Designer
This is the planner I use to stay sane and keep our business on track. I like pen and paper and by far this is the best planner I’ve found for taking notes and staying focused.

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi, we are Ethan and Karis, husband and wife who are wedding photographers from Washington DC. Ethan was a local wedding photographer primarily in DC/MD/VA area and Karis was a government worker in DC. A few years after we started doing wedding photography, we started getting inquiries for destination weddings. Ethan started to travel a lot and that’s when Karis joined the photography business. We’ve been doing wedding photography for over 10 years now and we travel a lot for weddings!

In 2015 alone, we were only home about 6 months out of the year. So, in 2016 we decided to ditch our permanent home and live from Airbnbs and hotels. We’ve been on the road for over 14 months now, living out of suitcases. We are currently in Hawaii for a few days and will stay in Asia for a few months before heading back to the States. Together, we have been to over 35 countries.

2. How have you funded your travels?

We are wedding photographers and we do at least 30 weddings per year. This is the minimum number of weddings we have to do for us to make living and also travel. We also do quite a few destination weddings per year and for these destination weddings, clients pay for airfare and lodging during the time we work.

For example, when we had a wedding in Paris, the client paid for the roundtrip ticket and 3 nights of lodging. We would then purposely make our trip in Europe longer so we could travel after completing the 3 days of work. This way, the airfare and minimum 2-3 nights would be covered.

We also let our other clients know we are going to be in Europe and some people sign up a photo session with us while we are on the road. Another way for us to make money while we travel!

Also, Ethan recently completed his first photo exhibit where he sold his fine art photography. We are thinking of doing this a few times a year now so we can make money when we are not doing weddings.

3. Tell us about your budget.

Going back to speaking about a permanent home, we realized the biggest thing hindering us from traveling more was the mortgage we had to pay. When you are traveling, you still have to pay mortgage. This was quite burdensome when we wanted to travel as much as we did. This was the biggest reason we decided to rent out our house and live out of the suitcases.

You will have your normal spending (grocery, eating out, shopping, entertainment) whether you live at your house or when you travel. So, for us it’s important to find a hotel/Airbnb that fits our regular budget with our monthly mortgage payment. I also keep an Excel spreadsheet to see how much money we are spending on lodging as we travel around . This past October, for example, we changed hotels/Airbnbs 13 times, but we still managed to stay under the budget of our monthly mortgage payment, and I keep this very strict. If we splurged on a hotel, then we would find something cheap to make up for it.

Oh another thing! We no longer have to pay for gas/electricity, cable/Internet service, security service etc. that comes along with owning a house. This allowed us to save more money and travel more!

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

I know being a minimalist is a thing these days, but because we don’t have a permanent home, we have to force ourselves to live minimally. When we want to purchase anything, we question each other if we really need it. Most of the time, we end up not buying it. These were things we used to easily buy but even a pair of socks takes up a space now.

Another thing we keep in mind is the food. You tend to splurge on food when traveling, going to restaurants and trying local food. But since we travel a lot we have to be mindful of when we eat out. Of course, we pick one or two foods we have to try in that city/country, but other than that we usually buy groceries at local markets and cook. The most memorial food we had was the pasta in Lake Como, Italy in our Airbnb patio looking over the lake and the fruit and bread we bought at the famous Aix-En-Provence’s farmer’s market in France. This is where we saved most of our money.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

For us, our work allows us to travel which makes long-term travel a little easier. Again, when we have destination weddings, our clients are responsible for our trip, but they pay for the work we do as well. Wedding photography is a high paying job so if you budget yourself well, you can travel well throughout the year.

The wedding business is also seasonal. We are usually super busy from March to early December. We do most of our work during these months and travel more often during the off season. In the beginning of our career as wedding photographers, we only did local weddings. But we purposely posted more photos of destination weddings on Instagram and Facebook to allow potential clients to know we are traveling. This led to booking more destination weddings which then allowed us to travel more often.

But we can’t just travel during the off season. During the off season when we travel, we also continue to look for other opportunities to make earning. We will be in Asia for about 3 months during this winter. Ethan is going to prepare for another fine art exhibit where he can sell his fine art prints and Karis is going to be teaching English.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

If you really want to travel and if you strongly desire it, you can make it happen. For us, we did what worked for us. We worked really hard as wedding photographers for the past 10 years. In the beginning of our career, we worked between 80-100 hours a week. We attended a lot of workshops to become better photographers and worked hard to brand our business too. And because we really wanted to travel, we decided to ditch a permanent home and live out of the suitcase. This wasn’t an easy process but it was all worth it for us. We realized we couldn’t have it all and decided what’s most valuable to us.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Since we are professional photographers, we carry lots of professional camera gear. We have a Canon 5D Mark III camera with a macro lens, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm prime lenses and 200mm zoom lens. But our favorite lightweight camera that we love to carry is the Fuji XT1 with 35mm, 50mm, 85mm lenses.

North Face Wheeled Luggage – Since we travel a lot, these sturdy bags get broken but with the lifetime warranty from North Face, you don’t have to worry about it. We’ve already exchanged our old, broken one for a brand new one without any cost. It’s also pretty light, and you can pack a lot!

Noise Canceling Headphones from Bose – We love these while we are on the plane.

iPad Pro – We watch movies when we are on the road, which makes our trips much more enjoyable.

Travel exercise rubber band – We love to work out when we are traveling. When staying at a hotel, sometimes you can find a fitness center, but when traveling though Airbnbs, these exercise bands come in handy.

Black clothes – Because we love to travel light and we figured out the best way to do this is wearing lots of black. But it is Ethan who does this often so Karis can carry more colorful clothes LOL

 

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

My name is Sebrin Elms and I am a travel-loving, flower-crown wearing, cat lady who has an affinity for writing and binge-watching Netflix with my husband. My first major trip was in 2007 when I sang at the Sydney Opera House in Australia with my choir, but it wasn’t until I studied abroad in 2010 that I really got bit by the travel bug. Now I’ve visited 5 continents and 27 countries with a goal of hitting a total of 30 before my 30th birthday.

2. How have you funded your travels?

Despite traveling to Australia and Sweden later for study abroad, those were helped by loans and my parents. My biggest and longest trip abroad was my 3-month long honeymoon with my husband in 2015. We were planning on visiting Norway, Germany, Morocco and backpacking throughout Southeast Asia for 6 months. Unfortunately, a volcano eruption in Bali forced us to redirect or travels to Australia (no regrets), which dwindled our savings quickly since Australia is so much more expensive than Asia.

As you can imagine, saving for a wedding AND a long honeymoon is incredibly challenging. We didn’t plan on skimping on any of the bells and whistles of our dream wedding either. We gave ourselves TWO YEARS to save for both our wedding and our honeymoon and we did a variety of things to reach our goals. Our dream wedding was about $35,000 (which isn’t too bad for a French-themed wedding in Malibu) and we estimated to save $15,000 for our honeymoon with the option of picking up odd jobs along the way. During those two years, we cut a lot of our expenses. First, by not going out–like at all. Friends would come over and we would cook dinner or watch a movie. We stopped paying for as many “luxuries” as we could: no more cable, going out to restaurants, we stopped drinking alcohol, no weekend trips or excursions, I stopped most of my spa treatments (and would push dying my hair as long as possible), we would carpool, we avoided Whole Foods, and we stopped buying clothes for ourselves.

We also picked up two jobs each. My husband was already a server at a very famous gay bar in West Hollywood which is where a majority of our money came from. He also started selling things on eBay (not necessarily our belongings, but he would sell comic-related items for other people and receive a commission. Eventually, he invested in his own paraphanalia and would flip items online. A long story, but a lucrative endeavor). I was originally working a 9-5 job, but the pay was just okay and I was hating my life. I started writing freelance for a couple of websites in the day and became a server at a restaurant in Beverly Hills at night. I was making about $17/hour at 15 hours per week with my writing jobs and made minimum wage with pretty good tips while serving. Usually somewhere between $100-300 per night.

