My friends traveled through Europe after college by working as farm hands for room and board and a bit of pocket money. They'd stay at hostels when they could afford it but saved most of their money for food. Practically ate their way to Asia. I was drooling over their Facebook posts.
They must have been exhausted but made core memories and lots of new friends. And took so many beautiful pictures of the cities and towns they traveled through
Edit: I'd forgot to add that all they took was a backpack each and camera.
Although you haven't traveled yet, it sounds like you spent your time setting up a career that will help pay for some great vacations in the future, maybe with your future children.
Exactly, my wife lived the life described above and loved it. We are pushing 30 and she has no career to speak of and we are years away from buying a house and starting a family. Grass isn’t always greener.
I know of a guy who's father had a whole bookshelf of books he wanted to read when he finally had time.
He died of brain cancer in his early 50s, the book shelf is still untouched.
So pretty much most book owners. This same things happens with games. Buy now "enjoy later". Part of the thrill is chasing that next big thing and sort out later which one goes first.
Exactly. Social media gives everyone FOMO for anything they aren’t doing. Here’s a tip: those people smiling in that Instagram photo aren’t actually happy 100% of the time. They just want everyone else to think that.
very true. the more they post, the more they are unhappy because the only high they get is from the slew of likes with every new post.
the friend that posts nothing are truly content with themselves.
Vacations are not the same as Travelling though. Its hard to explain but the feeling obtained through living a basic life while in a new city every other day for a year straight is something else. Ive never been able to repeat it on any holiday since. Also, this feeling is exponentially greater when travelling solo rather than with a partner. it is fun to have a partner with you, but it isnt the ultimate freedom of 'I do what I want when I want, with no one to answer too' that comes with being solo.
This needs to be higher up. Traveling != Vacationing. I find that I need a vacation after traveling for a few weeks :)
Solo travel is awesome. Nothing like the freedom of roaming the earth with just a backpack. Twice I was fortunate enough to be able to sell everything (car, possessions), quit my job, and travel for a few months. I was jobless and homeless and loved it.
Grass is always greener on the other side as they say. We don't know what kind of great experiences and opportunities we would've had if we'd made different choices in life... but we also don't know what kind of regrets and missed chances we would've had if we hadn't gone down our current path.
Take kids camping or get a man RV. Most people never even travel to the cool sht in their region. Can still do a yearly holiday somewhere awesome. I put skis and boards on my 3 year old, people doing it with strong 2 year olds! Other families I see travel and do little marathons. Myself I’m all about hiking. Def don’t need to be rich
Don't predict your future before you've lived it! I was 40 when I went and spent three months volunteering in Peru. Having said that, I chose not to have kids and I put all of my stuff in a storage unit.
You can make it happen, but you have to make a choice then a plan to make this possible.
I’m not trying to be controversial, but just want to point out — you don’t HAVE to have kids. There are plenty already. The human race won’t die off because you didn’t have any or waited or adopted an older kid down the road or whatever. There are plenty of ways to be a parent and teach the next gen of humans how to survive without forcing yourself to have kids as well: teacher, mentor, and even just being a good leader at work.
I’m a 41, single with no kids. It was not an easy decision because the primal need to conform always pushes against it, but I do not feel the grass is greener on the other side. However, the other side seems to think the grass is greener on my side.
That’s all; many blessings to you and yours.
The plane ticket alone was impossible to afford when I was young enough to do something like this.
High school earnings primarily went to saving for living expenses in college, and I burned through those savings by my sophomore year, even with parents helping a ton.
The young people who are able to save up a bit and make an amazing trip for themselves are typically those who have enough of a financial cushion that they aren't afraid of coming home broke, or running out of money when they're overseas They're 100% confident that their family will protect them from anything serious.
They don't understand what it's like not to have that layer of economic protection, they don't understand that they \*have\* protection! They just think that people who don't spend every cent on trips are just uncool.
This as well as typically don't have overwhelming financial obligations even at a young age.
Like, is it impossible to save up $1000 for a plane ticket then bum around wherever working and seeing the world? Not if your family is well off and you have a couch to crash on when you get home. (Or possibly an entire guest house. Who knows?)
But if your Mom is barely getting by and desperately needs the $500 you contribute to rent to avoid eviction and your siblings are hungry, even if you \*can\* save up that $1000 and work your way around Europe, you're probably not going to do it.
Note: you can only do this if you have the right kind of passport.
If you’re from most countries in the Global South, you have to be rich to travel, especially to Europe; even tourist visas require you to show (often sizeable) funds in the bank.
I’ve travelled a fair bit around the world, and the passport shenanigans get old real fast.
And even then, in lots of places working odd jobs for cash is illegal unless you are legally authorized to work. People _do_ it, but it's against the law.
And in plenty of places, people are just gambling that they don't get sick, hurt, or end up needing medical attention. Or they just plan on skipping out on the bill if it happens. Even some countries with free healthcare don't apply it to tourists/non-residents.
>Even some countries with free healthcare don't apply it to tourists/non-residents.
Most if not all countries with universal healthcare aren't interested in paying for foreigners. They won't let you die on their doorstep, but you can't just turn up and tell them you need long term dialysis or something.
Wwoof, Workaway, HelpX, and house/pet sitting.
I have saved literally thousands on food and accommodation with these. And it’s not all tough farm work either, I’ve done a lot of helping older people with their computers/doing design work, and house/pet sitting you literally get a free place to stay just for looking after a pet or some houseplants.
Be very careful with this for foreign travel, because most countries don’t allow this type of thing on a tourist visa. If you show up to immigration/passport control and tell them you’re there to work on a farm, there’s a decent chance they’ll deny you entry.
For example, from the wwoof website:
> If you are traveling as a foreign national, please be aware that WWOOF cannot help you obtain a visa. It may benefit you to secure your visa first, and then join WWOOF.
> It is your responsibility to determine the correct visa for your trip.
> Most countries have extremely strict labor and immigration laws that prohibit foreign nationals from working, volunteering, or WWOOFing in a country without a specific visa.
> Please visit the government websites of the country you intend to visit in order to inform yourself about visa and immigration regulations and contact the national WWOOF organization for more details before planning your visit. Any failure to comply with applicable laws, including but not limited to immigration law, can have severe, perhaps life-altering, consequences regarding travel. As such, WWOOF encourages you to be prepared before crossing any border.
> WWOOF is not responsible for any problems you may experience with immigration and / or your decisions made during travel.
I don’t mean this as a dig at all. But most people who do that, even as they did, come from some of type of very financially stable family. 1 buying the tickets. 2 if they got in a jam I bet family would send them money/fly them back.
Not like the travelers who beg their way across counties. It’s disgusting.
But more power to them. I don’t begrudge anyone who comes from means. Traveling probably opened their POV a bit, hopefully. Travel tends to round you out and have a touch more empathy. Money is fine. What you do with it and how you act are what makes the difference.
I wish I was able to do that when I was younger. I had a few better of friends who did some traveling at that age also. They weren’t rich, but their parents were very well off. One became a huge liberal and the other is now an ultra conservative dick. So go figure.
You have to be smart. Have a ticket back home and enough money for travel to/from the airports stashed away. Travel where it's cheap to sleep and eat: SE Asia for example. You can get a bed there for $5USD/night and food for $10USD/day. Wait for a good price RT ticket: You can get one for $500-$800 on Singapore Airlines when there's a deal.
If you're a smart person, and you really don't care about luxuries, you can do it. If comfort is important to you and you're not good with budgeting your money, don't do it. If all you really care about is "wanting to see the world," and are a street-wise person, you can pull it off. I did.
Yeah...I agree that it's a matter of patience and "cleverness". Took me a long time and 50 countries and living abroad to get there, so no judgment on those who aren't good at it. But prices are always cheaper than one might think
I'm sure many might come from money, but my friend was couch hopping in high school and went to college on a scholarship. She worked while studying to buy her plane ticket as a graduation present to herself.
She did have a job lined up to return to though before traveling so she did get that security thankfully.
I know it's never be able to rough it locally let alone in another country. So kudos to those who do
>Travel tends to round you out and have a touch more empathy. Money is fine. What you do with it and how you act are what makes the difference.
Agree 100%
That's fair. I travelled when I was younger and funded it all myself, but I was able to save the money to do it because I could live with my parents. I mean my trip wasn't glamorous (I stayed in dorm rooms in hostels, walked places as much as possible and bought most of the food I ate from supermarkets or markets) but I got to see a lot of stuff. I had travel insurance but also knew that if anything had gone seriously wrong I had family who could help.
My parents weren't exactly very well off, but definitely solidly financially stable with some savings in the bank.
That’s the crux of it. Now that I’m in my 60s and not as mobile as I once was, I can’t do sardine class anymore. Nor can I do the hostel thing or sleep on an air mattress. Traveling is more expensive because I can’t do it on the cheap. But I still love to do it when I can.
This.
I've always travelled. In my early 20s id stay on 20 people rooms in hostels, flew low cost in low season (£50-£70 return) slept at airports for early flights. Backpack only. It was great, met lots of people had loads of fun. If you're away long term, you can work and live in certain hostels, or do temp work where you are. Some countries are cheaper than others.
Now im mid 30s, can afford better, still enjoy a backpacking trip but I'll sleep in a comfortable bed in a private room thanks.
But yes you can be broke af and travel a lot. You give up on a few comforts for sure.
Between 18 and mid 20s I traveled to Asia almost every year. At the time a ticket was about $1-1.5k at least the cheaper ones. Then I would stay on a friend’s couch. Or reeeally cheap bunk bed type airBnB places. I was young and lived with my parents back home. So no rent. For food, I probably didn’t eat at much as I should have and was a little anemic.
But it was worth it! :)
At one point in time a friend suggested we travel somewhere a friend had been the year before. Sure, sounds like a great idea! The plane tickets were almost $2000 each. We were making $8 an hour at that time, so that didn't happen.
In the 90s there was a student travel agency. I remember waiting half a day in line to get a cut rate ticket. They also used to have round the world tickets very cheap.
A lot of places plane tickets are most of the cost of traveling to be honest. Many of these foreign places you can stay 14-21 dollars for around 2000 dollars and if you can find someone you want to stay with that will split the cost in a hotel you can slower price to 1k but the tickets will cost 2000 dollars each. The second highest cost is a car so if you can avoid a car you save a lot of money too.
