The adventure of my life is about to begin, in a few days I will take that plane to start my trip with a one-way ticket. This decision has not been taken in vain or in a matter of few days. It is a long planned and studied decision.

In my case it is about traveling, for others it will be taking a break for the family, starting a business or a mix of all. Truth is, that whatever the circumstances, it is not an easy decision.

It is difficult to know what the consequences of your decision will be, what the economic impact will be on your life or how fate is going to deal you the cards in the future. The important thing is to be convinced of your decision.

In my case I am 100% convinced of my decision. Although sometimes nerves can be mistaken with doubts, I think it’s the best decision I’ve made in a long time.

I encourage you to spend 5 minutes reading the reasons that have led me to make this decision and that you should take into account if you are also planning it.

Why I quitted my job to travel full time

Until June 30, 2022, I have been living the life I had designed when I was 18. An ambitious life, at a multinational company, making a career and growing professionally in a company that gave me a good economic livelihood and social status.

I have had the opportunity to live in Barcelona and move to Amsterdam for almost 2 years for work, meeting many colleagues and discovering new places. However, a time came when this was no longer enough.

The days start to get long, the motivation goes away and you stop seeing the purpose in the work you do. Although I was happy with the overall situation, something was missing from the equation.

You start living for the weekend and holidays, when we should be living our life and leisure complemented with work. From my personal point of view, social distancing and working 100% remotely without a hybrid model only accelerated this decision.

When is the right time to make this decision?

It’s never the right time. Be sure of that.

This is the conclusion I have come to after talking to many people. Is it the best time for me? Maybe not…

Leaving aside how much people admire, the courage to make this decision and how happy they are for me. You would be amazed at the number of times I’ve heard that, a strong crisis is coming, why don’t you work hard for a few more years and try to retire earlier, etc…

The majority of affirmations that we would all give ourselves to procrastinate these decisions

But why not take it now? I’m young (or at least I think so 🙃, I’m 32), I don’t have children, I’m single, I don’t have financial obligations of any kind and I feel more eager and energetic than ever; besides, I don’t feel like continuing to do what I do for a long time.

Putting a single condition, you need money to make this decision.

Money, money, money

Almost always these decisions end up being reduced to a single factor, money.

Not working and doing things is not cheap and you are going to need to support yourself in some way during this time that you are without income.

Although do not be scared, whether or not you are an experienced traveler, you should know and keep in mind that traveling to certain destinations is not more expensive than continuing to live your day to day. In fact, with my calculations I am going to spend about 50% less than what I spent doing normal life between Barcelona and Amsterdam.

We have to break the myth that a gap year is expensive.

I don’t come from a rich family that pays me for my whim of wanderlust, I finance it from my savings. However traveling full time requires a different budget and planning than traveling two weeks for pleasure.

You can do it for €25 a day in Asia, by backpacking, using public transport and watching where you eat. It is not a style for everyone, but it is the one that I like, where I meet more like-minded people, as well as discover the local culture first-hand.

Although this will require some financial planning. You should know where you want to travel and how much money you have. You can live for €20 a day in India, but you will hardly go below €70-80 in Australia or Europe.

What am I going to do with my time?

That’s one of the questions I’m getting the most lately.

Honestly, I don’t have an answer to what’s going to happen. What is certain is that I am open to all kinds of possibilities and different variables that come my way.

My initial idea is to travel for pleasure and take a long initial vacation and from there see what comes up.

Maybe the few people who are currently reading these lines of my personal project will be a few more in the future and the blog can be monetized. It may be that I dedicate myself to creating content for Instagram or even Tiktok to generate other channels of traffic and followers.

What I have clear is that everything I am doing I do for myself and because I want to do it. I want to discover countries and places I haven’t been to yet. Meet local people, make new friends that may last a few hours or become friendships for a lifetime. Who knows.

I want to share with everyone my vision of travel and the cultures I discover, and this is the purpose that always drives me to write these lines and post on social networks.

I will grow as an individual

Not everything is leisure.

My intention during these months ahead is to continue growing. Grow as a person. Grow in my knowledge. Learn new skills and focus on what I like to do. I have learned how to design this website from scratch with some help and tutorials. Maybe I study some course and try to expand my current knowledge. I go without any kind of mental barrier.

This also answers the typical corporate question: If you take a sabbatical, it will be very difficult for you to get back into the sector you were in.

Maybe I don’t want to, maybe in twelve months it’s what I’ll want the most, who knows. What I do have clear is that putting myself in my shoes as a possible candidate for a job in the future or as a recruiter in the past. Why wouldn’t I want a person who has managed their economy for 12 months, a person who has done volunteer work, helped NGOs, discovered cultures from different countries, etc…

Sometimes we need to step away from our path for a while to understand what we really want, to know if we should continue on the same or take a new one.

Traveling and seeing the world makes you grow in every way.

If you’ve come this far looking for the push, I hope I’ve shed a little more light on your decision. I’m still at day one and I don’t know what will happen. If you are in the other group, I hope you liked the reading and thank you for taking these few minutes to understand and see my point of view.