Should you quit your job to travel?
You might be wondering whether or not you should take the plunge and quit your job to travel. Maybe you weren’t one of the lucky ones who decided to travel straight from school on that all-important Gap Year. There’s a chance you didn’t even know that option was available to you.
Instead you’ve realised a year or two into your grad job that perhaps you’ve missed out on an experience? Or you start to wonder how did I go from student to adult overnight?
Everything’s going too fast and you think your 20s deserve to be your ‘best years’, so why not explore whilst you can?
In the words of Joe Strummer, ‘should I stay or should I go?’
Quit your job to travel : My experience
I decided to leave my teaching job after two years on the Teach First Programme. The workload was tough, days long and I wanted to see what the world had to offer.
Honestly, I felt like a fraud trying to inspire pupils about the world and what’s out there when in reality I had just come back from uni and taught in one of the high schools in my hometown.
Having regretted not going on a year abroad, or on the Erasmus program and after discussing with one of my best uni pals we decided, enough was enough. Let’s see what happens.
1. Money
An advantage of taking a career break is that, unless you’ve worked in London you have likely been able to save some money unlike you would have after leaving school. The more money you have, generally means the longer you can travel.
I saved for my trip by putting an affordable amount of money into a savings account each month as soon as I got paid. Be consistent with this, the extra pounds will go a long way in Asia.
2. Maturity and self-awereness
If you quit your job to travel on a career break, or have left your corporate life, you do have an advantage.
Maybe you’ll be one of the oldest in your hostel room, but suprisingly there are many ‘mature’ travellers. These people should be your friends. Learn from them, network with them. Before you know it, you’ll have contacts all over the world. Perhaps when your travel life over you might want to work in one of the places they’re from? Travel folk are the best, they’ll want to help you, even if you only met them for a short time.
Also if there’s one thing I was glad about was how I had more self-awareness. The amount of late-teens I met on my travels that were crashing their scooters in Thailand, or getting mugged was a little concerning. If you’re a little bit older, I’m not saying you won’t get mugged, (I have) you’re probably more equipped to deal with the problems as opposed to someone who has just left school. Of course I’m generalising here.
3. Quit your job and get a...Working Holiday Visa
Ultimately, it’s up to you, for some people ‘career is their life’ and if you’d get pain from leaving your job then you shouldn’t. Maybe your job will offer you a sabbatical and you can jump at the chance to travel and have security. Some people are lucky, they have a few months free in between contracts, but that’s not the case for everyone.
It’s hard to go from having a steady income and a ‘normal life’ to budgeting on a daily basis. But I can guarantee that from this experience, you will learn not only how to manage your money better, but you’ll begin to realise what’s really important in life.
Experiences always outweigh material possessions in the end.
If you just don’t have the money to travel, but want to explore new places, there’s always the trusty working holiday visas. Some popular ones include Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The Canadian visa is the hardest one to get as you go into a lottery. However, I know several people who have gone and loved it. Each country has different rules for how long you can stay, dependent on your age and what country you are from. So keep that in mind too.
4. Combine Career and Travel
Then there’s the option to combine career and travel. I did do this, as I am a teacher from an English speaking country, so I did have an advantage (generally if you speak English it is easier).
There would also have been opportunities for me to teach in Asia and I should have tried to pursue this. Instead, after a long time of jumping through hoops, Australia accepted my qualifications and I taught in a country school in Queensland. Which was an amazing experience, and it meant I didn’t really need to quit my job to travel at all. I could do both.
Not everyone has the option to do this, and after I was out of the classroom for 2 years, I wasn’t really sure that I could do it either. But the options are out there. Even if it’s not easy to get there.
5. No job security but no regrets
You’ll never have to say ‘what if’. The chance to meet like-minded individuals, see so many different, beautiful parts of the world and learn so much about different cultures.
What do you really want to remember when you’re 70? You should quit your job and travel!
If you’ve made it this far and now you’re wondering who you should travel with click here.
Photo Credit: Averagelives.com and Pexels