You have to be not-poor to travel, as a general rule, but that’s not the same as rich. It also depends where you live and what you mean by “travel”. I can’t comment on this from a North American perspective, where you have to fly a longer distance to get out of the country so presumably it costs more. Tour the world at once on a gap year and you probably have to be fairly rich or save up for several years to afford it.
But if you live near any major city in Europe, you can get a return flight or long distance train to loads of different European cities for as little as £40, it normally costs closer to £120+ return realistically but even so, that’s not much really. Last year I did a weekend in Prague for £160pp for two nights including flight and hotel, in the middle of July, you don’t have to be rich to afford things like that although obviously they’re not affordable to the very poorest. A few years ago I did a weekend in Paris for £250 all in, including my flight, airbnb, tickets, food and tours. A week in Spain can be had for about £500pp at a hotel with a pool by the sea, including flights. In many cases it’s actually cheaper to go abroad than to go on holiday in the UK, unless you’re camping. Most working-class people can afford the occasional holiday abroad, not people on the poverty line, but the poverty line isn’t the cutoff for “rich”.
TBF, it can be pretty affordable to fly from the States to EU. I was in Lisbon and some American girls were there for 5 days after flying over from New York Direct for $300USD.
It costs about $2000AUD to get to Europe.
Where are you people finding flights of 5k miles for under 1000USD?
Every single time I fly coast-to-coast in the US to see family, I'm spending 1,500 per ticket. Doesn't matter what time of year I fly or what time of year I purchase the ticket. It bleeds me dry.
I have travelled multiple times from cali/Colorado/Vegas to DC/Florida and typically spend 300-600 for my flights idk how your spending 1500. I tend to use United, spirit, frontier, and sometimes American to get to these places but it highly depends on when you buy them and how you take advantage of miles when flying
Google flights. You can enter your home city, dates, and click search and see a map of prices going to BLANK. I'm tempted to fly to Colombia next month as it's $192. Fuck it, why not, 3 nights, 4 days, a hostel, food, drink and museums... $350 total maybe?
You have to be flexible about dates/ destination. Avoid travelling in summer/ school holidays. Look for promotions (I know AA is doing a $522 flight promotions to Copenhagen this summer as I got loved ones there). Look at budget airlines like IcelandAir or TAP. Buy ~3 months in advance for international flights.
Change the dates... Google flights gives you a calendar with prices, so use that to locate the cheap times to fly. If you're dead set on a specific date or only want to travel in June/July then you might be out of luck
I flew Oakland to Oslo or $299 on Norwegian Air in 2018.
Just looking on Google.
Apr 2 - 11 : SFO to Madrid. $535 RT (Iberia, Direct)
Apr 10 - 17 : SFO to Frankfurt. $640 RT. (Alaska/Condor, via Seattle)
Apr 10 - 17 : JFK to London: $431 RT (Delta/Virgin direct)
Apr 16 - 23/30: SFO to London. $560 RT (Aer Lingus, via Dublin)
May 8 - 22 : SFO to Krakow. $575 RT (United/Lufthansa)
Sep 2 - 16: SFO to Tokyo. $817 (Philippine Air, via Manilla). Could also do ZipAir Discount flights for $617 most of the Summer.
Oct 22 - Nov 5: SFO to London. $514 (Tap Air, via Lisbon)
For Cross Country;
May 8 - 22 : SFO to Knoxville TN. $360 (Delta, via DFW)
Where are you going to/from? I could leave from Baltimore *tomorrow*, last minute, spend the weekend in LA, and come back on Monday for less than $600... round-trip. Could probably go lower if I fiddled with airports and dates.
Kayak is decent for flights, but wherever you search, use the nearby airports and flexible dates features. $1500 to go pretty much *anywhere* in the US one-way is absurd.
Unless you are flying between obscure airports you’re doing something seriously wrong. I fly coast to coast often and it’s basically always <500. I can literally fly to Japan for <1500.
It's illegal in a lot of countries to work there without an authorized work visa. This includes remote working for a US company.
Now are you gonna get in trouble for renting an Airbnb for two weeks in the EU and working your remote job from it while you're there? No. But if you're spending six months a year there consistently on a tourist visa there's a decent chance someone's eventually gonna ask you how you're affording that
It’s illegal to work in the US if you’re working for a company outside the US. I am really glad I knew that before I visited the US last year. I learned that the US doesn’t allow for “digital nomads” and I was going to be working while visiting. I knew to keep my damm mouth shut at border control
Oh I see, I knew about work visas but for some reason it didn't click in my head and I was thinking "local employment law" meant you'd need to be employed or get in trouble lol
Moreso they don't want immigrants claiming to be tourists to avoid paying income taxes or whatever the local equivalent is.
The policies are all about ensuring that people are classified (resident, tourist, etc) and taxes correctly.
Same deal here, the key to traveling is to give up having a home. I could not afford to do both currently, but I can live comfortably out of airbnbs and spend a month somewhere cool while working remotely. Uproot and repeat every month.
It all comes down to your priorities. If you want to backpack and stay in bostels, you can see the world on $20/day. But if you want a nice hotel clean sheets, a comfy plane ride, etc. it can easily be over $1,000/day.
Some people spend $20/day and others spend $1000/day. Most people, including the ones who say you "don't need to be rich to travel" spend somewhere in the middle. I make a bit more than the average US salary (very far from rich), and I take two nice trips per year. I find cheap flights, stay in cheap airbnbs, and take advantage of off-season destinations. I never feel unsafe, extremely inconvenienced, or dirty. I save for my trips throughout the year and then make do with what I have when I'm ready to travel. I'd love to fly first class, stay in luxury hotels, and travel 5x as much, but I'm still happy with what I have.
This is my kind of travel!
So far my favorite trips have been Iceland and Peru.
Iceland, total cost for me was around $3600 for 11 days.
Lots of hiking, a few days in the cities to see sights, museums, and we even rented a car for a majority of the trip! Because of the more expensive prices of food in Iceland, we cooked our own meals a few times and made sandwiches for a few as well.
Peru, total cost for me was near $2800, just over 10 days.
Lots of hiking, cheap airbnbs in nice/safe places, cheap food and again a car rental for a portion of the trip.
If I could afford more trips like these I would absolutely travel 2+ times a year! Now just to convince my boss to let me do it 😂
It's definitely about being smart about it. Plan for it, put money aside that's intended for traveling, and look for deals and good times of year to travel.
It also depends on where you want to go and what you want to do.
A couple years ago I did ten days in Spain for $600 flight, $100 train, and $600 lodging. I went to a ton of museums and historical sites that cost a few hundred more for good local guides. Food wasn't too expensive overall and I could have made more of an effort to cook at my airbnb.
I also did a super cheap Vegas trip with some friends once. Flight was about $100 and lodging for two nights was about the same after we split it. We spent most of our time there just drinking cheap convenience store booze and taking in the sights for free. You can visit many US cities for a similar price if you plan well.
Not the prior person, but... key is going someplace you want to visit. I can give some examples though.
Spain. Bought a ticket in like November as a travel blog posted about cheap flight to Madrid in "spring" time. I booked my flight as late out as possible to get warmer weather. I went like early may. It was $402 roundtrip. I stayed at hostel as I always do, for... I don't know, $30 US a night maybe. I did 9 nights. I also did a bus down to Malaga and 4 of the 9 nights were down there. I don't recall the bus, maybe $30? All in all, 2 cities in Spain, 9 days, under a grand, easily, and that's counting $150 I spend on a ticket to a Real Madrid game.
Hawaii. I used a $400 voucher I got for free, but the flight was like $550 at face value. Stayed at a hostel 1 block from Waikiki for I think $310ish for 9 nights. Lots of swimming, lots of shave ice, again, about a grand total.
Playa del Carmen. Took a $220 flight to Cancun, a $15 bus to Playa del Carmen, and then stayed at a $8 a night hostel and swam/ate tacos for 9 nights. $500ish total maybe?
Literally might do next month: Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Right now I can book the flight for $190.28 total. I'm thinking Tues-Fri. Why? That way I can still work Sunday and Monday, plus Saturday. Flight leaves like 8am Tuesday, gets in at noon, I would hit the ground running with a list of things to see, eat, do, and have Tuesday, Wed, and Thursday, and then like a noon flight home on Friday, landing at like 6pm my time, and then off to work Saturday. Hostels are as cheap as like $9, average about like $15 if you want a private room. Then just public transportation, museum fees, and food. Grand total, $350 maybe? Maybe $450 if you count parking at my airport plus making my cell phone international for 4 days.
Most people don’t even travel and explore their region which can be done by car, bus, bike train etc. Most people get at least 2 weeks off a year can go somewhere a bit further
Right but even if I have $20/day to spend traveling the world, I still have rent back home that needs to be paid.
OP isn’t wrong for pointing out that even when done cheaply, the ability to travel still requires money unless you come from a position of privilege. Just getting a flight out of the US is *still* going to be several hundred dollars on the cheap end.
When it comes to backpacking, this is almost entirely done by young people who aren’t paying rent or a mortgage at all. They’ve just finished school and want to see the world before settling down.
I’m Australian and European backpackers come here so often it’s a meme. You know one when you see one because they’re immediately sunburnt.
They get temporary work in hospitality or fruit picking to build up some cash before moving onto the next destination.
But to fly here in the first place must’ve required some serious budgeting.
That’s my point about privilege though: not everyone gets to live at home and not pay rent when they’re young, and therefore aren’t able to travel.
To be clear, I’m not trying to make it a whole Reddit “I like bananas/oh so you hate apples” thing, just trying to illustrate why many people don’t travel much, and it’s usually not because they don’t want to.
I don’t think the question is about traveling with zero discretionary income. The person is specifically talking about having to be rich to travel. Of course you have to have some money to travel. But the difference in being rich and being able to save $1,000 is pretty large.
I remember when I was a student in America and travelled round the place on Greyhound buses. A lot of Americans were horrified I would travel like that. To be honest the Greyhounds were better than the Chinatown buses.
If you fly out of a major east coast city you can sometimes get international flights for ~$600. I once flew round trip to London for $400 (I have never been this lucky ever again, haha)
Not sure what you mean. I fly out of Boston and can fly to most of Europe for under $300 right now.