We were able to accumulate about $45,000 between the two of us in those two years. This was through a combination of selling our belongings, avoiding a social life, working all the time and saving money on useless expenses. It I as hard work and we definitely got sick of that lifestyle for two years, but that long honeymoon and amazing wedding was amazing and we don’t regret it for anything. We didn’t quite reach our money saving goal, but we were surprised just how little money we needed in Southeast Asia. We would spend $25-30 a day and live very comfortably.

One thing that was really valuable was getting travel credit cards. We treated them like debit cards and didn’t spend money we didn’t already have. But we would get sign up points for each card we had (which was two) and would put all of our wedding expenses on it. So meeting the minimum spending requirement wasn’t too difficult.

We didn’t want to work during our honeymoon so we did go into a little bit of debt on our trip with those credit cards. But it was easy to clear that out within the year after returning home.

3. Tell us about your budget.

Budgeting is incredibly important when I travel. In a collaboration I did with Mint, I broke down my expenses on my birthday trip to Peru and how I do it in a detailed series for their blog. It all starts with looking for flights. I find the cheapest flights and when they’re flying (since I want to go basically EVERYWHERE, picking a destination isn’t really the hard part). I find the top 5 or so and before booking, look up cheap accommodation and food in the area to see if I can afford the place. Once I find some great deals, I book the flight!

When tying to save for the trip, I use a few tools like mint and google sheets to help organize what I need, how much everything costs and what my income is. This helps me set realistic expectations of my spending. It takes quite a few hours to research but I always find this part to be exciting!

When I’m on the road, I give myself an allowance. It helps when I look up cool restaurants ahead of time or train prices so that I won’t be too surprised when I get there. I’ll give myself an overflow allowance for fun, but try to stick to my budget the first half of the trip. I use my mint app and wrote down all of my expenses in a small travel journal all day, everyday.

If I’m traveling on my own and am merely traveling for work or because I got a good deal, I try to stick between $25-50 per day and attempt to get comped hotel stays. If I’m planning a grand vacation with my husband or girlfriends, I’ll go a little crazy with $100 per day not including accommodation. These trips are very rare and might occur once every couple years.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

There have only been a few instances where I broke my budget and most of them are emergency situations. One for example was when a volcano had erupted in Indonesia during our honeymoon, forcing us to stay longer. It ate into another country’s budget and ultimately cost us money. Another time, we had a flight mishap in Peru and had to buy last minute flights that had gone up 500% in price! Both of those instances we had travel insurance so we were reimbursed much later. We also had our car broken into in Puerto Rico and did not have insurance for that. That was a serious bummer and cost us money.

There are also those occasions when you just wanna splurge. Based on my accident-prone history and my occasional luxury-spending habit, I always give myself an “emergency fund.” I pretty much know I won’t end up bringing it back with me so if I go through the whole trip without an accident, I’ll go shopping! Otherwise, it’s nice to have backup money for when things get expensive or something goes wrong.

I always try to bring an extra $500 for short trips and a couple thousand for longer trips. And of course credit cards for severe emergencies.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

First of all, let me start by saying almost anyone can travel long term. With the exception of a few cases, if you’re willing to sacrifice your normal levels of comfort, work really hard, and save a ton, you can definitely travel long term!

I think the best advice I can give for people wanting their own long term adventure is to start reading! Look at blogs, read travel books, look into travel hacking! Read personal stories and become inspired! I once read how a guy had accumulated thousands of points (which cost him next to nothing) which equaled a RTW ticket (which means a ticket that goes across the entire globe with multiple stops). I thought I could never live a life of travel because I worked a boring job and made a below average income. Once I started learning, I found out that as long as I was willing, I could travel ANYWHERE! Honestly, you really need a positive attitude and never give up!

But I think the most valuable tool to make your dreams happen is travel hacking. In addition to credit cards with airline points, you can also gain points through online shopping portals, taking surveys, joining an airline dining club and more. Start by looking up travel hacking blogs and you’ll be SHOCKED!

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

It wasn’t until after my honeymoon that I realized I could blog in exchange for comped services or money. It took me about 6 months to start getting free hotel stays and about 1 year before I started making any money. I’ve just now started to make enough money where this could be a full time job (albeit a low paying one) and it has been 1.5 years since I treated my blog like a business. I learned everything I know from Travel Blogging Secrets ebook by Kelly Ella Maz. I also attended conferences like Social Media Marketing World and Create + Cultivate to learn how to start my business. Everything else I have picked up from trial and error as well as jobs I’ve taken on outside of my blog for my writing career.

I looked at Nomadic Matt’s blog and The Points Guy’s site like they were my bible. They laid out travel hacking, real costs of everything in just about every city and I even bought Matt’s book!

My favorite sites for saving money on travel-related expenses include:

• Skyscanner.com (flights)
• Airbnb.com (accommodation)
• Booking.com (accommodation)
• Hostelbookers.com (accomodation)
• Wanderu.com (transportation)
• Rome2rio.com (transportation)
• Megabus.com (transportation)
• Yelp.com (dining)

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

As a blogger, I use my Sony A6300 camera with a Sony e mount lens 10-18 mm f/4 and Sony e mount lens 35 mm f/1.8 lens, GoPro Hero 4, underwater dome, and MacBook Pro to deliver work while on the road.

My favorite luggage includes the Hylete 6-in-1 Backpack, Herschel Little America Backpack, and Lug Puddle Jumper Carry On. All of these items are big enough to pack my equipment and clothes, but small enough to remind me to pack as light as possible. They’re all affordable, reliable and trendy!

 

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

We are The Budgeteers and we are three travelers who all met on the road and decided to create the best travel show we could, and with over 1million views on just two series we must be doing something right!

We are Paddy (a British primary school teacher), Thijs (a Belgian digital artist), and Lina (a Colombian fitness instructor). We have all traveled all over the world – but our two series have taken us to Southeast Asia, USA, Mexico, Central America, and most recently, Myanmar (Burma).

2. How have you funded your travels?

We all live pretty minimal life styles, work hard, and put a set amount of our paychecks aside for travel. We tend to save anywhere from $500 – $750 a month for travel doing this. Travel is our passion and our hobby, so instead of spending money on stuff we don’t need, like fancy new clothes, or eating at overpriced restaurants, we put that money into our love of travel.

3. Tell us about your budget.

For the show, we each take $1000 and once the money is gone, the trip and the series finishes. We want to show people out there that traveling on even a super tight budget can not only be possible, but in fact almost always creates an even bigger adventure, more incredible memories and of course FANTASTIC content for our viewers.

To stretch our budget, we hitchhike everywhere, stay with locals as much as possible, and cut back on things we don’t need, like silly souvenirs, for example. We have fun with it, we get creative with it, and we honestly have the most amount of fun you can imagine doing it.

During Series 1 we lasted 7 weeks across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, and in Series 2 we lasted 9 weeks traveling south from Los Angeles through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. Not too shabby, huh?

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

You can easily spend all your money on beers and tequila. Money translates into time when you travel, so the more money you have = the longer you can travel.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

If you want to travel long term, then you need to just get out there and stop stalling. There are plenty of ways to make money abroad. The city Paddy lives in (Chiang Mai, Thailand) has over 30,000 expats living there and most of them work remotely online. If you have skills that you can use on the road like photography, teaching, and anything online-based, then save up some cash, start traveling, and start hustling!!!

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

We all learnt how to live and travel full time by getting out there and giving it a go. You can read all the ebooks or take all the courses in the world, but nothing will prepare you better than getting out there and making mistakes. Stick to your passions and interests, stick to cheaper countries, and don’t be afraid to fail.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

We keep it simple and our camera is amazing and so cheap! – Canon 700D

And here’s the rest of our YouTube channel!

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi! My name is Jordan Simons and I’m a YouTuber who travels the world continuously! In 2014 I sold all my possessions, quit my job and began to travel the world. That journey has taken me to over 56 countries across the world and led to me finding my passion for film and inspiring others!

2. How have you funded your travels?

After selling all my stuff back in 2014, and paying off my overdraft and credit cards, I had roughly £6000 saved ($9000US). This lasted about 9 months before I completely ran out of money and went to Australia to begin my working holiday visa – which was always my back up plan and I had paid for previously. I saved up money there for 6 months while working various jobs (including bar work, office work and general labour) until I had enough to begin traveling again. I knew that this time I wasn’t going to learn how to make money online and went into it with a strategy.

