How can you afford this nomad life? How do you finance traveling? Where do you get all this money from? Did you rob the bank? Are your parents rich? Have you inherited a large sum?
There is probably no traveler around who at least once hasn’t heard a similar question. We know people are curious, and we know you are curious too. And that’s why today we’re going to satisfy that curiosity. With the help of our fellow traveler friends, who agreed to share, we’ll answer this worrying question. You’ll get a chance to take a look at real-world examples and different points of view on the same topic. Ready? Let’s discover how to make money for traveling and how you can start financing yours soon.
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How do our traveler friends make money for traveling?
Some time ago on Twitter, we asked our fellow travelers about that, and below you’ll find what we got.
Zoe from Together in Switzerland
Together in Switzerland | Instagram | Twitter
Tell us a few words about yourself and how you travel
Together with my boyfriend we are based in Ticino, Switzerland, and both work from home full time. Since we work from our laptops, this allows us to work ultimately from anywhere with a decent internet connection – which has allowed us to spend months in other countries. These countries have all been in the EU, such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, France, Poland, and now Switzerland where we relocated to and now call our official home.
We have been traveling together since our first date, with short weekends away by train or with cheap flight tickets in Europe, to also longer trips away with our car. We love road trips especially, giving us the flexibility to just stop and admire the location without having to rush for the next public transport. We never end up going back to the same place as well, so we are always exploring new locations from city trips to a little cabin in the middle of nowhere.
In general, we like to have trips as a couple, but also combine trips with friends at least twice a year if we can (who also work from home like us from anywhere). This is great for spending time together as well as splitting the overall costs for a location.
How do you make money for traveling?
When it comes to financing our trips, it does help that we have full-time decent jobs that easily allow us to save money. However, we also like to live frugally, always buying the best deals with fruit, veg, and meat at the supermarket. Also, we buy in bulk when something is on offer, to save money overall, such as when our cat’s favorite food is available on sale.
We also very rarely buy new clothes, except for our socks when they have holes in them! If I do need something you will find me searching for a cute bargain at the local charity shop as well.
For living, since we are now based in Switzerland some costs are of course a bit more expensive, such as the mandatory health insurance, which is around 4 times more than what we had to pay in the Netherlands. But we have adjusted with other expenses to manage the same, and actually more savings each month than before.
Lastly, when it comes to exploring new places, certain costs you cannot avoid, like an expensive funicular to the top of a local mountain. When we know these costs will be additional for the day, we combine it with a self-made picnic, free hiking, and enjoy a photography session together to keep costs down.
Cristina from My Little World of Travelling
My Little World of Travelling | Facebook | Instagram
Tell us a few words about yourself and how you travel
I’m Cristina, a Spanish travel blogger that lives between Spain and the UK. I have always been passionate about traveling, but everything changed when I moved abroad. This made me realize how many amazing places I hadn’t visited abroad and in my home country. I used to love the idea of city breaks (and I still go on city breaks), but I fell in love with slow travel a few years ago. I try to go to a destination and stay as long as possible to learn about the place, the people, and the culture. This also helps me save money and work remotely too.
How do you make money for traveling?
There are different things I do to save money for travel. One of them is cutting down the times I go for a hot drink or brunch with friends. It seems like it might not be a lot of money but it does make a difference. The second thing I do is plan my trips a few months in advance. This way I can start slowly saving for my trip, especially if I travel outside Europe since flights tend to be more expensive. Saving little by little is much easier than spending all the money in one go and allows me to be in control of my finances. By doing this, I sometimes can allow to book another flight or go on more day trips on the weekends. Last but not least, I try to explore more places near me rather than flying to many destinations in a short time.
Riana from Teaspoon of Adventure
Teaspoon of Adventure | Pinterest | Twitter
Tell us a few words about yourself and how you travel
My name is Riana and I’m a travel blogger from Vancouver, Canada. I work remotely as a content writer and social media manager, so have the flexibility to go on a few trips a year, taking my work with me. I usually travel with my husband and when we can we like to bring our dog too!
How do you make money for traveling?
I finance my travels through my job as a remote content writer and social media manager. I’m a contractor with a number of long-term clients. I love freelancing because it gives me the flexibility to prioritize travel, set my own hours and rates, and pursue work I’m passionate about. My husband works at a hospital in Vancouver and his income also helps finance our travels.
We’re able to travel as much as we can due to finding great deals and budgeting in other areas of our life. For example, we try to only book flights when a flight deal pops up – I recently booked tickets from North America to Europe for a $165 CAD round trip! We also don’t spend much on clothing, cars, and other luxuries at home in order to save up for our travels.
I do make a small amount of income from my blog, Teaspoon of Adventure, which helps with our travel expenses. Having my travel blog has also allowed me to make connections with other travelers and collaborate with brands resulting in richer travel experiences.