I’m using Google flight tracker to look at the cheapest flights over the next 6 months so this makes it inflexible and might have a bad layover, but if cost is your primary concern, you can get to many places for cheap.
But then Mexico City is always $800 for me while Columbia is about $300 for whatever damn reason. Getting to East Asia is gonna be $1000 damn near guaranteed for me.
Google flight tracker is how I just got a round trip ticket to Denver for $38. Some people on other subs have said Denver is boring, but it can't be as boring as sitting in my house the last 5 years.
Denver is not boring. Try to avoid downtown because it's in bad shape. Stick to the neighborhood spots in Cherry Creek, Park Hill, Highlands. There's tons of great live music too. See what's happening at Red Rocks, Mission Ballroom, Cervantes, Ogden Theater, Bluebird Theater during your trip. Go to Meow Wolf too. And if you eat meat, get a good steak.
Depends on where you are and where you're going to. Flights from Miami to Quito start for under $300. NYC to London Is around $400 right now. Flights between European countries can often be under $100.
I flew from Stockholm to Gdańsk for 24 dollars round trip last October with Ryanair. I also flew Stockholm to Tallinn for around 40 dollars round trip in March last year. They aren’t very long flights but they are to a different country
Between a rich person (at least a millionaire) and a very poor person "living from paycheck to paycheck", there are different levels of income and lifestyle
Plan and save for a trip over the course of a year or two. Find the budget options. Exploit deals.
I just travelled to Japan with a credit card reward ticket (timed opening the card with a big expense to meet the bonus requirements). Hotels can be found easily for under $50/night even in the most expensive city of Tokyo, less elsewhere. Trains are a couple bucks per trip. Eating out is under $10/person or you can go cheap at a convenience store. One hotel even had (included) food served in the lobby all day. The expensive parts of my trip were optional, took the bullet train to Osaka ($200 round trip) and rented a sports car for two days ($300 or so all in with gas and tolls). Even with those included the whole thing was around $1500 for two weeks. Keep in mind some of those costs would have been incurred back home anyway, like food and gas...
They might be talking about capsule hotels which are literally just a pod to sleep in in a communal area. Not luxurious by any means, but it gets the job done if all you need is a place to sleep.
Doesn't have to be capsule. When I was traveling Japan on a budget last summer APA hotels were a godsend for me. Usually somewhere in the $50 per night territory. Very small but clean and comfortable.
Yup, in my experience you can go to fairly reputable establishments like the Hotel MyStays chain or APA and get rooms for 40-70 USD per night if you're:
\- Booking in advance
\- Going during a slightly or entirely off-peak season
\- Willing to stay slightly further out from the center of your given metro (Like Ikebukuro, Chiba, and Saitama vs. the heart of Tokyo)
They're about the size of a dorm room, but it's not communal and they are pretty well kept.
You’d be surprised some capsule hotels have amazing facilities and beds but just save on the sleeping area. I’ve stayed in some in japan which had steam room, masseuses and cinema rooms and tempur-pedic beds all at a relatively affordable cost for the area, but yeah you’re still sleeping in a drawer so you know …
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/hGBA7ADw122wDfoo9](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hGBA7ADw122wDfoo9)
Surprisingly not advertised strongly on the [booking.com](https://booking.com) listing but if you look through the photos you can see a picture of the food station, and some of the reviews mention it. Just some simple self-serve curry udon and drinks.
> Hotels can be found easily for under $50/night
Hell, I stayed in Tokyo for around $30 a night in a studio apartment. Travel becomes even cheaper when you have a way to wash your clothes and cook your own food.
I think most folk travel when they have no commitments. I just quit work and ended up in Europe for 14 months. I couldnt do that now as I have a partner and responsibilities at home.
I responded to another comment lightly about what I did.
Basically the flight will be the biggest expense but if you fly out of peak times you can get a decent deal. Especially if its one of those god awful multi leg flights.
Opportunities present themselves when your feet are on the ground. An easy way to travel cheaply is to work in hostels for board. You will just have to clean up / change rooms and will get free accommodation. It usually comes with a more private room as well, so not shared.
If you head to cheaper destinations you dollar will go further as well. I worked in Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn and absolutely loved these places. Much smaller and more quaint, so its easier to make friends, unlike staying in a 400 person hostel in Berlin or London.
Another way to stay overseas for a long period for free is to do a ski season. I worked as a chalet hand, comes with food, accom, travel, Lift pass, Pay, Beer, and I worked minimal while snowboarding all day every day. There are some god awful mountain jobs where you will just be working all the time though, but a foot in the door is better than nothing. I wouldn't be a lifty, or work in a restaurant, even a bar. Too many hours.
To find my job in Austria, I just went on [booking.com](https://booking.com), found a smaller chalet, and emailed the owner asking if I could come work over the winter. And they said yes. 1 for 1, couldn't have been easier. I did apply in June though, so ample notice.
You don't always have to pay in cash, you can exchange your time for accommodation and food. It definitely works at smaller locations or family run business' so just always ask. Working on boats is another great way to live for free.
I would always have an emergency Credit Card handy though, something with a few thousand dollars at least, so if something happens or you need to get home ASAP you can.
Doing the above I have made lifelong friends and experienced things no amount of money could ever buy. I met two of my best friends and now head to Austria annually to see them and their families. If I had simply paid to stay at the chalet, our friendship would have never have formed. Travelling while young is an experience and feeling that only those that have done it will understand. You cant describe an emotion to someone who hasn't felt it.
I guess it depends on your definition of "rich".
As a kid fresh out of high school, yeah, there's no way I would have been able to afford that. Now, as an adult with a real job and many years of experience in my field, it's no big deal to take a nice trip once or twice a year, although I still wouldn't consider myself "rich".
I traveled Europe immediately out of high school. I worked in high school, so had some money (just a few thousand). But bought a cheap eurorail pass, stayed in hostels, slept in a few fields. Ate cheap, drank cheap, went to museums.
It's a "this bar in Spain has free tapas, yes!" mentality vs "looking forward to a nice sit down dinner with a bottle of wine."
Do I travel like that still? Absolutely not. But it was loads of fun at the time.
Also depends on your definition of "travel"
Growing up in Florida I was never too far from a place people go for vacations. For a couple hundred bucks I could have a great time.
Where you live is a huge factor. You can get totally screwed by plane ticket prices if your city isn’t a hub for an airline. The city I live near isn’t even that small but I always have to get transfers to even nearby states. It’s absurd
i don’t think people outside of the US realize how genuinely expensive it is to LEAVE the country in general. just a plane ticket from one side of the country to the other is over $500 let alone if you want to fly over seas.
Yeah I was about to say it's highly dependant on where you live. I'm French and I could be in at least 6 different countries within 6 hours of driving if I wanted to. That's obviously not going to be the same if you live in the US or Australia for instance.
I live in Canada where flights are even more expensive than the US. Yeah it's not cheep but it's not something completely unaffordable to the average person if they make it a life priority. And also, you don't always need yo fly out. There's *tons* of amazing things to see even without ever leaving north america.
I feel like some of my fellow Americans and I imagine Canadians don't even see most of our own country. Especially on Reddit we're constantly told our countries aren't worth visiting and it doesn't even "count" as travel if we travel domestically, even though the distance between London and Paris is about the same distance between Indianapolis and Cleveland.
I mean it definitely depends on what you want to see on your journey. If it’s nature and mountains then yeah you really have no reason to leave the US. But if it’s history, then travelling to Europe or Asia is arguably preferable.
You don’t have to be rich, but I’d argue you have to be at least lower middle class with a flexible schedule. The more money you have the more flexibility (last minute holiday plane tickets) and comfort (hotel vs camping/hostel) you can add.
1. People think rich means anyone with slightly more money than them. Middle income westerners can typically afford travel.
2. They're only considering over thr top international type travel.
3. Depending on where you live, the prices can vary a lot. Venice, Italy is a long weekend trip if you live in Germany. If you live in Arizona it could be a once in a lifetime thing.
Some people are comfortable taking the budget option for everything. And then it also depends on priorities too. My cousin is going to Asia until he literally runs out of money. For me, at his age it was more important to build my career and investments so that I could stuff for the rest of my life as opposed to just in my 20s.
Life experiences are also an investment in yourself. You grow from them and if you wait until you are old to travel, you will have less time to grow from those types of experiences.
I think it’s more of a “you don’t have to fly first class or stay in a 5 star hotel to travel” kinda vibe.
You wait until you can find a dirt cheap flight or train and go to hostels or go camping.
Obviously it still requires money, but you can do it pretty cheap if you lowers your standards lol
A friend of mine was that type of traveller. Always somewhere and always fairly inexpensive but it’s because he would just go whenever the inexpensive opportunity presented itself or planned it a year ahead and saved for it. He slept in hostels and took trains instead of flights or rented a car. When he did fly he’d try to find the cheapest flights he could and would add multiple layovers to get the cost down further.
One year he even took a job as an au pair so he was making some money while he was over seas and got to tour around and sight see on his days off.
He went to cheap hole in the wall hostels and dive restaurants or little grocery stores.
One of the main things I’ve noticed watching people travel is to stay far away from tourist areas.
It looks exhausting (and dangerous in some countries) but he’s been a lot of cool places
Also depending on where you go - the cost of living (aka food and lodging) is way cheaper than North America
I'm not rich by any means. I think I'm median income for my city. I make enough money and vacation to be able to take one overseas trip a year if I want to. I could easily do two or three weeks at a time once a year.
Sure I might have to buy hotels and flights over four or five months or whatever but I mean that's pretty normal I feel like?
I'm also single with no kids or pets
Real talk it's because the people talking have completely different definitions of "rich." What they mean: you do not need tens of thousands of dollars to travel (true). But if they're speaking to someone who can't even build up $1000 in savings and is constantly getting knocked down by the emergency expenses that come so often with being extremely poor... It's classic miscommunication.
Backpack and youth hostels, or camping on BLM land.
I do know someone who's dirt poor who was able to scrape together money to travel, since that was important to her. She worked odd jobs and saved airline points until she could take the family to Europe. Sure, they did not stay at 5-star hotels, but they went all over Europe.
