For the last two years, I’ve been a full time traveler. Knowing what I know now, it would have been SO easy to start right after high school! But I didn’t have the funds, the skills, or the confidence to do it… But you can. You so can! Give me five minutes to prove it to you.
The absolute bare minimum
You need the cash to begin. But you’re just a kid, and life is a nightmare, right? Trust me, it’s actually easier than you may think. And to preface this, I’d like to say I’m coming at this with a Canadian perspective, so take that as you will.
There are a few ways to start out your travel, and the starting costs will be respective to each of those ways – obviously – but let’s say you’ll want about $10k in the bank to be safe, no matter how you go about it. This covers flights, visas, and a buffer to stay afloat for the first couple of months. That means the first thing we need to figure out is how to get you that money!
It’s not recommended to work full time in high school, but at the very least you can work a bit during the year and as much as you can during the summer (as much as you can *without sacrificing your summer* that is). Camps are fun, they’re accessible with their bus systems, they’re good on a resume, but they pay minimally. If you keep up your work throughout the rest of the year, this isn’t a bad way to go, but it certainly isn’t your big money maker. Given the horrendous tipping culture that we have, my advice would likely be to get into the food service industry as soon as you’re old enough, take advantage of the evening and weekend hours, and make that tip money. This will take you from $17 minimum wage to potentially $25 or even higher if you work in a restaurant, and if you’re 18 and have your smart serve, it can be even higher. It also builds the resume you need to have a successful work holiday experience, if you go that route, so I very much recommend!
The other thing is holding onto that money. It’s extremely tempting when you get that glorious paycheck to blast through it (I know I did, pretty much on lunch every day because I didn’t want to pack a sandwich). Trust me. Keep a budget of $20 or so a week to play with, and throw the rest into your savings account (hopefully one with even a little bit of interest) and let that caterpillar turn into a butterfly!
And this sort of leads into our next section…
Things You Don’t Know You Need to Know
You don’t want to bring sandwiches for lunch everyday? Well, listen here. That inability to not be frustrated making and bringing food along is going to potentially ruin your travel. If you’re looking for travel longevity, as I do, you need to learn self sufficiency. You need to be able to do the adulting and not lose your mind doing it, and let me tell you, that is a SKILL. Not being bored with chores is a SKILL. Being able to stick to a budget and a food plan of sorts is a SKILL. Keeping your dishes clean and put away at ALL TIMES is… You guessed it… A SKILL. It isn’t enough to be able to plan flights and hostel stays. You need to be able to do the adulting on your own without being burnt out.
Get into a rhythm early. The older you are when you start trying to be organized, the harder it will be to build good habits and break the bad ones. It probably took me two years after moving out of my family home with a dishwasher to stop being completely stressed about sinks full of dishes. And when you travel, you cannot be having dishes out at hostels or share houses or you will be fined or removed. Practice making cheap meals, wash the dishes, and then get them dried and put away. This one routine, if you can master the not-being-bored, will get you so far. It seems small and stupid, but it’s essential.
Another thing is being materialistic. I too had my creature comforts, but extensive travel requires living out of a backpack. A large backpack, mind you, but one that will need to hold EVERYTHING you own. Even long-traveling like me, where I stay for 2-8 months in each place, it’s just not worth having a small board. I learned my lesson early when I had to donate a bunch of things (money wasted, I didn’t need those items), and spend over a hundred dollars to send things home (that I won’t be home to use for years anyway), just to get on a plane. So have what you have right now, but really know what you need.
Which – again – brings us into our next skill!
You NEED to practice not being stressed and anxious if things get intense. You need to know how to breathe through it so you can think your way out of whatever craziness comes up. When I had to spend a lot of extra money to get on a plane (more than what I sent home, because my luggage still ended up being overweight), it was because I’d spent a month in Perth, Australia without finding a job, and was being threatened by my roommate. I needed to leave quickly, and my way out ended up being to fly to a volunteer run farm at the other side of the country. I had originally planned to work for a few months and buy a van to live and travel in, but things don’t go to plan. ALSO, our flights got changed three times because there ended up being a hurricane where we were supposed to be landing, and couldn’t safely fly over, so we spent even more money at hostels while we waited, bank drained, and not gonna lie, pretty freaked out. Had we panicked, we likely would have ended up having to give up and fly home. Adventure over.