I planned to begin my YouTube channel and blog while using freelance web design to keep myself going. This is what I did for the next 6 months, while living in South East Asia to keep my costs down – living off roughly $20 a day. After about 6 months of continued effort and learning I began to make money from the ad revenue of my YouTube channel, so I decided to do it full time. Since then I have made money from YouTube and sponsorships. The amount always varies from month to month, depending on the gig and how many views you get – some months I have made as little as $200 while another month could be $7500!

Now I draw a full-time income from YouTube, which I talk about at length here.

3. Tell us about your budget.

When I started out travelling I used to budget strictly, since I only had a certain amount of money to spend and I knew that when that money ran out my travels would end. I gave myself $20 a day to travel with and I would always balance it out over the week i.e. if I spent $25 one day then I had to spend $15 the next.

However, now that I work online, I don’t feel the need to budget. If I need more money then I just plan to make more money in the long run. I don’t go crazy and I still live fairly cheaply whenever I can, but I don’t stick to a strict budget any more. This is the beauty of working for yourself and working remotely. If you need more money then you can just slow down the travels and work a bit harder! Just make sure not to leave yourself short – have a little bit of a buffer that enables you to live somewhere when you need to buckle down and work.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

I have learned that money goes a lot further depending on what country you’re living in! I know that’s not groundbreaking stuff, but I just mean that I would much rather live in cheaper places and have a higher quality of life than spend all my money on the cost of living. In general though, travelling is a lot cheaper than most people think it is, especially when you travel slowly. The most expensive times are usually when you are moving around a lot, spending money on transports and last minute hotels. If you stick to a general area for longer, then you will spend less money in the long run and learn how to do things cheaper.

Initially, I spent more on alcohol and partying than I ever meant to (haven’t we all?). Nowadays however I spend more on food and coffee than I used to, perhaps that’s just me growing up?

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

Honestly, my top tip is just to have discipline and put in the work consistently. It’s not very sexy advice and it’s going to create any headlines, but the only route to success in my experience is to put in the hard work every day. The only definite way to ensure you’ll be successful in whatever you do is to keep turning up every single day and keep putting in the effort. Eventually that consistent effort will all add up!

• Learn 10 words of a language every day. In 3 years you’ll know 10,000 words, which is generally considered to be fluent.
• Invest a small amount of money wisely every day. Compound interest would make you a millionaire in the long run.
• Post every day on social media while constantly learning and improving. Eventually you’ll have a large following and be able to make a full-time living.

Just remember that consistent marginal gains = long term rewards.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

YouTube tutorials! That’s how I learned most of the things I know now, from watching videos created by other people currently leading that lifestyle. I would also recommend reading – a lot. Some of my biggest inspirations have come from books I’ve read. Just off the top of my head, here are some classics I’d recommend – ‘4 Hour Work Week’ ‘Bounce’ ‘Richest Man In Babylon’ and of course every travellers companion ‘The Alchemist’.

I would also highly recommend the website TravelContinuously.com (shameless plug),which is my new website designed to show people the many different ways you can make money while travelling! It’s my passion project and I’m using it to help show as many people as possible how to lead a location independent lifestyle.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Over the past couple of years I’ve learnt what camera equipment to use to produce professional quality videos while also being portable enough to travel with. Here’s what I travel with:

Canon Eos 80D DSLR

Canon PowerShot G7

Canon 10-18mm Lens

Canon 18-135mm Lens

DJI Phantom 4 Drone

Manfrotto D1 Drone Backpack

GoPro HERO4

RODE VideoMic Go

JOBY Gorillapod Flexible Tripod

TravelContinuously.com

The Life of Jord on YouTube

@thelifeofjord on Instagram

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi! Many name is Nichole Walz, a small town girl from Michigan in the USA. I lived in Florida for seven years, where I became a chiropractor. I met my husband, who’s from New Jersey, while studying in Chiropractic College and we practiced in South Florida for three years after graduation, and then moved to Singapore to practice for two years. It wasn’t until we moved to Singapore where we truly fell in love with travel.

Living in Singapore allowed us to travel throughout Asia and Oceania: Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

After leaving our jobs in Singapore, we became yoga teachers in Bali and ventured to Europe to travel for another few years. We’ve been on the road for three months in Europe, now and I’m currently at 38 countries.

2. How have you funded your travels?

While living in Singapore, we funded all our Asia travels with our careers as chiropractors, but we knew we wanted to go mobile and be digital nomads, we just didn’t know how. After some soul searching and a brilliant idea that came about while we were on our honeymoon in New Zealand, we developed a mobile app for health/posture!

We currently earn our revenue through the app, freelance writing and videography. Living in Singapore allowed us to save the money to fund our app and get it off the ground. It wasn’t until October 2017 that we officially launched the app and started to earn revenue, which is still growing daily. The rest of our income comes from freelance work. We also teach yoga privately and for studios.

3. Tell us about your budget.

Of course we budget! Living in Europe, our budget is about $1,500USD/month total for food and accommodation. We track our budget through credit card statements and cash use (daily), recorded in our phones. We are quite strict about sticking to the budget, but will go over for experiences that we deem ‘worth it.’ Luckily, Airbnb has really helped a lot with accommodation while traveling. We book one whole month at each destination we go and receive large discounts that way. Also, having an Airbnb allows us to have a kitchen, where we can cook most meals, unless we’re out eating local food.

Note from Kara and Nate: We love Airbnb too! If you click here, you’ll get $40 off your first stay, plus you’ll also be helping us out 🙂 

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

We have stuck to our budget 90% of the time while traveling Asia and now Europe. Traveling has, surprisingly, been cheaper than we anticipated, as long as we plan ahead. If we don’t map out a grocery store near our Airbnb when we arrive, we end up eating out and spending more cash. We don’t purchase souvenirs, which saves a lot of money as well.

Currency exchange can sometimes be a rip off, so it’s important to research ahead of time before arriving at the next country. We’ve found that extracting money from an ATM is more cost effective in Europe than exchanging paper currency. In Asia, it is the opposite.

The most expensive form of our travel has been bringing our dog along, but we wouldn’t have it any other way! Luckily, most trains and buses don’t charge to bring her, but flying with her is quite costly, so we try to keep it to a minimum.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

Sell everything you own, save enough for 6 months of travel and just GO! You will never realize how cheap being a digital nomad really is…you no longer have vehicles, vehicle insurance, cell phone bills, electricity, etc. Most people think you have to have a LOT of money in order to travel the world, but, if you omit all the normal bills that we all have each month, stop shopping and go on the road, it really is affordable. Eating in and cooking is vital to saving money, so get to know Pinterest really well for easy recipe ideas…I even carry spices and olive oil in my suitcase so I don’t have to purchase them when we arrive at new places!

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

Bloggers: The best way to learn how to be a digital nomad is to learn from others. The Facebook Group ‘Girls Love Travel’ has been absolutely vital for us. I have found SO much information about the places we are going, how to obtain different jobs, etc.

Upwork is a great source for freelance work. We have been really fortunate finding a lot of work this way.

Networking: Get in touch with people you know. My best friend had a friend looking for an Administrative Assistant to answer all the emails they receive for tours in NYC in Spanish (I’m fluent in Spanish), and I literally got the job without trying. This has added a substantial amount of extra income each month.

Diversify: Take on multiple projects and do different things to earn money in various places.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

We cannot survive without our Macbooks, which are our most important items (besides our dog-who goes everywhere with us- and passports of course).

We use GoPro Cameras: Hero4 and Hero5 and the The GoPro Karma Drone, which is vital to our travel videos and photos.

We LOVE our Northface Travel Backpack and Samsonite Suitcases, which are durable and can withstand lots of wear and tear.

Buddy Pouch: We never worry about our passports and cash while traveling with our Buddy Pouches.

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

 

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi I’m TJ! I’m 25, Taiwanese American, and I eat a lot. I’m a digital nomad (although an immigration officer at the UK border called me a drifter so that’s cool too). I have a travel and food Youtube channel!