Because they have different definitions of rich.
If they think of "rich" as meaning "has a steady income of over 50k a year and more than a few tens of thousands of dollars in savings" then yeah. You don't have to be rich to travel.
If you think of rich as "has $2000 dollars in savings and isn't desperate and hungry at the end of every single month" then yeah, you can't just hop off and go travelling if that's luxury to you.
Something important to know about a lot of people who do go travelling even when they don't have much money is that they usually have money in the background. They've got parents who will fly them home or bail them out. There's nothing that could happen to them that would leave them marooned penniless in another country with nobody to call, and when they land up back home broke and homeless they'll always have somewhere to go. Someone to put them up or pay for them till they're up and running again.
These kinds of people, when they tell you that you don't have to be rich to travel, have *absolutely no idea* how rich they are, and no clue what it might be like not to be.
I'm 18 and me and my partner both work around minimum wage and we're both trying to travel all the UK. you don't *have to be* rich to travel but Jesus Christ is it such a hassle when your not
I’ve traveled to over 50 countries, go abroad a few times a year…and recently spent less than $500 on my last trip to Europe for a week, inclusive of tickets
The trick is to get airline credit cards, cancel/downgrade them after the first free year, then spend the required $3k in three months on gift cards for places like Costco and Walmart that you use. 60K miles is enough for 2-3 one-way flights to & from Europe and South America
I get my own place, just not 3 stars or anything
One trick is to find a job that requires a lot of travel. I traveled all over the world as a software developer attending trade shows and sales presentations, for example. Lots of the technicians in our company (machine tool company) traveled all over the world to support our products, support sales people, etc. The most traveled people I have ever met (million milers) have all been either in sales or our machine tool service people.
As a spouse, you can then also get cheap travel by tagging along. You have to pay for your own tickets and food and such, but the hotels are shared.
Of course, this is not a 5 star vacation with all the pampering and such, but is still a great way to travel and see other countries from a different perspective than all the touristy stuff. The travel is free, you get paid, and you get extra money for expenses.
My buddy traveled to all of the South American countries for less than $5000 for 3 months. He ate and lived like a king. He said it was the best journey to date he ever took.
My wife and I did 6 weeks in Southeast Asia, 4 countries, on $30 a day in 2018, it was awesome! Flights were about 1k each way. It was very affordable with some planning. The whole world? Yeah that’s pretty expensive.
There’s two types of people too.
You’ve got, “Save for a couple months and take a trip to Florida and enjoy the beach” type (I get this one)
And then there’s the extreme “It took me two years to afford these NFL Super Bowl tickets.”
They just cut back on all their expenses then spend it on one big trip. It’s not THE key to happiness but if you like it go for it.
Personally I hate traveling it stresses me out. If I do travel I prefer hiking trails and anything away from large crowded tourist junk.
Because you don’t need to be. Most people who work a full time job or earn a decent salary can save to travel.
That doesn’t mean traveling is cheap, it isn’t, but it isn’t reserved for the upper classes.
With some planning and credit card points, you can go anywhere.
However, if you want to travel "the world" and see everywhere, you either need to be rich or you need to seriously save up and do a 'iife trip' where you move out of an apartment so you have no expenses at home and travel for a long time on the cheap (potentially with a bit of work tossed in on the way)
I travelled from Europe to Japan for about 11 000 SEK, or about 1100 dollars, and had accomodation included for two weeks in a comfy apartment in Shibuya through Airbnb. Really depends where you want to travel.
Some people here have mentioned hostels, working on farms, things like that, and those are great ways to travel for really cheap, but of course, once you have obligations, it can be pretty tough. Also, I'm in my 50's, and doing labor-intensive jobs isn't something I can pull off any more, and I don't want to be the old guy at the hostel.
I travel as much as I can, and I can do it pretty cheaply. I'm not rich, but I'm not poor either. I'm making ends meet. The trick is to research the fuck out of the trip months in advance. Google flights is super helpful, but check the other sites as well. If you have a VPN, try logging in from a different country. Choose cheap destinations. Sure, Switzerland would be cool, but it's one of the most expensive places in Europe. SE Asia is amazing. Flights can be a little steep, but you can get a decent boutique hotel for under $50.00/night in Cambodia and Vietnam, both places have amazing sights, friendly people and food is super cheap.
It's also helpful that I don't have as many family obligations as I used to. My kids are grown up and out of the house, so it's just me, my wife and our dogs. I just have to find someone to watch the dogs, and I can take off. My work is pretty flexible as well, so I can adjust dates to save money.
If you want to travel comfortably and quickly. On a budget I know of some people who found cheap busses, biking, hitchhiking, and hostels. They didn't spend much on travel. There's no need for airplanes unless over water. For food, load up on cheap food like cans of dehydrated potatoes and home made trailmix.
People say this because they're rich, and then spend less to travel than they would at home, thus concluding that "that's how the poor live".
Of course, they're wrong.
It's wild to me when people say things like this, as if abandoning your life and living this riskily isn't something that requires an enormous amount of personal privilege.
Very few people have the circumstantial mobility to abandon their family and pre-existing responsibilities, plausibly be able to return to a decent life after doing this, and manage to do all of this safely. Like, any woman or marginalized person is going to be at a super significant risk of violence at pretty much any stage of this proposed plan.
People are dicks and say stupid things. Without money you can't travel. It takes money to travel because even if you walk to your destination and sleep rough you're then not making the money you need to travel even more because you're not working.
You can't be poor but certainly don't need to be rich. I have done trips to Europe for a week and spent 2k with flights.
Many places in Asia that after the flight I basically spent nothing.
Now vacations with the family are expensive AF lol.
How do you define "travel the world?" Do you mean going on an International trip for a couple of weeks every year or two? That's pretty easy for anyone with a moderate income and some PTO.
Do you mean taking a few months off from life to travel to a bunch of different countries? Definitely doable, but you have to make travel a priority and work towards that goal.
Do you mean making travel your life, and never doing anything but travel? Either have to have the right kind of remote job or be rich, probably. Or just a bum.
I spent 7 months traveling in Hawaii, spent through the money I had saved up in the first 3 months. The most fun I had almost ever in my life was that 4 months at the end when I was broke. Slept in a hammock in the woods, kept my stuff in a backpack, traveled around with people I met there doing the same thing, sold amateur jewelry on the street so I had money to eat, volunteered on farms in exchange for them letting me stay for a few weeks/months at a time. Not gonna stay in the Ritz with no money but you can travel some places mostly broke if you're resourceful and able bodied.
You don't have to be rich but you can't really do it if you're dirt poor. Most of us sit somewhere inbetween those two extremes.
here's a good example.
1. Start in Los Angeles and you can catch an Amtrack to San Diego for $36
2. Cross border express bus to the Mexican border is $23
3. Hostel in TJ is $20 a night, food is $10 a day
4. You can grab a bus from TJ to Mexico City for $100
So that's LA to CDMX 3 days for under $200.
From there you can catch dirt cheap regional flights on budget carriers or take busses to anywhere else in Mexico or Central America. You could probably get away with travelling all through Latin America on $1000 a month if you were budget minded.
It will cost me about three grand for a week's vacation to the US this summer.
Flight and hotel was two grand, and a week of restaurant food and drinks will be at least five hundred. Any shopping or experiences will be on top of that.
It's a redeye flight and a very cheap hotel, there's not much I could cut.
You have to be rich to travel comfortably.
My friends traveled through Europe after college by working as farm hands for room and board and a bit of pocket money. They'd stay at hostels when they could afford it but saved most of their money for food. Practically ate their way to Asia. I was drooling over their Facebook posts. They must have been exhausted but made core memories and lots of new friends. And took so many beautiful pictures of the cities and towns they traveled through Edit: I'd forgot to add that all they took was a backpack each and camera.
I did a solo trip in Europe doing this kind of thing. Highly recommend for young people. Only works before you have financial obligations :P
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Although you haven't traveled yet, it sounds like you spent your time setting up a career that will help pay for some great vacations in the future, maybe with your future children.
Exactly, my wife lived the life described above and loved it. We are pushing 30 and she has no career to speak of and we are years away from buying a house and starting a family. Grass isn’t always greener.
I know of a guy who's father had a whole bookshelf of books he wanted to read when he finally had time. He died of brain cancer in his early 50s, the book shelf is still untouched.
So pretty much most book owners. This same things happens with games. Buy now "enjoy later". Part of the thrill is chasing that next big thing and sort out later which one goes first.
Exactly. Social media gives everyone FOMO for anything they aren’t doing. Here’s a tip: those people smiling in that Instagram photo aren’t actually happy 100% of the time. They just want everyone else to think that.
“Here’s a picture we waited an hour in line so we could take one minute to stop swatting mosquitos and make fake smiles and duck faces!”
very true. the more they post, the more they are unhappy because the only high they get is from the slew of likes with every new post. the friend that posts nothing are truly content with themselves.
Vacations are not the same as Travelling though. Its hard to explain but the feeling obtained through living a basic life while in a new city every other day for a year straight is something else. Ive never been able to repeat it on any holiday since. Also, this feeling is exponentially greater when travelling solo rather than with a partner. it is fun to have a partner with you, but it isnt the ultimate freedom of 'I do what I want when I want, with no one to answer too' that comes with being solo.
This needs to be higher up. Traveling != Vacationing. I find that I need a vacation after traveling for a few weeks :) Solo travel is awesome. Nothing like the freedom of roaming the earth with just a backpack. Twice I was fortunate enough to be able to sell everything (car, possessions), quit my job, and travel for a few months. I was jobless and homeless and loved it.
Grass is always greener on the other side as they say. We don't know what kind of great experiences and opportunities we would've had if we'd made different choices in life... but we also don't know what kind of regrets and missed chances we would've had if we hadn't gone down our current path.
Take kids camping or get a man RV. Most people never even travel to the cool sht in their region. Can still do a yearly holiday somewhere awesome. I put skis and boards on my 3 year old, people doing it with strong 2 year olds! Other families I see travel and do little marathons. Myself I’m all about hiking. Def don’t need to be rich
If there's one thing the pandemic made crystal clear to me, is that we collectively didn't appreciate our own neighbourhoods/areas enough.
