I Quit My Job to Travel -- What About Money?

There are a lot of great resources on the web for budgeting the “Overlander” journey (driving the Pan-American Highway), compiled by people who’ve done it.  For a great example, see the www.liferemotely.com blog.  I’ve studied as much as I can and I’ve budgeted my road trip very carefully, and at some point I’ll make my own blog post about my proposed budget for the six-month trip from Seattle to Tierra Del Fuego.

This isn’t that post.  What I want to spotlight here is something different: crossing the psychological line from Earning into Spending.

I have done that wonderful thing: I have “quit my job to travel the world.”  What does that actually feel like?

Well, from the minute that lifelong fantasy became reality, I have been flailing around, as it were, for the umbilical cord of an income.  Like I say, I’ve budgeted this trip and saved for it, and I know I can afford it.  But that’s the rational mind talking.  For someone like me, coming out of variably grey decades working unrelievedly charcoal jobs, the very meaning of my life came to be defined by my income.  Yes, the whole purpose of this trip is to throw over that terrible and life-denying attitude.  But it doesn’t go quietly.

Proposing to spend a lot of money, without money coming in, is hard.  It goes against a very long-standing grain.

And, as if to aggravate the sore point, in these last weeks before departure I’ve had to spend thousands of dollars willy-nilly like there’s no tomorrow.  It’s an irony of budget-conscious road trips that the prep expenses clump all together at the beginning in a horrifying spree.  In recent days alone I’ve spent over $2,500 -- on camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, backpack, etc.), on my Miata (tuneup, new tires, etc.), on electronics (video microphones for my DSLR, a mobile printer, etc.), on readying my apartment for the 6-month rental (agency fees, new sheets, etc.)...

It’s been a crash course in watching my savings dwindle.  And that edifying sight is due to continue, albeit more slowly, but to much more drastic eventual depths.  How will I deal with that?

If you’re like me -- that is to say, not a jet-setter, not someone who can World-Tour themselves seven times on different orbital tangents without denting their pocket change (in Trump’s America such people will be more common) -- then the point to hold onto is Income Reinvention.  It’s not about coming home at the end of six months to resume the same life with less money.  For me it’s about redefining my life in a way that’s closer to my real talents, closer to my real principles, closer to my heart.  (I promise not to overloads this blog with Rush quotes.)

I don’t know what form my new income possibilities will take, but I’ll be looking for them down every mile of the road.  It could be as simple as teaching English in Buenos Aires and exploring the city every day for a year.  It could be that I connect a hook to a lifelong dream and do travel writing.  In any case, I choose to look at the money I’m spending on this trip as an investment.

So one could say that the real purpose of “quitting my job to travel the world” is --- to get a better job.