In 2016 I quit my tech marketing job and have been nomadic ever since! 20+ countries and a good-looking belly later, I’m now a vlogger and remote social media manager.

2. How have you funded your travels?

Before I left I saved up around $14,000. My savings started in college. I was a full-time student working two jobs with three internships and extracurriculars. I spent most of my youth without my parents so I was always big on being independent and hustling through everything.

When I graduated I got a managerial job at a tech company in San Francisco. I became obsessed with automating my finances and saved 30% of my paycheck every two weeks. Automating your finances is basically the idea that when money is deposited into your bank account, small percentages are automatically pulled out. For example, 30% toward bills, 5% into retirement, 20% for guilt free spending, etc. You can do this by setting up your credit cards, retirement fund, etc. to automatically withdraw from your checking account each month. I wrote more about it all and how much to travel the world for a year in this blogpost.

When I quit in 2016 I decided I needed a way to make money. Around then I was also getting started in photography so I began taking professional portraits. I got better and better and my clientele built. While this was happening, I started making Youtube videos. I then expanded my services to video projects. Photography & video projects ranged from $70 – $3000.

But I want to be honest and say it took me a while to even start getting good projects with good pay. For the majority of 2016 I was a struggling digital nomad just grabbing whatever gigs came my way. I dealt with this mental battle of going back to my stable corporate job or sticking with this rocky creative life. While it’s incredible and legendary to hear people make $10K/month, it really takes time and journey can be SO frustrating. If you’re just starting or you’re somewhere in the middle and you’re struggling – just remember the struggle is good. That means you’re constantly looking for innovative ways to earn money and sustain your travels.

The end of 2016 was when I was making somewhat of a sustainable income as a freelance creative. I was jam packed, even went to film a retreat on an island in Thailand! But the editing workload from freelance projects was keeping me from focusing on Youtube. This is called creative burnout – when the work you get paid for takes up all your creative energy from doing work you love. Eventually I had to transition and figure out another source of income. The start of 2017 I became a social media manager for a remote creative agency in the states. This freed up an ample amount of time for me to work on my creative pursuits.

While I’m now slowly transitioning into Youtube full-time, it doesn’t exactly pay the bills. If you read Kara and Nate’s income report, you know Youtube ads aren’t much. It’s about 1,000 views for $1. So if you spend three days to make one video, and get only 5,000 views – how much did you make? A cup of coffee’s worth.

I have affiliate streams, a Patreon page, and brand sponsorships. These, along with my freelance work, add up to $1,000-$4,000/month. It’s such a huge range because some months I get more or less projects. Because of the recent Youtube demonetization frenzy, my earnings have been cut in half. It’s still and always will be a work in progress but I’m much better off now than a year ago. Honestly I’m making nowhere close to the same amount I made at my corporate job but you know that saying about rich in experiences? I’m definitely feeling that.

I’m now working on other income streams so stay tuned!

3. Tell us about your budget.

When I was traveling constantly, it was SO difficult to budget. A lot of advice columns say you have to track your budget, and while I agree – it just never worked for me. I guess my budgeting would be dependent of the country. The way I travelled was drop into a country for 1-2 months. I’d get a cheap place for the month and work, play, relax, work some more. Some countries cost way, WAY more. Those months I’d budget $2,000. Other countries just $1,000 a month. Luckily majority of my travels were in Asia.

If I do go over, I’ll pause the traveling and work more hours to cover the excess. You can tell by the pauses I have between video uploads. Those days I’m probably locked up in some cafe.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

Traveling has been expensive in some countries (London, Ireland, Norway) and affordable in others (Southeast Asia, India) so travel expenses really varies. What I found to be REAL expensive is this thing called travel vlogging! Hahah.

But real talk. I think when you’re traveling, it’s important to give yourself time to rest. Remember to cash out for some luxury experiences! Stick to your budget but give yourself room to play. It’s no fun to stay in hostels every single day and to keep munching on 7-eleven sandwiches (as good as they are…sigh now I’m craving).

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

Develop passive income streams. Passive income is basically cash flow received on regular basis that requires little to no effort to maintain. They may take a bit to set up, but once they’re ready – the money comes in without you having to monitor it all the time. The book “The 4 Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferris outlines this idea pretty well.

Investments, online courses or products (ebooks, audio guides, video guides, templates), drop shipping, and affiliate marketing are all good ways to make passive income. The ultimate goal is to not not work at all but to work less, and having passive income is one of the best ways to achieve that.

If you’re first starting out and figuring out your income source, just remember any of your skills used at your previous job are transferrable. If you’re in the nontechnical field, you can become a freelance copywriter, virtual assistant, project manager, online business coach, etc. If you have just 3 clients each paying you $1000 a month for X deliverables – you’re making $3,000 each month. My advice for those starting out is to always, always use your network. While many had success using Upwork, the people who will pay you more are the ones connected through referrals. Immediately send an e-mail to your friends and family letting them what you do and that you’re looking for new clients. Kindly ask them to send you anyone that may need your service.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

Must read books include I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi for personal finance and Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon for creative inspiration. If you’re starting a Youtube channel, binge all of Video Creators videos or you know, most of them. Jodi from LegalNomads was a big inspiration for me when I first started my digital nomad journey.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Sony RX V – I use this camera to vlog everything!

Gorilla Pod – the go-to tripod for vloggers.

iPhone phone holders – these weird little things have made using my phone so much more convenient. TRUST me, it’s a must.

You can see my full compact travel vlogging setup here!

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hey! My name is Jeremy Enns, I’m from Vancouver, BC, but grew up on the prairies. I’ve been away from Vancouver for about 2 months at this point, but as I don’t really have a home and was only in Vancouver for a couple months, in one sense I’ve been traveling for over a year now. Over the course of a few extended trips in the past few years, I’ve been to somewhere between 30 and 40 countries on 5 continents.

2. How have you funded your travels?

While I’m able to make money now while traveling, that wasn’t always the case.

Three years ago I went on a three month cycle tour in Europe through Scandinavia, central Europe and the Balkans, then spent a month solo backpacking further through the Balkans to Istanbul, and then 4 months in SE Asia with my girlfriend at the time. For this trip, I spent a year and a half saving up $20,000 to fund the 8 month trip.

I want to point out that I was working a job that paid $15/hr as a landscaper and I was living in Vancouver, a city that just outranked New York and San Fransisco as the most unaffordable city in which to live in North America. So, no excuses. If you’re wondering, the secret is prioritizing. Every financial decision I made over that year and a half had the bike trip in the back of my mind. I bought cheap food at the grocery store, I didn’t go out to eat, I didn’t go to the movies, or the bar, I biked rather than using transit, I lived with roommates in a shared house, and on and on and on. I also kept detailed spreadsheets projecting out my income month by month and tracking my expenses to the penny. In short, you can find a way to live on pretty much any budget and income level.

Since last year, I’ve been self employed, running my podcast consultation and production company Ascetic Productions, and have been working from the road for a year now, which has been awesome and fulfilling and stressful and scary and so many other emotions.

When I first started out I was making anywhere from $1500 – $3000/mo. A year later, while the floor remains similar depending on the month, the ceiling has greatly expanded, with income ranging from $2000 – $6000/mo. My goal right now is to have my first $10,000 month by April, and be making $10K consistently by next summer.

My business hasn’t changed all that much over the course of the past year. Most of my income comes from client work, consulting, producing and editing podcasts for everyone from solopreneurs to globally recognized brands. The change in income has been due to taking on clients, and raising my prices, probably doubling them. I’ve also started creating digital products, do some video editing work, photograph weddings, engagements, portrait and branding shoots, have a stock photography portfolio, do some freelance writing, and a bunch of other side projects that are unrelated to podcast production.

Over the course of the year I’ve also grown my team by outsourcing some of the client work to freelancers, which has added monthly expenses but allowed me to be more ambitious with the projects I take on and grow the business.

3. Tell us about your budget.

I have a general budget, but I don’t pay a lot of attention to it to be honest. As I don’t really have a home base any more, there’s not really a distinction between home and travel any more, it all just is. My routines are generally the same wherever I am, and as a result I spend about the same amount each month regardless of where I’m living at the time.