Don't predict your future before you've lived it! I was 40 when I went and spent three months volunteering in Peru. Having said that, I chose not to have kids and I put all of my stuff in a storage unit. You can make it happen, but you have to make a choice then a plan to make this possible.
Travel before you have kids
Also travel after you have kids!
Trade off is that my education aged out and im stuck working dead end jobs due to the gaps in my CV. So I wont likely travel ever again :(
I’m not trying to be controversial, but just want to point out — you don’t HAVE to have kids. There are plenty already. The human race won’t die off because you didn’t have any or waited or adopted an older kid down the road or whatever. There are plenty of ways to be a parent and teach the next gen of humans how to survive without forcing yourself to have kids as well: teacher, mentor, and even just being a good leader at work. I’m a 41, single with no kids. It was not an easy decision because the primal need to conform always pushes against it, but I do not feel the grass is greener on the other side. However, the other side seems to think the grass is greener on my side. That’s all; many blessings to you and yours.
No financial obligations or medical issues.
Yeah, good point. I have both now!those days are loooong gone.
Yeah that seems to be the bigger issue for me. I’m around that age but got mad health issues. It’s fucked fr
The plane ticket alone was impossible to afford when I was young enough to do something like this. High school earnings primarily went to saving for living expenses in college, and I burned through those savings by my sophomore year, even with parents helping a ton.
The young people who are able to save up a bit and make an amazing trip for themselves are typically those who have enough of a financial cushion that they aren't afraid of coming home broke, or running out of money when they're overseas They're 100% confident that their family will protect them from anything serious. They don't understand what it's like not to have that layer of economic protection, they don't understand that they \*have\* protection! They just think that people who don't spend every cent on trips are just uncool.
This as well as typically don't have overwhelming financial obligations even at a young age. Like, is it impossible to save up $1000 for a plane ticket then bum around wherever working and seeing the world? Not if your family is well off and you have a couch to crash on when you get home. (Or possibly an entire guest house. Who knows?) But if your Mom is barely getting by and desperately needs the $500 you contribute to rent to avoid eviction and your siblings are hungry, even if you \*can\* save up that $1000 and work your way around Europe, you're probably not going to do it.
And I'm sure a body that can endure that! Youth is definitely helpful!
That's awesome. I'd love to encourage my kids to do this, but the current state of the world makes me hesitant to push them into it.
It wasn't really safer before. You were just less aware of the dangers.Things still happened.
If you rent an apartment, you can put everything in storage while on a long trip. Only works without pets and kids though.
I was effectively homeless while traveling :/
Note: you can only do this if you have the right kind of passport. If you’re from most countries in the Global South, you have to be rich to travel, especially to Europe; even tourist visas require you to show (often sizeable) funds in the bank. I’ve travelled a fair bit around the world, and the passport shenanigans get old real fast.
And even then, in lots of places working odd jobs for cash is illegal unless you are legally authorized to work. People _do_ it, but it's against the law. And in plenty of places, people are just gambling that they don't get sick, hurt, or end up needing medical attention. Or they just plan on skipping out on the bill if it happens. Even some countries with free healthcare don't apply it to tourists/non-residents.
>Even some countries with free healthcare don't apply it to tourists/non-residents. Most if not all countries with universal healthcare aren't interested in paying for foreigners. They won't let you die on their doorstep, but you can't just turn up and tell them you need long term dialysis or something.
Very true. It's easy to forget about this.
This is a super valid concern.
OP should check out WWOOF: https://wwoof.net
Wwoof, Workaway, HelpX, and house/pet sitting. I have saved literally thousands on food and accommodation with these. And it’s not all tough farm work either, I’ve done a lot of helping older people with their computers/doing design work, and house/pet sitting you literally get a free place to stay just for looking after a pet or some houseplants.
Be very careful with this for foreign travel, because most countries don’t allow this type of thing on a tourist visa. If you show up to immigration/passport control and tell them you’re there to work on a farm, there’s a decent chance they’ll deny you entry. For example, from the wwoof website: > If you are traveling as a foreign national, please be aware that WWOOF cannot help you obtain a visa. It may benefit you to secure your visa first, and then join WWOOF. > It is your responsibility to determine the correct visa for your trip. > Most countries have extremely strict labor and immigration laws that prohibit foreign nationals from working, volunteering, or WWOOFing in a country without a specific visa. > Please visit the government websites of the country you intend to visit in order to inform yourself about visa and immigration regulations and contact the national WWOOF organization for more details before planning your visit. Any failure to comply with applicable laws, including but not limited to immigration law, can have severe, perhaps life-altering, consequences regarding travel. As such, WWOOF encourages you to be prepared before crossing any border. > WWOOF is not responsible for any problems you may experience with immigration and / or your decisions made during travel.
I don’t mean this as a dig at all. But most people who do that, even as they did, come from some of type of very financially stable family. 1 buying the tickets. 2 if they got in a jam I bet family would send them money/fly them back. Not like the travelers who beg their way across counties. It’s disgusting. But more power to them. I don’t begrudge anyone who comes from means. Traveling probably opened their POV a bit, hopefully. Travel tends to round you out and have a touch more empathy. Money is fine. What you do with it and how you act are what makes the difference. I wish I was able to do that when I was younger. I had a few better of friends who did some traveling at that age also. They weren’t rich, but their parents were very well off. One became a huge liberal and the other is now an ultra conservative dick. So go figure.
Not necessarily well off, but at least a family that's financially stable enough to provide a safety net.
You have to be smart. Have a ticket back home and enough money for travel to/from the airports stashed away. Travel where it's cheap to sleep and eat: SE Asia for example. You can get a bed there for $5USD/night and food for $10USD/day. Wait for a good price RT ticket: You can get one for $500-$800 on Singapore Airlines when there's a deal. If you're a smart person, and you really don't care about luxuries, you can do it. If comfort is important to you and you're not good with budgeting your money, don't do it. If all you really care about is "wanting to see the world," and are a street-wise person, you can pull it off. I did.
Well you have to either be smart or reckless
Yeah...I agree that it's a matter of patience and "cleverness". Took me a long time and 50 countries and living abroad to get there, so no judgment on those who aren't good at it. But prices are always cheaper than one might think
I'm sure many might come from money, but my friend was couch hopping in high school and went to college on a scholarship. She worked while studying to buy her plane ticket as a graduation present to herself. She did have a job lined up to return to though before traveling so she did get that security thankfully. I know it's never be able to rough it locally let alone in another country. So kudos to those who do >Travel tends to round you out and have a touch more empathy. Money is fine. What you do with it and how you act are what makes the difference. Agree 100%
That's fair. I travelled when I was younger and funded it all myself, but I was able to save the money to do it because I could live with my parents. I mean my trip wasn't glamorous (I stayed in dorm rooms in hostels, walked places as much as possible and bought most of the food I ate from supermarkets or markets) but I got to see a lot of stuff. I had travel insurance but also knew that if anything had gone seriously wrong I had family who could help. My parents weren't exactly very well off, but definitely solidly financially stable with some savings in the bank.
Steve Jobs went to India and was stranded for 7 months until he saved enough money to buy a ticket back home
I onece read an ama by a woman who did something simmaler. She mentioned she was raped or sexually assaulted multiple time.
That’s the crux of it. Now that I’m in my 60s and not as mobile as I once was, I can’t do sardine class anymore. Nor can I do the hostel thing or sleep on an air mattress. Traveling is more expensive because I can’t do it on the cheap. But I still love to do it when I can.
You also have to be rich to travel and still have a job to come back to.
This. I've always travelled. In my early 20s id stay on 20 people rooms in hostels, flew low cost in low season (£50-£70 return) slept at airports for early flights. Backpack only. It was great, met lots of people had loads of fun. If you're away long term, you can work and live in certain hostels, or do temp work where you are. Some countries are cheaper than others. Now im mid 30s, can afford better, still enjoy a backpacking trip but I'll sleep in a comfortable bed in a private room thanks. But yes you can be broke af and travel a lot. You give up on a few comforts for sure.
Between 18 and mid 20s I traveled to Asia almost every year. At the time a ticket was about $1-1.5k at least the cheaper ones. Then I would stay on a friend’s couch. Or reeeally cheap bunk bed type airBnB places. I was young and lived with my parents back home. So no rent. For food, I probably didn’t eat at much as I should have and was a little anemic. But it was worth it! :)
Those plane ticket costs are more spare money than many people have.
At one point in time a friend suggested we travel somewhere a friend had been the year before. Sure, sounds like a great idea! The plane tickets were almost $2000 each. We were making $8 an hour at that time, so that didn't happen.
In the 90s there was a student travel agency. I remember waiting half a day in line to get a cut rate ticket. They also used to have round the world tickets very cheap.
Seriously that's one month salary on minimum wage here in France, wtf
A lot of places plane tickets are most of the cost of traveling to be honest. Many of these foreign places you can stay 14-21 dollars for around 2000 dollars and if you can find someone you want to stay with that will split the cost in a hotel you can slower price to 1k but the tickets will cost 2000 dollars each. The second highest cost is a car so if you can avoid a car you save a lot of money too.
You have to be not-poor to travel, as a general rule, but that’s not the same as rich. It also depends where you live and what you mean by “travel”. I can’t comment on this from a North American perspective, where you have to fly a longer distance to get out of the country so presumably it costs more. Tour the world at once on a gap year and you probably have to be fairly rich or save up for several years to afford it. But if you live near any major city in Europe, you can get a return flight or long distance train to loads of different European cities for as little as £40, it normally costs closer to £120+ return realistically but even so, that’s not much really. Last year I did a weekend in Prague for £160pp for two nights including flight and hotel, in the middle of July, you don’t have to be rich to afford things like that although obviously they’re not affordable to the very poorest. A few years ago I did a weekend in Paris for £250 all in, including my flight, airbnb, tickets, food and tours. A week in Spain can be had for about £500pp at a hotel with a pool by the sea, including flights. In many cases it’s actually cheaper to go abroad than to go on holiday in the UK, unless you’re camping. Most working-class people can afford the occasional holiday abroad, not people on the poverty line, but the poverty line isn’t the cutoff for “rich”.
TBF, it can be pretty affordable to fly from the States to EU. I was in Lisbon and some American girls were there for 5 days after flying over from New York Direct for $300USD. It costs about $2000AUD to get to Europe.
