Why Travel?

It’s been a month since I started talking to people about my plans to travel full time. It’s great to see their excitement and share mine. There’s been a short list of questions that most people have asked. They are usually based on their initial excitement and then shift to some concern. Both are valid. They are likely the same questions that you have:

Why did you decide to travel full time?

I can’t say I’ve always liked to travel. We went on a lot of road trips when I was younger and I know that I enjoyed new places, but I don’t think it was something that I thought was accessible. In 2015 I went on a work trip to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. It was a long trip and the first time I needed a passport. It was also the first time I realized that I could have made the trip alone. After that trip, I started to think of places I wanted to go.

The next year I went to Rome and Paris over the New Year. I packed my backpack and left for 10 days to figure out how much I could see. It was the perfect trip. The next year I went on a solo backpacking trip to Yosemite. The year after that I went to Saint Louis. It was somewhere after that when I found people on YouTube that were traveling full time and making money as they go. Once I realized full time travel was an option, I started to frame what that would like for me. I started thinking about what I needed to do to make it happen and that turned into plans to implement.

Did you win the lottery?

I didn’t. This is as disappointing to me as it is to you. Between saving for over a year and selling my house, I have enough to get started. I’ve also done research on location independent jobs. All of my financial obligations will be focused on travel.

Where do you plan to go?

This questions has a lot of answers. I was planning to go to South East Asia for a while then on to Europe in the summer. Right now, I’m not able to go. I am currently planning to stay put until the concerns with spreading Covid-19 calm down. At that point, I expect to spend some time around the US before heading out on international travel once it is safe.

What do you want to do most?

There are so many things that I want to do. It’s one reason why I decided to travel full time instead of using vacation days. Overall I just want the opportunity to travel at my own pace on one way tickets. I’m excited to see as many places as possible and get off the beaten path. Check out my blog post on the top 10 things I want to do while traveling. Although I expect this list will continue to change.

Let me know what questions you have. I’ll be happy to answer them as we all have a little extra time right now!