While I have a general budget of about $2000 – $2500/mo, I don’t plan around that really. Left to my own devices I would spend very little, so it’s not something that I’m keeping in the back of my mind every day and with every expenditure. It seems like every few months there will be a month where I spend something like $5000, most of that being business expenses. Those months don’t really worry me though, as I know that it’s part of running a business, and will hopefully result in more income down the road.

The biggest aid in keeping my costs down has been tracking every expenditure using Quick Books for my business expenses and an app called Spending Tracker for my personal expenses. For me, it’s not even about the actual total number, but rather the act of knowing that I need to write down every expenditure that has conditioned me to think about what I spend money on.

Aside from that, I’ve conditioned myself over years of traveling and understanding what makes me happy to only spend money on things that actually make me happy. I know now what kinds of purchases make me happy, and live a fairly minimalistic, non-stuff-centric life, which just naturally means I don’t make a lot of day to day impulse buys (although those can be fun).

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

Since hitting the road I’ve learned that traveling doesn’t have to be expensive, and that if you get creative, there are a ton of ways to live more cheaply than you would at home. For example, during my bike tour three years ago I averaged spending less than $30/day over three months in Europe including a full month of that in Scandinavia (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark). Sure that involved free camping off the side of the road most nights (I think we paid for accommodation 5 out of more than 90 nights?), and limiting our transportation costs by cycling everywhere, but it was a great way to spend 3 super cheap months in Europe and see more than 10 countries in the process. I know that kind of travel doesn’t appeal to everyone, but I’ve learned that you can travel pretty much anywhere in the world for less than $30/day if you’re willing to think outside the box and adjust your idea of what “traveling” means.

One of the ways that I’ve adjusted my travel experiences since starting to work on the road is by living like a local rather than traveling like a backpacker. Over the past year, I’ve spent 7 months house sitting, which has been an incredibly rewarding (and cheap) travel experience. Most of the places I’ve house sit are locations I never would have gone to if I had been traveling in that country, like rural England for example. But, I’ve been amazed at the depth of my experiences at these sits, even if most of the time is spent living exactly as I would at home, working 10-12 hours a day and only really going out and sightseeing once a week.

These sedentary and deep local travel experiences then set up periods of more typical travel, going some place new every 3 or 4 days and doing a lot of sightseeing. Over the past year I’ve spent about 4 months doing that type of travel as a compliment to the slow, home base style travel. I’ve found that for me at least, running a business while being on the move constantly is doable, but incredibly draining, and unsustainable long term, at least in a client- and service-based business. On top of that, I like routine and often find that even when traveling at a faster pace, my favorite days are those where I spend 5-6 hours working in a coffee shop and then go sight seeing in the afternoon.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

In my experience, most people have skills that could be used to work remotely, but that take a considerable mental shift to uncover. When I was starting out with my goal to become location independent, I had an audio engineering and production certificate that I thought was entirely useless. My whole perspective of audio work was that it required a recording studio, very much location independent. When I finally latched onto the idea of podcast production I was amazed at how simple the idea was, but how it had taken me over a year to latch onto.

My tip for uncovering these skills is just to look at what other people have done with similar skills. I knew that people produced podcasts, but I considered that a low-paying job that was beneath my skill level (yep, I was super arrogant about that). That arrogance kept me from seeing that this was actually a viable location independent job, and once I clued in, I realized that there were a ton of people already doing it, and making decent money while working remotely.

If you seriously DON’T think you have any skills that are worth pursuing remotely, then you just so happen to be in luck! We live in an amazing time where there are probably HUNDREDS of online courses ranging from $500 – $1000 (and many much beyond that) that if taken and applied could teach you the skills necessary to start a location independent career within a month! Huzzah! Things like social media management, Facebook ads, Virtual Assisting, Graphic design, and on and on and on.

While there are a TON of options, the trick with any of these is actually applying what you learned. IT IS NOT EASY BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION. But I believe it’s doable, for pretty much anyone. I spent a year working 40 hours a week at my day job and then another 30-40 hours on top of that building my business. I lost a relationship (not solely due to the work load, but along with the intense personal growth over that time, definitely contributed to it), didn’t have time for friends (they were sad but understood and supported what I was working towards), lost friends who weren’t supportive, but made countless new and better friends who have continued to inspire and elevate me the deeper our relationships grow.

In my opinion, few (if any) people can make this radical of a change in their life by remaining the person they are now. Routines, people, expenditures, time allocation, outlook on life and so many other aspects of your current life probably don’t support this new direction, so the biggest thing you can do is to start aligning yourself with elements that DO move you one tiny bit closer to that goal. The fact that you’re reading this interview now is a great sign of how you’re already doing that. It’s probably also a sign that there’s still a long way to go, and that there are many habits and people that still need to be reconciled to make the leap to being able to support a location independent lifestyle. That’s cool; one step at a time and you’ll get there.

Lastly, and simply: I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but the very easiest way to get started is by offering a service. Start looking on UpWork, I got my first client within one week of setting up an account, and from the moment I got that client, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have enough to quit my day job and hit the road.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

I’m a big proponent of online freelancing marketplaces like Fiverr and UpWork. You need to temper your expectations when starting out, but they can be a great way to get your foot in the location independent door.

I’m also a big reader, reading more than 60 books last year, and aiming for around 30 this year. Here’s a list of my favorites and the books that impacted me the most last year.

I also devour podcasts. In the year leading up to quitting my day job, I listened to more than 50 hours per week of podcasts, generally at 1.5X or 2X speed. Some of my favorites are Smart Passive Income w/ Pat Flynn, Online Marketing Made Easy w/ Amy Porterfield, Tropical MBA, Internet Business Mastery, Location Indie, Side Hustle School, and many more.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

I’m a huge believer that gear is pretty much never as important as we think it is, and that we need way less of it than we probably have. I buy literally everything secondhand, from a 5 year old MacBook pro, to a 6 year old DSLR with used lenses.

The camera and lenses have been drenched by waves and ravaged by sand, the autofocus doesn’t work anymore along with half of the other functions, and one of the lenses is stuck at one focal point. But none of that stuff really matters. Sure, it’s harder to take photos now, but the lack of features has made me a lot more thoughtful and methodical about my photography and videography as well as promoting creativity and problem solving. I’ve found this to be true with almost any creative pursuit.

If there’s one piece of gear I am a firm believer in, it’s hard drives. Always have hard drives. Many, many, many hard drives. I like Seagate and Western Digital portable drives

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

I’m Erick Prince. Founder of MinorityNomad.com and Eclatist Digital. Prior to traveling I was in the US military for over 10 years. After leaving the military and returning to college, I decided to start a nonprofit foundation for low income youth focusing on access to travel. That drove me to sell all my possessions, save all the money I could, and hit the road on a one-way ticket to inspire marginalized youths to travel. Five years and 93 countries later, here I am still at it. I currently travel on a mission to become the first African-American to visit every country in the world.

2. How have you funded your travels?

The first year or so of my travels were funded through my savings, a bit over $19,000. I took a job at the Texas DMV where I used my prior experience in the military to create a new training program for them. It wasn’t a full-time job, just a short-term contract that paid very well, but it opened my eyes to the world of freelancing. Have a skill, sell that skill.

As my blog gained attention, I started learning about digital marketing and luxury concepts. Companies started asking me to create marketing plans and strategies for them. I transitioned into the digital marketing realm. Creating social media strategies and developing content for brands like Shang Ri-La Hotels, Intercontinental Hotels, Sony, and LAN Airlines. Now, my travels are entirely funded from my digital marketing work.

3. Tell us about your budget.

I don’t believe in this concept of “budget” that’s so prevalent these days. Of course, everyone has a budget one way or another. I’m just not a fan of planning my travels around it. If I want to do something, I work to get enough money to do that thing. 