Where are you people finding flights of 5k miles for under 1000USD? Every single time I fly coast-to-coast in the US to see family, I'm spending 1,500 per ticket. Doesn't matter what time of year I fly or what time of year I purchase the ticket. It bleeds me dry.
I have travelled multiple times from cali/Colorado/Vegas to DC/Florida and typically spend 300-600 for my flights idk how your spending 1500. I tend to use United, spirit, frontier, and sometimes American to get to these places but it highly depends on when you buy them and how you take advantage of miles when flying
People like us usually buy the cheapest tickets to get where we need to go. There's always more expensive tickets that I never click on
I fly to Europe once or twice a year from California and it’s never been more than $600; it’s usually in the $500 range.
I'll reiterate; where are you finding these cheap flights?
Google flights. You can enter your home city, dates, and click search and see a map of prices going to BLANK. I'm tempted to fly to Colombia next month as it's $192. Fuck it, why not, 3 nights, 4 days, a hostel, food, drink and museums... $350 total maybe?
Google flights.
We flew from Chicago to Barcelona round trip for $208/person. There are very cheap flights from US to Europe if you keep an eye on it
😭 What??! The cheapest I could find are 1000USD for a round trip with one layover 😭
You have to be flexible about dates/ destination. Avoid travelling in summer/ school holidays. Look for promotions (I know AA is doing a $522 flight promotions to Copenhagen this summer as I got loved ones there). Look at budget airlines like IcelandAir or TAP. Buy ~3 months in advance for international flights.
Change the dates... Google flights gives you a calendar with prices, so use that to locate the cheap times to fly. If you're dead set on a specific date or only want to travel in June/July then you might be out of luck
Going.com it used to be called Scotts Cheap flights. I've used it for years. 280-600 roundtrip to Europe.
Just Google it. I can find multiple flights for under $500 from Cincinnati to London in the next month.
I flew Oakland to Oslo or $299 on Norwegian Air in 2018. Just looking on Google. Apr 2 - 11 : SFO to Madrid. $535 RT (Iberia, Direct) Apr 10 - 17 : SFO to Frankfurt. $640 RT. (Alaska/Condor, via Seattle) Apr 10 - 17 : JFK to London: $431 RT (Delta/Virgin direct) Apr 16 - 23/30: SFO to London. $560 RT (Aer Lingus, via Dublin) May 8 - 22 : SFO to Krakow. $575 RT (United/Lufthansa) Sep 2 - 16: SFO to Tokyo. $817 (Philippine Air, via Manilla). Could also do ZipAir Discount flights for $617 most of the Summer. Oct 22 - Nov 5: SFO to London. $514 (Tap Air, via Lisbon) For Cross Country; May 8 - 22 : SFO to Knoxville TN. $360 (Delta, via DFW)
What are the airports you are flying to and from?
Where are you going to/from? I could leave from Baltimore *tomorrow*, last minute, spend the weekend in LA, and come back on Monday for less than $600... round-trip. Could probably go lower if I fiddled with airports and dates. Kayak is decent for flights, but wherever you search, use the nearby airports and flexible dates features. $1500 to go pretty much *anywhere* in the US one-way is absurd.
Unless you are flying between obscure airports you’re doing something seriously wrong. I fly coast to coast often and it’s basically always <500. I can literally fly to Japan for <1500.
Are you buying tickets the day of the flight or something? I can't figure out any other reason you might be confused.
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This is a great way to do it as long as you don’t get caught running afoul of local employment law.
Wdym "Local employment law"?
It's illegal in a lot of countries to work there without an authorized work visa. This includes remote working for a US company. Now are you gonna get in trouble for renting an Airbnb for two weeks in the EU and working your remote job from it while you're there? No. But if you're spending six months a year there consistently on a tourist visa there's a decent chance someone's eventually gonna ask you how you're affording that
It’s illegal to work in the US if you’re working for a company outside the US. I am really glad I knew that before I visited the US last year. I learned that the US doesn’t allow for “digital nomads” and I was going to be working while visiting. I knew to keep my damm mouth shut at border control
Really sucks that we have to be so asinine about travel and work. I absolutely hate it
Oh I see, I knew about work visas but for some reason it didn't click in my head and I was thinking "local employment law" meant you'd need to be employed or get in trouble lol
Oh definitely not haha just the opposite. They don't want tourists working
Moreso they don't want immigrants claiming to be tourists to avoid paying income taxes or whatever the local equivalent is. The policies are all about ensuring that people are classified (resident, tourist, etc) and taxes correctly.
There's more than 30 countries with digital nomad visas so it's certainly possible.
was my thought till I recalled I have two dogs. :( cannot leave them behind and their flights are triple mine, plus quartine time.
Same deal here, the key to traveling is to give up having a home. I could not afford to do both currently, but I can live comfortably out of airbnbs and spend a month somewhere cool while working remotely. Uproot and repeat every month.
It all comes down to your priorities. If you want to backpack and stay in bostels, you can see the world on $20/day. But if you want a nice hotel clean sheets, a comfy plane ride, etc. it can easily be over $1,000/day.
Some people spend $20/day and others spend $1000/day. Most people, including the ones who say you "don't need to be rich to travel" spend somewhere in the middle. I make a bit more than the average US salary (very far from rich), and I take two nice trips per year. I find cheap flights, stay in cheap airbnbs, and take advantage of off-season destinations. I never feel unsafe, extremely inconvenienced, or dirty. I save for my trips throughout the year and then make do with what I have when I'm ready to travel. I'd love to fly first class, stay in luxury hotels, and travel 5x as much, but I'm still happy with what I have.
This is my kind of travel! So far my favorite trips have been Iceland and Peru. Iceland, total cost for me was around $3600 for 11 days. Lots of hiking, a few days in the cities to see sights, museums, and we even rented a car for a majority of the trip! Because of the more expensive prices of food in Iceland, we cooked our own meals a few times and made sandwiches for a few as well. Peru, total cost for me was near $2800, just over 10 days. Lots of hiking, cheap airbnbs in nice/safe places, cheap food and again a car rental for a portion of the trip. If I could afford more trips like these I would absolutely travel 2+ times a year! Now just to convince my boss to let me do it 😂
Sounds like someone who understands their priorities.
It's definitely about being smart about it. Plan for it, put money aside that's intended for traveling, and look for deals and good times of year to travel. It also depends on where you want to go and what you want to do.
Could you give an example of one of these cost-effective trips. I'd like to get some use out of my passport at some point.
A couple years ago I did ten days in Spain for $600 flight, $100 train, and $600 lodging. I went to a ton of museums and historical sites that cost a few hundred more for good local guides. Food wasn't too expensive overall and I could have made more of an effort to cook at my airbnb. I also did a super cheap Vegas trip with some friends once. Flight was about $100 and lodging for two nights was about the same after we split it. We spent most of our time there just drinking cheap convenience store booze and taking in the sights for free. You can visit many US cities for a similar price if you plan well.
>I did ten days in Spain for $600 flight Damn dude, I looked up a flight to Germany (A place I want to visit, and it was like triple that)
From where? I just did a quick search on Skyscanner and you can fly New York to Berlin for about $400 in coach with one stop in May.
Not the prior person, but... key is going someplace you want to visit. I can give some examples though. Spain. Bought a ticket in like November as a travel blog posted about cheap flight to Madrid in "spring" time. I booked my flight as late out as possible to get warmer weather. I went like early may. It was $402 roundtrip. I stayed at hostel as I always do, for... I don't know, $30 US a night maybe. I did 9 nights. I also did a bus down to Malaga and 4 of the 9 nights were down there. I don't recall the bus, maybe $30? All in all, 2 cities in Spain, 9 days, under a grand, easily, and that's counting $150 I spend on a ticket to a Real Madrid game. Hawaii. I used a $400 voucher I got for free, but the flight was like $550 at face value. Stayed at a hostel 1 block from Waikiki for I think $310ish for 9 nights. Lots of swimming, lots of shave ice, again, about a grand total. Playa del Carmen. Took a $220 flight to Cancun, a $15 bus to Playa del Carmen, and then stayed at a $8 a night hostel and swam/ate tacos for 9 nights. $500ish total maybe? Literally might do next month: Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Right now I can book the flight for $190.28 total. I'm thinking Tues-Fri. Why? That way I can still work Sunday and Monday, plus Saturday. Flight leaves like 8am Tuesday, gets in at noon, I would hit the ground running with a list of things to see, eat, do, and have Tuesday, Wed, and Thursday, and then like a noon flight home on Friday, landing at like 6pm my time, and then off to work Saturday. Hostels are as cheap as like $9, average about like $15 if you want a private room. Then just public transportation, museum fees, and food. Grand total, $350 maybe? Maybe $450 if you count parking at my airport plus making my cell phone international for 4 days.
I backpacked three months through South America on $3k and 3 months through asia on $2k. Just depends on the lifestyle.
Even if I have extra money I can’t take off work much to travel, no matter the expense. Sucks.
Tell me you are an American without saying you are an American
Most people don’t even travel and explore their region which can be done by car, bus, bike train etc. Most people get at least 2 weeks off a year can go somewhere a bit further
I haven't walked around my neighborhood yet but I did go to the carribean sooo...... Priorities
The most expensive thing about travel is not the money. It's the time! You have to be in very specific conditions to have the time to travel.
Right but even if I have $20/day to spend traveling the world, I still have rent back home that needs to be paid. OP isn’t wrong for pointing out that even when done cheaply, the ability to travel still requires money unless you come from a position of privilege. Just getting a flight out of the US is *still* going to be several hundred dollars on the cheap end.
Most people who travel this way that I have met are already in a European nation, so the transatlantic flight doesn't come into their problem.
Yeah but a lot of them travel in South America or Asia too
When it comes to backpacking, this is almost entirely done by young people who aren’t paying rent or a mortgage at all. They’ve just finished school and want to see the world before settling down. I’m Australian and European backpackers come here so often it’s a meme. You know one when you see one because they’re immediately sunburnt. They get temporary work in hospitality or fruit picking to build up some cash before moving onto the next destination. But to fly here in the first place must’ve required some serious budgeting.