So Now What?
Well… You know about the finances, you know about the skills… But what about the actual traveling? Well, hold your horses, we’re getting there!
We have our way to begin, but not our way to be successful. If we want to travel for more than a week, we need to have a plan, and we need to be able to make a lot of plans after that. You need to know how to find your options and pick the right ones.
So what do our starting itineraries look like?
Well, they sort of look like what they look like at home… You make money for the next thing. The difference is, you’re doing it out in the world. Sort of anti-climactic, but stay with me.
You need to keep making money to keep the travels going. Let’s discuss.
You can be an Au Pair. An au pair is a family employed nanny/tutor/child minder/housekeeper that is essentially absorbed into a family for half a year to a year. They show you their culture, teach you their language, feed you, house you, and provide you with a home away from home. These aren’t paid positions, but you can often find families willing to pay for plane tickets, and you should always be placed with families you provide a stipend. This stipend is a bit of cash you can use during your time off to explore with friends, or saved for when you continue your trip. If you’re a nervous person who hasn’t really traveled before or just isn’t ready for a big risky adventure (or if this is just appealing to you, because it’s awesome), this is your go to way to travel.
Another kid centred approach is camp hopping! Essentially, going country to country and working at summer/holiday camps. Same as for au pairs, there are many companies that arrange all of this so that you know where you’re ending up. This is sort of an in between level of stressful, in that you’re a lot more on your own, but surrounded by supportive individuals who are going through the same things you are, and employers who are ready to help you if you’re struggling. With free accommodation and food, your wages go into your next adventure.
Did some one day cruise ship? Cruise ship positions can be hard to land, which is another reason you want to be building that resume in high school. Food and beverage, housekeeping, casino, cleaning, and recreation are all possibilities you can find yourself exploring. The catch is pretty big though. Yes, you do get a whole cruise ship to play on, and yes, you get to travel the world for free. But the hours or grueling and at the end of the day, the pay is nothing special. Some people only save $10k or less in their 6+ month contract, which is great, I know, but not if you don’t like your job and end up exhausted from working long days without a break. I would do it, but I would do it extremely selectively because I get TIRED and CRANKY.
Work holiYAY. This is what I did. Actually, I’m still doing it! A work holiday, or youth mobility scheme, is a temporary immigration agreement between countries that allows for youths to travel and work to fund it. I came to Australia because of the high wages ($30 minimum wage for casual workers, which is almost double the Canadian wage in a world where costs are actually slightly lower), and great travel opportunities. It’s been… Fine. A lot of people really enjoy it, and those people seem to be the ones who have a lot left in savings and can be choosy with what they have to do. For the rest of us, this place can turn into a nightmare if you’re not lucky. For the work holiday option, you need the most in the bank for visa requirements, and you take on the most risk. Like anywhere, it can be really hard to find a job and even somewhere to live while you’re on a restricted work visa. You also can get trapped and desperate if your funds run low. Like me! I would still recommend it though. Depending on your passport, you can travel to partner countries in this visa until you’re 30-35, meaning that for up to 17 years (depending on how old you are when you start) you can live in a new country every year, or even for a few months here and there if you can afford it. Australia, like other countries, also has student visa options for those who can afford it. If you value your education and don’t want to have to give it up for traveling, you can spend a bit more (a lot more, depending), and do college or university abroad. Here, you’re still allowed to work for 25 hours a week, and can come out of it with a qualification you can use globally.
AND SO
There are the basics. They’re not everything, and they’re not set in stone. But the moral of the story is that you can literally just go travel for ages just like you always wished you could do.
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