In over five years of travel, I’ve never spent more than $1,200 a month traveling, excluding one-off items like flights and hospital bills. Accommodation, food, and entertainment has never cracked $1,200, which has made it relatively simple for me to keep going as long as I have. I stay on “budget” by making more money than I spend.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

I’ve learned that money means very little, but I knew that long before this. Money is nothing more than a means to an end. It only has the value which people place on it. The people I’ve met with the least amount of money have been the kindest and most giving.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

Long term travel is possible when you have long-term income. I take exception to all these “life hacks” and courses people are selling which perpetuate this myth of passive income. Things can be simple but not easy, and I think that’s where many get themselves in trouble: by trying to outsmart the basics of life. How do you live the lifestyle you want? Make more money. Simple, not easy.

Figure out what you love and you’re good at, and figure out a way to monetize it. We live in a world where teenagers make millions a year playing video games on YouTube. There’s money out there. People just have to realize you’ll need to sacrifice something. Sleep, family time, health, something.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

If someone wanted to follow in my footsteps I would say DON’T! My success has come from one simple truth. I do everything my way and I have 100% self-awareness and confidence. I bet on my strengths and compliment my weaknesses. What I’m good at is creating plans and strategies. Finding the right pieces to the puzzle. What I’m bad at is pretty much everything else in business. Which is why I hire people to fill those holes. If you’re not a good cook you hire a chef. You don’t need anyone’s course, ebook, or site to tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are. Everyone needs to cut out all the self-help noise and be brutally honest with themselves. What are you great at? Focus on that with all of your energy and make sure the world knows you’re great. Strive to be the best at that thing and an authority. The money will come.

One site I do recommend is Lynda.com. I’m a big fan of their courses and instructors. Also Skillshare. It has more unique courses and caters well to digital nomad skill sets.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

My Sony A7S. All things stripped away, I’m a photographer. It’s the air that I breath. It nourishes my soul and the one thing that drives me above all else. And my rucksack, US Military issue. This thing has literally been to war and back with me.

 

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hello! My name is Michelle and I run the personal finance blog Making Sense of Cents. I have three finance-related college degrees and I used to be a financial analyst before I became a full-time blogger.

Me and my husband sold our house in 2015 and travel full-time with our two dogs, in an RV. We have been to many national parks, have summited several mountains, been to many states, lived and sailed a boat for 10 days (plan is to do that next after RVing!), and more.

I am able to travel full-time due to my blogging business, Making Sense of Cents. I earned over $979,000 from my blogging business in 2016, and I am on track to earn over $1,500,000 from it in 2017.

2. How have you funded your travels?

In August of 2011, I started my blog with the aim of teaching people how to save money as well as journaling my personal finance journey after reading a magazine that featured a personal finance website in one of their articles. I became extremely interested in that website and my interest in blogging just grew from there. This is interesting and hilarious because before that same summer, I had no idea about what blogs were, that they could even make money, or anything along those lines.

I did not create my blog with the intention of making money blogging. It was all just a hobby and an outlet I then realized how much I loved blogging and realized that it was for me, so now I am a full-time blogger! I went full-time in October of 2013 and I haven’t looked back once. Blogging has completely changed my life for the better and it’s something that I recommend everyone try if they are interested.

On my blog Making Sense of Cents, I teach readers how to make extra money, the best ways to save money, achieving your dream life, RVing (me and my husband RV full-time), and more. I love running Making Sense of Cents and I am very happy that this is now my full-time career, my business, and pretty much my life.

I currently earn over $100,000 a month from my blogging business, which consists of affiliate income, course sales from Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (I teach people my exact strategy to earn affiliate income in this course), sponsored partnerships with companies, and display advertising.

3. Tell us about your budget.

I have a budget, but not in a strict sense. I know where my money is going, where it’s coming from, and I am pretty much always aware of that.

Personal finance is my life (and I am very good with numbers), so while I am not as crazy when it comes to budgeting, I definitely recommend that 99% of people have a budget.

My favorite financial tool is Personal Capital. If you don’t know what it is or don’t have it, download it ASAP!

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

One thing I’ve learned about money is that appearances can be deceiving!

So many people think that RVers and other full-time travelers are broke, and have no choice and no home. That is just dumb. I have met mega millionaires, people living in $2,000,000 RVs, people who are running successful businesses, and more, all while on the road.

Whenever someone finds out that we live in an RV, around 50% of them take pity on us, as if something is wrong with us, we are stupid, or need help. The other half are extremely jealous of the lifestyle and want to travel full-time – so it makes no sense that there is such an extreme between the two views!

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

My top tip for someone who wants to travel long-term is to find a way to make money while traveling. My favorite way is to learn how to start a blog, but there are many other ways to make a living while traveling as well.

You could work for someone else online (I know many people who telecommute to their job), start your own business, work at businesses you come across on the road (such as a hostel), and more.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

My top online resource for someone who wants to start a blog would be to sign up for my free How To Start a Blog course.

If you’re looking for a great Facebook group on making money while RVing, my top recommendation would be Make Money and RV.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

My top favorite travel-related item is my RV – does that count? 🙂

We have a 2016 Tiffin Allegro Bus 37AP, and it allows us to comfortably see the United States with our home, us, and our two dogs. Living in an RV means that we can live wherever we want to live. The United States has so many beautiful places to see and live, and because it would be hard to just pick one place, RV life allows us to live in as many as we want.

Other than that, my favorite items are our Jeep Rubicon that we have turned into an overland vehicle, and my laptop and iPhone so that I can work wherever. We also have a lot of fun toys in the RV such as rock climbing gear, paddle board, kayak, multiple bikes, and more.

My free How To Start a Blog course – With this free email course, I show you exactly how to create a blog easily, from the technical side (it’s easy – trust me!) all the way to earning your first income and attracting followers.

Lastly, if you want to see my travel adventures, you should follow my Instagram.

 

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Greetings! I’m Nora, aka The Professional Hobo. In 2006, I sold everything I owned in Canada (including a busy financial planning practice) to embrace my lifelong dreams of culturally immersive travel – something I couldn’t achieve with regular vacations. I had no idea what I’d do, where I’d go, or how long I’d actually travel for.

Well, I’m still on the road 11 years later, and going strong! So, there’s that.

I’ve traveled through and/or lived in 55+ countries so far. I enjoy the art of slow travel, staying months (and in some cases years) in a place to truly get a feel for the culture and people. Also, traveling fast for 11 years isn’t sustainable on a variety of different levels.

2. How have you funded your travels?

When I sold my financial business, it kicked out an income of about $2,000 (Canadian) per month for two years. My goal was to see if I could travel full-time on that alone without touching my savings. Simultaneously, I decided to start a freelance writing business on the road, and my goal was to be able to replace my $2k/month income at the end of the two years when it ran out.

In both instances, I was successful!

My income (and expenses) have varied quite a bit over the years, but I always manage to travel full-time in a financially sustainable way, and that’s what I teach others to do (so I kinda have to lead by example).

I publish my annual income and expense reports on my website; you can find them linked to the home page of my website, for which you’ll find a link at the end of this post.

3. Tell us about your budget.

Although I track my expenses and income religiously, I don’t tend to follow any sort of specific budget. I’m pretty good at knowing how much I’m earning, and in turn, how much I can afford to spend. If one month is exorbitant (with an annual health insurance payment or some sort of splurge for example), I have a savings buffer I can draw from. And many months I don’t spend what I earn so I can continue to set money aside and invest.

Through years of tracking my expenses, they’ve ranged from $17k/year to $44k/year. The cheapest years were usually because I did a lot of volunteering in trade for free accommodation, and the most expensive year was an unmitigated disaster with tragedies all over the place that ended up costing me on a variety of levels. But over the years, I’ve found a “sweet spot” of sorts at $24,000/year, all in – including business and insurance and personal expenses.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

I’m a financial planner. I learned most of what I needed to know about money before I started traveling full-time! Probably the biggest travel-related financial lesson I’ve learned along the way is that rural locations are generally inherently cheaper than cities…where I tend to go on spending sprees!

Other money lessons learned have been more esoteric in nature; combined with concepts like work-life balance, romantic relationships, and “easy come, easy go”!

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

My whole website is about this! The biggest takeaway for me: financially sustainable travel is NOT synonymous with budget travel. It’s about money in, and money out. If you earn a lot of money (or have a lot of money in savings), your travel lifestyle can look different than if you’re not earning so much money.