Terry from Strangers in the Living Room
Strangers in the Living Room | Newsletter | Youtube
Tell us a few words about yourself and how you travel
I’m an American journalist who was on TV for 30 years before starting a media training company. I blog about the interesting places where I go to teach journalists and also about my personal travels with family and friends.
How do you make money for traveling?
I plan a few personal days on my business trips to write about a destination. My students sometimes host me on tours of their city. Or they might introduce me to a local attraction or tour operator with a story to tell. I’m literally the stranger in their living room, hence the name of the blog. I’ve been camel-riding on a beach in Pakistan and I’ve had a moose show up outside the room where I was teaching in Alaska.
Media training supports my major expenses like airfare and accommodations. Travel writing opens a lot of doors for free or low-cost experiences in my personal time, including collaborations with national and local tourism agencies. I love it when people sponsor my posts by offering me an experience I can write about while I’m in their town.
I’m a big believer in promoting free travel stuff and volunteer tourism. I recently spent a week in a beautiful Spanish resort in exchange for helping people improve their English. That turned out to be one of my most popular posts. I also get a small income stream from affiliate links. This is generally enough to finance my travel endeavors and maintain the website, but the real reward is knowing that I’ve helped other people plan trips in a more mindful and sustainable way.
Elena, Yuriy, Roman & Andrey from Travel by Example
Travel by Example | Twitter | Facebook
Tell us a few words about yourself and how you travel
We are the family behind the Travel by Example blog: Elena (the main author of the blog), Yuriy (the main planner of our trips and itineraries) and our two boys – Roman and Andrey (who often introduce unexpected changes and corrections to our travel plans, such as visiting ice cream places, car expos and amusement parks instead of planned museums or galleries 🙂 ). We love traveling as a family, visiting new countries and learning about different cultures.
How do you make money for traveling?
Even though we love traveling, we don’t do it full-time. We have moved countries a few times, but we tend to stay in one place for at least a few years. This allows me and Yuriy to have full-time jobs and for our kids to attend school, sport sections and make friends. We usually use every opportunity (school holidays and long weekends) to travel.
Both myself and Yuriy work in IT. That’s not only financing our travels, but we also find it quite easy to get a job in a new country when we move around. And with the recently growing trends of working from home, IT jobs are quite friendly for remote working and freelancing. Which also adds to the freedom of traveling and moving around while working.
Living in New Zealand means every overseas trip is an expensive (especially, for a family of 4) and time-consuming adventure due to the long flight times. To be able to travel and see Europe, we moved to the Netherlands and lived there for 3 years. Traveling within Europe is easy and cheap (at least compared to traveling from New Zealand) and so we used our years in Europe to the fullest, traveling to many European cities and places over school holidays and weekends.
Now that we are back in New Zealand, we mostly travel within the Pacific region (New Zealand, Australis, Pacific Islands, etc.), plan a couple of trips to Asia next year and think about the possibility of moving to Australia to explore this huge and interesting country better 🙂
Priya & Nikhil from Let’s Go Sightseeing
Let’s Go Sightseeing | Instagram | Facebook
Tell us a few words about yourself and how you travel
We call ourselves a full-time couple & a part-time traveling duo. We have built a life where we prefer to spend every spare moment either traveling or planning travel. We travel short-term, largely because one of us is in a demanding corporate job.
So, we do a lot of long weekend trips, a lot of domestic travel in India, a lot of road trips (thanks to our two-year-old puppy).
How do you make money for traveling?
We are not fans of big brands. Compared to our peers, therefore, we end up saving a lot of money by going for mid-segment products & services.
We have adopted a minimalist lifestyle. We consume less. We defer expenditures till absolutely necessary. We reuse & recycle. This saves a fair amount of money.
Even during travels, we usually do not splurge. Given that we will be out sightseeing all day & use the accommodation only for sleeping at night, we book budget/ mid-segment hotels.
How do we make money for traveling?
You’ve already absorbed a lot of information above so we’ll try to keep it short and to the point. Our main source of income comes from providing consulting services for IT companies. A bit of it also comes from our mobile games studio – Crazy Oyster Games. Not that long ago we used to make mobile games for the App Store and Play Store and we also wrote Mobile games marketing for indie developers ebook.
We are also minimalists and we don’t spend money on unnecessary things. We prefer experiences over things. A good meal in a local restaurant? Yes, please! Buying too many clothes, a new car, or some dust catchers as souvenirs? Nah, pass.
How to make money for traveling? – Summary
As you can see there is no one definite answer on how to do it. A lot depends on how you travel, where you travel, what is your lifestyle, financial habits, needs, etc. One thing is for sure – you can travel if you really want. You just need to do the first step!
Wanna share how you do it? Share your story in the comments below.