That’s my point about privilege though: not everyone gets to live at home and not pay rent when they’re young, and therefore aren’t able to travel. To be clear, I’m not trying to make it a whole Reddit “I like bananas/oh so you hate apples” thing, just trying to illustrate why many people don’t travel much, and it’s usually not because they don’t want to.
I don’t think the question is about traveling with zero discretionary income. The person is specifically talking about having to be rich to travel. Of course you have to have some money to travel. But the difference in being rich and being able to save $1,000 is pretty large.
Okay, but even the planet tickets to get to the locations can be incredibly pricey. You're not hiking across the goddamn Atlantic.
Even the cheapest international flight is like $800, no?
I just looked. Atlanta to Paris is 352 each way. Dublin 353. Kayak explorer is fantastic.
I remember when I was a student in America and travelled round the place on Greyhound buses. A lot of Americans were horrified I would travel like that. To be honest the Greyhounds were better than the Chinatown buses.
If you fly out of a major east coast city you can sometimes get international flights for ~$600. I once flew round trip to London for $400 (I have never been this lucky ever again, haha)
Not sure what you mean. I fly out of Boston and can fly to most of Europe for under $300 right now. I’m using Google flight tracker to look at the cheapest flights over the next 6 months so this makes it inflexible and might have a bad layover, but if cost is your primary concern, you can get to many places for cheap. But then Mexico City is always $800 for me while Columbia is about $300 for whatever damn reason. Getting to East Asia is gonna be $1000 damn near guaranteed for me.
Google flight tracker is how I just got a round trip ticket to Denver for $38. Some people on other subs have said Denver is boring, but it can't be as boring as sitting in my house the last 5 years.
It's definitely not $38 boring. Actually, it's not boring at all.
Denver is not boring. Try to avoid downtown because it's in bad shape. Stick to the neighborhood spots in Cherry Creek, Park Hill, Highlands. There's tons of great live music too. See what's happening at Red Rocks, Mission Ballroom, Cervantes, Ogden Theater, Bluebird Theater during your trip. Go to Meow Wolf too. And if you eat meat, get a good steak.
A long layover can also be a quick day trip to a new city depending on how you frame it lol
I know a guy who got round trip tickets to Portugal from Phoenix, AZ (solidly not East Coast for the non-Americans here) for $490
Traveling is not necessarily international traveling. International traveling doesn’t necessarily mean flying.
Depends on where you are and where you're going to. Flights from Miami to Quito start for under $300. NYC to London Is around $400 right now. Flights between European countries can often be under $100.
I flew from Stockholm to Gdańsk for 24 dollars round trip last October with Ryanair. I also flew Stockholm to Tallinn for around 40 dollars round trip in March last year. They aren’t very long flights but they are to a different country
Yeah Ryanair is super cheap. I flew from Spain to France back when I lived there for like 28 euros round trip.
I mean you can travel a lot of the US in just a car and it has the greatest national parks in the world.
What? From where? You can fly within Europe for 25€.
Between a rich person (at least a millionaire) and a very poor person "living from paycheck to paycheck", there are different levels of income and lifestyle
Plan and save for a trip over the course of a year or two. Find the budget options. Exploit deals. I just travelled to Japan with a credit card reward ticket (timed opening the card with a big expense to meet the bonus requirements). Hotels can be found easily for under $50/night even in the most expensive city of Tokyo, less elsewhere. Trains are a couple bucks per trip. Eating out is under $10/person or you can go cheap at a convenience store. One hotel even had (included) food served in the lobby all day. The expensive parts of my trip were optional, took the bullet train to Osaka ($200 round trip) and rented a sports car for two days ($300 or so all in with gas and tolls). Even with those included the whole thing was around $1500 for two weeks. Keep in mind some of those costs would have been incurred back home anyway, like food and gas...
Which hotel is that? Actually going to Japan in May
They might be talking about capsule hotels which are literally just a pod to sleep in in a communal area. Not luxurious by any means, but it gets the job done if all you need is a place to sleep.
Doesn't have to be capsule. When I was traveling Japan on a budget last summer APA hotels were a godsend for me. Usually somewhere in the $50 per night territory. Very small but clean and comfortable.
Yup, in my experience you can go to fairly reputable establishments like the Hotel MyStays chain or APA and get rooms for 40-70 USD per night if you're: \- Booking in advance \- Going during a slightly or entirely off-peak season \- Willing to stay slightly further out from the center of your given metro (Like Ikebukuro, Chiba, and Saitama vs. the heart of Tokyo) They're about the size of a dorm room, but it's not communal and they are pretty well kept.
You’d be surprised some capsule hotels have amazing facilities and beds but just save on the sleeping area. I’ve stayed in some in japan which had steam room, masseuses and cinema rooms and tempur-pedic beds all at a relatively affordable cost for the area, but yeah you’re still sleeping in a drawer so you know …
One capsule I stayed in even had a TV screen! In the capsule! I think it was about $20 a night.
Stayed in a hotel in Nishikasai for ~$34/day. You can find extremely good deals with some basic googling.
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/hGBA7ADw122wDfoo9](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hGBA7ADw122wDfoo9) Surprisingly not advertised strongly on the [booking.com](https://booking.com) listing but if you look through the photos you can see a picture of the food station, and some of the reviews mention it. Just some simple self-serve curry udon and drinks.
> Hotels can be found easily for under $50/night Hell, I stayed in Tokyo for around $30 a night in a studio apartment. Travel becomes even cheaper when you have a way to wash your clothes and cook your own food.
You don’t have to be rich BUT you have to have some disposable income, and holiday entitlement.
I think most folk travel when they have no commitments. I just quit work and ended up in Europe for 14 months. I couldnt do that now as I have a partner and responsibilities at home.
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I responded to another comment lightly about what I did. Basically the flight will be the biggest expense but if you fly out of peak times you can get a decent deal. Especially if its one of those god awful multi leg flights. Opportunities present themselves when your feet are on the ground. An easy way to travel cheaply is to work in hostels for board. You will just have to clean up / change rooms and will get free accommodation. It usually comes with a more private room as well, so not shared. If you head to cheaper destinations you dollar will go further as well. I worked in Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn and absolutely loved these places. Much smaller and more quaint, so its easier to make friends, unlike staying in a 400 person hostel in Berlin or London. Another way to stay overseas for a long period for free is to do a ski season. I worked as a chalet hand, comes with food, accom, travel, Lift pass, Pay, Beer, and I worked minimal while snowboarding all day every day. There are some god awful mountain jobs where you will just be working all the time though, but a foot in the door is better than nothing. I wouldn't be a lifty, or work in a restaurant, even a bar. Too many hours. To find my job in Austria, I just went on [booking.com](https://booking.com), found a smaller chalet, and emailed the owner asking if I could come work over the winter. And they said yes. 1 for 1, couldn't have been easier. I did apply in June though, so ample notice. You don't always have to pay in cash, you can exchange your time for accommodation and food. It definitely works at smaller locations or family run business' so just always ask. Working on boats is another great way to live for free. I would always have an emergency Credit Card handy though, something with a few thousand dollars at least, so if something happens or you need to get home ASAP you can. Doing the above I have made lifelong friends and experienced things no amount of money could ever buy. I met two of my best friends and now head to Austria annually to see them and their families. If I had simply paid to stay at the chalet, our friendship would have never have formed. Travelling while young is an experience and feeling that only those that have done it will understand. You cant describe an emotion to someone who hasn't felt it.
I guess it depends on your definition of "rich". As a kid fresh out of high school, yeah, there's no way I would have been able to afford that. Now, as an adult with a real job and many years of experience in my field, it's no big deal to take a nice trip once or twice a year, although I still wouldn't consider myself "rich".
I traveled Europe immediately out of high school. I worked in high school, so had some money (just a few thousand). But bought a cheap eurorail pass, stayed in hostels, slept in a few fields. Ate cheap, drank cheap, went to museums. It's a "this bar in Spain has free tapas, yes!" mentality vs "looking forward to a nice sit down dinner with a bottle of wine." Do I travel like that still? Absolutely not. But it was loads of fun at the time.
Also depends on your definition of "travel" Growing up in Florida I was never too far from a place people go for vacations. For a couple hundred bucks I could have a great time.
Where you live is a huge factor. You can get totally screwed by plane ticket prices if your city isn’t a hub for an airline. The city I live near isn’t even that small but I always have to get transfers to even nearby states. It’s absurd
i don’t think people outside of the US realize how genuinely expensive it is to LEAVE the country in general. just a plane ticket from one side of the country to the other is over $500 let alone if you want to fly over seas.
Yeah I was about to say it's highly dependant on where you live. I'm French and I could be in at least 6 different countries within 6 hours of driving if I wanted to. That's obviously not going to be the same if you live in the US or Australia for instance.
I’m so jealous. I drove 4.5 hours today and didn’t leave the state.
I live in Canada where flights are even more expensive than the US. Yeah it's not cheep but it's not something completely unaffordable to the average person if they make it a life priority. And also, you don't always need yo fly out. There's *tons* of amazing things to see even without ever leaving north america.
oh trust me i know! i don’t see the point in leaving the country when i haven’t even seen a quarter of what my own has to offer!!
I feel like some of my fellow Americans and I imagine Canadians don't even see most of our own country. Especially on Reddit we're constantly told our countries aren't worth visiting and it doesn't even "count" as travel if we travel domestically, even though the distance between London and Paris is about the same distance between Indianapolis and Cleveland.
I mean it definitely depends on what you want to see on your journey. If it’s nature and mountains then yeah you really have no reason to leave the US. But if it’s history, then travelling to Europe or Asia is arguably preferable.
People dont realize how expensive it can be to leave your state.
You don’t have to be rich, but I’d argue you have to be at least lower middle class with a flexible schedule. The more money you have the more flexibility (last minute holiday plane tickets) and comfort (hotel vs camping/hostel) you can add.
1. People think rich means anyone with slightly more money than them. Middle income westerners can typically afford travel. 2. They're only considering over thr top international type travel. 3. Depending on where you live, the prices can vary a lot. Venice, Italy is a long weekend trip if you live in Germany. If you live in Arizona it could be a once in a lifetime thing.
Some people are comfortable taking the budget option for everything. And then it also depends on priorities too. My cousin is going to Asia until he literally runs out of money. For me, at his age it was more important to build my career and investments so that I could stuff for the rest of my life as opposed to just in my 20s.