And on the topic of budget travel, for me it’s about creative spending. I have not – and will not ever (if I can avoid it) – eat dry macaroni for dinner because I’m on a budget. I’m a girl with champagne tastes and a beer-drinker’s budget, and I do quite well by it. I’ve stayed in palatial residences – for free – around the world. I wear nice clothes. I fly in business class (for less than the price of economy tickets). When I want lobster, I eat lobster. I spend my money creatively, and I employ strategies to save big dollars on big ticket items like accommodation and transportation.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

Well, ahem, I wrote a book called Working on the Road: The Unconventional Guide to Full-Time Freedom. It’s about designing your career around your lifestyle desires, instead of what most people do – which is the other way around. So, if you want to follow in my footsteps and design a career to take you around the world, I’d start there!

I also wrote another book called How to Get Free Accommodation Around the World, which you’ll find through my website (The Professional Hobo). I’ve saved over $100,000 in accommodation since I started travel and simultaneously had some pretty epic and culturally immersive experiences using the techniques in this book.

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Career wise, I need a laptop. Thus, I’d throw myself in front of a bus to protect my MacBook Air 11” (save for the fact that without me, my laptop would be pretty useless).

And because I live out of a suitcase, I’m all about packing tools. My favorite is the Hoboroll, which organizes and compresses an impressive amount of stuff.

Lastly, a random piece of gear that serves me over and over again, is my headlamp. Great for mountain treks, rural night walks, and even a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night in a place I’m not accustomed to!

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

We’re Katie and Ben, founders of the travel blog Two Wandering Soles. Like Kara and Nate, we were high school sweethearts, so we’ve kind of grown up together. Shortly after getting married, we quit our jobs as an engineer (Ben) and a graphic designer (Katie) to go on a 3-month backpacking trip in South America. That 3-month trip never really ended, and has since taken us to South Korea where we taught English, then around the world on a year-long trip that included adventures like trekking to the Everest Base Camp and road-tripping around Iceland.

After returning to the United States, we spent a winter season working at a ski resort in Washington state, then spent the following summer traveling around the US in a campervan named “Vinny”!

From living overseas as expats to backpacking around the world to road tripping in a campervan, we’ve had a wide variety of travel experiences through 43 countries and several US states.

2. How have you funded your travels?

The way we’ve funded our travels has changed and evolved over the past three years. We’ll share a few of the ways we have been able to afford a nomadic lifestyle for 3.5 years and counting!

Prior to our travels:

Before even purchasing our one-way flight to Colombia in 2014, we had been strategically saving our money for about a year and a half. We both had good jobs, but with wedding expenses and student loan payments, we had to be really diligent about putting money away. We stopped going out to eat as much and met friends for walks instead of drinks. We started living more simply and found that it wasn’t as difficult to save money as we thought it would be.

Over that year and a half, we came up with tons of creative money-saving hacks, and put together a super detailed article on our website of very specific ways we saved our money prior to quitting our jobs.

Our biggest and fastest money-maker:

Once we really got a taste of long term travel in South America, we decided to figure out how we could financially make it work to keep seeing more of the world. One thing we kept coming back to time and time again was the idea of teaching English overseas. We did tons of research and ended up choosing to teach in South Korea, where the cost of living is low and earnings are high.

We had an incredible opportunity to live in another country for a year and really delve into a culture completely different from our own. Plus, we were able to save more than $22,000 each in just one year! Yes, you read that right. Between the two of us, our savings from one year of teaching English in South Korea was more than $44,000. That doesn’t include all the money we spent while living in Korea and traveling around Asia during our year as expats.

We have several articles on our website that break down exactly how we saved that much money, and we’re happy to help out anyone else who would like to pursue a similar endeavor. Any time people ask us how they can earn money quickly and easily for travel, our number one recommendation is to teach English in South Korea!

How we earn money anywhere in the world:

By saving more than $44,000 by teaching English in South Korea, we were able to spend about a year traveling around the world – from Southeast Asia to India and Nepal, to Eastern and Western Europe. We made sure to stay on top of our budget while traveling so that we could continue to pay our student loans and stretch out our travel for as long as possible.

But we didn’t want to spend all of our savings and come back home completely broke, so we decided we should start earning money on the road.

We each do different things to earn money remotely. Ben teaches English via video chat to students in China through a program called VIPKID. It is an incredibly easy way to earn money, no matter where in the world you may be, and has tons of opportunities for bonuses and pay increases. We put together a complete guide with everything you need to know before applying to VIPKID that you can find on our website.

I (Katie) earn money by doing freelance writing, social media management and graphic design projects. I have used Upwork in the past to find gigs, but now tend to work with clients long term.

Monetizing our website:

We started our website as a passion project because we love sharing about our experiences and advice with readers. We wrote articles for the sheer joy of it, with no intentions to make money.

It wasn’t until about one year ago that we started to monetize our website, and we’ve only really put time and effort into this realm in the last few months. We make some money through advertising and sponsorships, but the main money-maker on our website so far is through affiliate marketing. In short, this means we get a small “kickback” when readers buy a product we have recommended. We are very specific with which companies we work with, and only promote those we actually use and believe in. Being honest, genuine and transparent has always been a higher priority to us than earning money quickly, but it is starting to pay off. 

Currently, our website is paying all of our student loan payments (which is a hefty monthly sum!), and it is also covering all of our travel expenses and nomadic lifestyle. Our plan is to spend the next three months working very hard on our website to grow our earnings even more. 

3. Tell us about your budget.

In order to sustain a nomadic lifestyle while also paying student loans each month, we are pretty strict about staying on top of a budget.

The magic number we try to stay under each day is $70 for both of us. When traveling in countries in Southeast Asia or India, this is very easy. But in Western Europe and North America, it’s a bit more difficult. We are big believers in balance. Splurging is part of travel and we try not to pass up on once in a lifetime experiences because of money. But if we go way over our budget today, we’ll spend the next couple days being very careful about our purchases to balance it out.

In order to understand how much we are spending and exactly what we’re spending it on, we record all our purchases on an app called Trail Wallet. Developed by other travelers, it converts between currencies seamlessly and allows you to customize your budget completely. It’s important for us to know how much money we have left to spend each day (or how much we’ve gone over budget), so we can hold ourselves accountable. It also breaks down exactly what we’re spending our money on, so we know that types of things we can cut back on, like ice cream, for example. Recording all our purchases felt like a lot of work at first, but now it’s habit and we kind of make it into a game. Plus, it has been the reason we’ve been able to travel for such long periods of time, so it’s totally worth it.

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

We’ve learned not to let money hold us back. Quitting our jobs was a huge risk, and it was made even bigger by the fact that we have sizeable student loans to pay each month. But we didn’t want money to stand in the way of us and our dreams, and we knew that if we worked hard enough and planned ahead, we could control our money instead of letting money control us.

Interestingly enough, we have found that we actually spend less money while traveling than we did while living in an apartment and working full time jobs.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

This is a question we’re asked time and time again. And we have 3 pieces of advice:

1. If you are at all interested and it fits into your lifestyle, our number one recommendation would be to consider teaching English in South Korea. The opportunity to explore another country while making (lots) of money is an experience you’ll cherish for your lifetime. Plus, it can set you up to pay off student loans or travel the world long-term. If this is of any interest to you, we have endless resources on helping you get started.
2. Keep track of your expenses. All of them! Start keeping track now, while you’re saving up for travel so you can see what costs you can cut. Continue tracking your spending while on the road so you can stretch out your travels. If you don’t know exactly how much you’re spending, it’s easy to blow your bank account before you can buy a return ticket home!
3. Rethink the way you vacation. If you’re just starting out, you’ll need to think about long-term travel differently than you think about a 2-week vacation. If you want to travel for as long as possible, you might not be able to stay in the 5-star hotels you tend to stay at during a short holiday. And eating at fancy restaurants each night will take a toll on your wallet fast. Traveling in a more sustainable way, more similarly to how you live at home, will help you stretch your money further.

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

There are so many resources out there we’d recommend! We’ll share a few of our favorites:

1. VIPKID: This is a fantastic way for any North American (sorry to all other nationalities, they are looking for American and Canadian accents) to earn a great income remotely by teaching English to students in China via video chat. You can work from anywhere in the world – Ben even taught during our 3-month road trip from inside our campervan!
2. Upwork: Find freelance jobs for just about any skill you have – from photo editing to technical writing to SEO optimization – you can find tons of job opportunities. Our advice would be to look primarily for those clients who will offer you repeat, long-term work.
3. EPIK: This is the program we went through to teach English in South Korea where we were able to save a total of $44,000 in one year!

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

Steripen – This handy device sterilizes water to make it safe for drinking. We always travel with our Steripen so we don’t have to constantly buy plastic water bottles and create more waste. Plus, not having to buy water all the time has saved us a ton of money along the way. We’ve used our Steripen for the past 4 years on our travels in countries like Colombia, Myanmar, India and Romania, and have never gotten sick from drinking the water.

Packing cubes – We are obsessed with packing cubes because they keep our clothes and toiletries organized and compressed. We literally don’t know how we ever traveled without these!

Charles Schwab High Yield Investor Debit Card – This debit card allows you to withdraw money from ATMs all over the world and reimburses your ATM fees. It has saved us hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars!

Anker Portable Charger 20000mAh – This external battery pack keeps all our electronics charged and ready to go! We did tons of research before landing on this one, and chose the Anker because it can charge 2 devices at once; plus, and it can charge them 7 times before needing to be charged itself. It was a huge lifesaver during our trek to Everest Base Camp!

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi! We are Rachel and Sasha, The Grateful Gypsies! We’re from Tennessee and Michigan, respectively, but our life of travel began when we moved to China. After graduating college, we both tried to find “real jobs”, but it didn’t work out for a lot of reasons (mostly the terrible economy in 2009), so we moved to Beijing, China to teach English in 2010. That’s when our international travels truly began.

Since then we have traveled extensively in East Asia; Japan, South Korea and all over China. We’ve also been to every country in Southeast Asia except for Brunei and East Timor. In addition to China, we also lived in Bali and Mexico. In total, we’ve visited 14 countries together!

Other websites that are great teaching resources are:

Linguahouse.com – They have many lesson plans and worksheets for different ability levels. They have a free subscription option but it’s very limited. There are two other subscription levels that provide unlimited access.

LanternFish (BogglesWorldESL) – This is a great website for making vocabulary worksheets and games for young or low ability ESL learners. In addition, they have vocabulary and writing exercises specifically for adults.

Busyteacher.org – Here, they have an endless supply of worksheets and activities for free.

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/gratefulgypsies/

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn5T0r4o5KV4qoyQyR7Buww?view_as=subscriber

(Just so you know, there may be some affiliate links in this post, but we only recommend items that we believe in and think will benefit you on your travels.)

1. Tell us about yourself and sum up your travels for us.

Hi, we’re Mitch and Sarah Loar!  We’ve been married for 2 1/2 years and for the entirety of our marriage we’ve been hustling, designing, and building a lifestyle that allows us to travel full time.

We both discovered our passion for experiencing new ways of life around the globe before we were married. It started for Mitch when he lived in Chile and for Sarah when she lived in New York.

Our inspiration behind traveling is based on experimenting with our curiosities really. Our first goal was to create a life that gave us time to do things we love. Then it moved to exploring more places that we are curious about. Our next goal is to build up our resources and ways we can help others in the world.

The “other people” we are referring to aren’t just people with a severe case of wanderlust, but our future children! We dream of the day when we have a couple little travelers strapped to our backs or waddling along side us as we explore the many corners of the world!

We have only been at this vagabonding thing for 3 months and we will be kicking it in Europe until the end of 2017! We wanted to get a feel for it before we started expanding our family to make sure we aren’t in too far over our heads! 😉

2. How have you funded your travels?

There are two reasons we are able to travel full time. One is the way we fund our travels and the other is how we afford our travels.

Our jobs: Sarah is working remotely for a tech company based in the US doing online tech support. Mitch runs his own business as a full-stack marketer and specializes in helping health care providers.

We can afford to travel full time because we don’t pay for two thirds of the costs that most travelers pay for. We look at travel being broken down to three categories; Flights, Accommodations, and Travel tidbits(everything else)

98% of our time in Europe, we don’t pay for accommodations. We didn’t have to pay for our flights to get out to Europe and we will only be paying for one of our tickets on our next flight back to the US. With these two things out of the way, travel becomes really affordable really quickly.

3. Tell us about your budget.

We bring in anywhere between $1400 – $1800 per month.

$800 of that is already spoken for with students loans, car payments, and other bills we’re still paying.

That leaves us with $600 – $1000 per month to keep ourselves alive in Western Europe which breaks down to $20 – $35 per day. We eat cheaply most of the time (hello, ramen noodles) and splurge sometimes in order to make this budget work.

Now to touch on what you’re probably asking yourself, how do you not pay for flights or accommodations?!?

We strictly obey these two rules: We only go where we can get housesitting gigs, and we only fly cheap and use our flight points on the expensive flights.

We run all our expenses through two travel credit cards to rack up our points and make it possible to afford some of pricey overseas flights.

House sitting is when you watch someones house, plants, and almost always their pets while they take their vacation, in exchange for a free stay. So far we’ve landed 12 weeks of house sits in Europe – Here’s a peek into our Itinerary:  3 weeks in Southern France(currently here), 2.5 weeks in Spain, 2 weeks in London, 2.5 weeks in Portugal 2 weeks in Northern France – Pretty crazy right?!

4. What have you learned about money since hitting the road?

We’ve learned that European gelato is our budget buster and European bread is our budget saver.

Also, always plan for an emergency, unknown circumstance, or an extra somethin’-somethin’ for yourself.

What surprised us when we started our long-term journey is how quickly we entered the “vacation state of mind” i.e. – buy all the things as fast as you can because you won’t be here long. This screwed us in our first week because Mitch decided to spend almost our entire month’s budget at every other pizza stand in New York, and we were only there for a week!

Simply put – we struggle when it comes to good food. We’ve since learned to spend our money on ramen, bread, and spaghetti from the jar so we can splurge a little on the Gelato stand down the street more often.

5. What’s your top tip for someone trying to figure out how to make long-term travel financially possible?

This is a repeat of what we said early but it’s something we’ve come up with to help us stay focused: Know your FAT 🙂

Flights – We use our Chase Sapphire and Capital One Venture on everything possible in order to rack up flight points and use sparingly.

Accommodations – Housesitting or bust.

Traveling Tidbits – This is including everything else travel consists of but mainly comprises of food. 80% eat cheap, 20% treat yo’ self. (This also includes other activities of leisure and enjoyment.)

6. If someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, are there any online resources you’d recommend?

We will be pre-launching a course that teaches our exact method of traveling in the coming weeks, but until then check these out:

Location Indie podcast and community – A community of nomads and long term travelers! The community opens a couple times a year so sign up for their email list and listen to the podcast to know when the next opening is.

The Wantreprenuer to Entrepreneur podcast, book, and UPM course  – Mitch went to Brian Lofrumento’s Ultimate Profit Model retreat to help him get his business off the ground. It was one of the best investments we’ve ever made!

Trusted Housesitters – A place where you can find free accommodations in exchange for caring for someones pets and home. If you go through the link provided, we get 2 months free and you save $20!

7. What’s some of your favorite travel gear that enables you to do what you do?

We travel minimal and light. Two backpacks and a Duffel bag – no check on luggage.

Tortuga Backpacks – They just came out with a backpack specifically for digital nomads but we have the Outbreaker bags both in 35L and 45L. Fits all our stuff great and its carry on size so we never have to check anything on.

Matador Packable Backpacks – It’s a backpack that packs down to the size of an apple and we use it for day to day use and pack it away for our travel days.

MacBook Pro 13″ – nuff’ said

8. Where can people follow your travels?

We are known in the travel world as the Traveloars

https://www.facebook.com/traveloars  – Facebook

https://www.instagram.com/traveloars/ – Instagram

Traveloars.com – Sign up to get notified of our site launch and get a little something’ somethin’ in return!