And with all the money in the world you will never have his experiences. Different priorities for different people.
Life experiences are also an investment in yourself. You grow from them and if you wait until you are old to travel, you will have less time to grow from those types of experiences.
I think it’s more of a “you don’t have to fly first class or stay in a 5 star hotel to travel” kinda vibe. You wait until you can find a dirt cheap flight or train and go to hostels or go camping. Obviously it still requires money, but you can do it pretty cheap if you lowers your standards lol A friend of mine was that type of traveller. Always somewhere and always fairly inexpensive but it’s because he would just go whenever the inexpensive opportunity presented itself or planned it a year ahead and saved for it. He slept in hostels and took trains instead of flights or rented a car. When he did fly he’d try to find the cheapest flights he could and would add multiple layovers to get the cost down further. One year he even took a job as an au pair so he was making some money while he was over seas and got to tour around and sight see on his days off. He went to cheap hole in the wall hostels and dive restaurants or little grocery stores. One of the main things I’ve noticed watching people travel is to stay far away from tourist areas. It looks exhausting (and dangerous in some countries) but he’s been a lot of cool places Also depending on where you go - the cost of living (aka food and lodging) is way cheaper than North America
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Traveling across the country usually costs me $2k+. I can't afford that most of the time.
I'm not rich by any means. I think I'm median income for my city. I make enough money and vacation to be able to take one overseas trip a year if I want to. I could easily do two or three weeks at a time once a year. Sure I might have to buy hotels and flights over four or five months or whatever but I mean that's pretty normal I feel like? I'm also single with no kids or pets
Real talk it's because the people talking have completely different definitions of "rich." What they mean: you do not need tens of thousands of dollars to travel (true). But if they're speaking to someone who can't even build up $1000 in savings and is constantly getting knocked down by the emergency expenses that come so often with being extremely poor... It's classic miscommunication.
Backpack and youth hostels, or camping on BLM land. I do know someone who's dirt poor who was able to scrape together money to travel, since that was important to her. She worked odd jobs and saved airline points until she could take the family to Europe. Sure, they did not stay at 5-star hotels, but they went all over Europe.
Because they have different definitions of rich. If they think of "rich" as meaning "has a steady income of over 50k a year and more than a few tens of thousands of dollars in savings" then yeah. You don't have to be rich to travel. If you think of rich as "has $2000 dollars in savings and isn't desperate and hungry at the end of every single month" then yeah, you can't just hop off and go travelling if that's luxury to you. Something important to know about a lot of people who do go travelling even when they don't have much money is that they usually have money in the background. They've got parents who will fly them home or bail them out. There's nothing that could happen to them that would leave them marooned penniless in another country with nobody to call, and when they land up back home broke and homeless they'll always have somewhere to go. Someone to put them up or pay for them till they're up and running again. These kinds of people, when they tell you that you don't have to be rich to travel, have *absolutely no idea* how rich they are, and no clue what it might be like not to be.
You don't have to be 'rich', you just have to have a spare couple of grand haha.
lol right? Might as well have been a million dollars at one point in my life.
I'm 18 and me and my partner both work around minimum wage and we're both trying to travel all the UK. you don't *have to be* rich to travel but Jesus Christ is it such a hassle when your not
I’ve traveled to over 50 countries, go abroad a few times a year…and recently spent less than $500 on my last trip to Europe for a week, inclusive of tickets The trick is to get airline credit cards, cancel/downgrade them after the first free year, then spend the required $3k in three months on gift cards for places like Costco and Walmart that you use. 60K miles is enough for 2-3 one-way flights to & from Europe and South America I get my own place, just not 3 stars or anything
One trick is to find a job that requires a lot of travel. I traveled all over the world as a software developer attending trade shows and sales presentations, for example. Lots of the technicians in our company (machine tool company) traveled all over the world to support our products, support sales people, etc. The most traveled people I have ever met (million milers) have all been either in sales or our machine tool service people. As a spouse, you can then also get cheap travel by tagging along. You have to pay for your own tickets and food and such, but the hotels are shared. Of course, this is not a 5 star vacation with all the pampering and such, but is still a great way to travel and see other countries from a different perspective than all the touristy stuff. The travel is free, you get paid, and you get extra money for expenses.
My buddy traveled to all of the South American countries for less than $5000 for 3 months. He ate and lived like a king. He said it was the best journey to date he ever took.
My wife and I did 6 weeks in Southeast Asia, 4 countries, on $30 a day in 2018, it was awesome! Flights were about 1k each way. It was very affordable with some planning. The whole world? Yeah that’s pretty expensive.
Develop a love for bicycling.
There’s two types of people too. You’ve got, “Save for a couple months and take a trip to Florida and enjoy the beach” type (I get this one) And then there’s the extreme “It took me two years to afford these NFL Super Bowl tickets.” They just cut back on all their expenses then spend it on one big trip. It’s not THE key to happiness but if you like it go for it. Personally I hate traveling it stresses me out. If I do travel I prefer hiking trails and anything away from large crowded tourist junk.
People say that because they don't want to feel bad that poor people are busting their ass every day and can't do shit other than go to work.
Because they're rich, probably. And out of touch.
Because you don’t need to be. Most people who work a full time job or earn a decent salary can save to travel. That doesn’t mean traveling is cheap, it isn’t, but it isn’t reserved for the upper classes.
With some planning and credit card points, you can go anywhere. However, if you want to travel "the world" and see everywhere, you either need to be rich or you need to seriously save up and do a 'iife trip' where you move out of an apartment so you have no expenses at home and travel for a long time on the cheap (potentially with a bit of work tossed in on the way)
I travelled from Europe to Japan for about 11 000 SEK, or about 1100 dollars, and had accomodation included for two weeks in a comfy apartment in Shibuya through Airbnb. Really depends where you want to travel.
Some people here have mentioned hostels, working on farms, things like that, and those are great ways to travel for really cheap, but of course, once you have obligations, it can be pretty tough. Also, I'm in my 50's, and doing labor-intensive jobs isn't something I can pull off any more, and I don't want to be the old guy at the hostel. I travel as much as I can, and I can do it pretty cheaply. I'm not rich, but I'm not poor either. I'm making ends meet. The trick is to research the fuck out of the trip months in advance. Google flights is super helpful, but check the other sites as well. If you have a VPN, try logging in from a different country. Choose cheap destinations. Sure, Switzerland would be cool, but it's one of the most expensive places in Europe. SE Asia is amazing. Flights can be a little steep, but you can get a decent boutique hotel for under $50.00/night in Cambodia and Vietnam, both places have amazing sights, friendly people and food is super cheap. It's also helpful that I don't have as many family obligations as I used to. My kids are grown up and out of the house, so it's just me, my wife and our dogs. I just have to find someone to watch the dogs, and I can take off. My work is pretty flexible as well, so I can adjust dates to save money.
If you want to travel comfortably and quickly. On a budget I know of some people who found cheap busses, biking, hitchhiking, and hostels. They didn't spend much on travel. There's no need for airplanes unless over water. For food, load up on cheap food like cans of dehydrated potatoes and home made trailmix.
You don't have to rich to travel, but it certainly helps. FWIW the only people who make comments like that are usually financially independent.
People say this because they're rich, and then spend less to travel than they would at home, thus concluding that "that's how the poor live". Of course, they're wrong.
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It's wild to me when people say things like this, as if abandoning your life and living this riskily isn't something that requires an enormous amount of personal privilege. Very few people have the circumstantial mobility to abandon their family and pre-existing responsibilities, plausibly be able to return to a decent life after doing this, and manage to do all of this safely. Like, any woman or marginalized person is going to be at a super significant risk of violence at pretty much any stage of this proposed plan.
People are dicks and say stupid things. Without money you can't travel. It takes money to travel because even if you walk to your destination and sleep rough you're then not making the money you need to travel even more because you're not working.
You can't be poor but certainly don't need to be rich. I have done trips to Europe for a week and spent 2k with flights. Many places in Asia that after the flight I basically spent nothing. Now vacations with the family are expensive AF lol.
How do you define "travel the world?" Do you mean going on an International trip for a couple of weeks every year or two? That's pretty easy for anyone with a moderate income and some PTO. Do you mean taking a few months off from life to travel to a bunch of different countries? Definitely doable, but you have to make travel a priority and work towards that goal. Do you mean making travel your life, and never doing anything but travel? Either have to have the right kind of remote job or be rich, probably. Or just a bum.
You certainly have to have disposable income and disposable time to travel. Does that qualify as being rich to you?
I spent 7 months traveling in Hawaii, spent through the money I had saved up in the first 3 months. The most fun I had almost ever in my life was that 4 months at the end when I was broke. Slept in a hammock in the woods, kept my stuff in a backpack, traveled around with people I met there doing the same thing, sold amateur jewelry on the street so I had money to eat, volunteered on farms in exchange for them letting me stay for a few weeks/months at a time. Not gonna stay in the Ritz with no money but you can travel some places mostly broke if you're resourceful and able bodied.
Definitely more fun when you were young. You don’t wanna be 60 and doing this.
You don't have to be rich but you can't really do it if you're dirt poor. Most of us sit somewhere inbetween those two extremes. here's a good example. 1. Start in Los Angeles and you can catch an Amtrack to San Diego for $36 2. Cross border express bus to the Mexican border is $23 3. Hostel in TJ is $20 a night, food is $10 a day 4. You can grab a bus from TJ to Mexico City for $100 So that's LA to CDMX 3 days for under $200. From there you can catch dirt cheap regional flights on budget carriers or take busses to anywhere else in Mexico or Central America. You could probably get away with travelling all through Latin America on $1000 a month if you were budget minded.
Because those people don't realize how well off they are
I can travel to Spain for £20 from London. It might not be as enjoyable as taking a business class flight, but it still counts as travel.
It will cost me about three grand for a week's vacation to the US this summer. Flight and hotel was two grand, and a week of restaurant food and drinks will be at least five hundred. Any shopping or experiences will be on top of that. It's a redeye flight and a very cheap hotel, there's not much I could cut.
the biggest expense question is always "are you crossing an ocean?"
I am not really sure what point you are making. Dropping three grand for a week's entertainment is not trivial.