What Happened When I Quit My Job To Go Travelling

I had been playing with the idea of quitting my job to travel, for many years. I knew there was so much more I wanted to experience, that I was unable to do with a full time corporate job. The pandemic gave me a renewed perspective about how I wanted to be spending my life and the push I needed to go through with it.

I did not know anyone else who had quit their job to travel, so I scoured the internet for stories and experiences from strangers. I found that for someone of my age and life circumstances, it’s really not common thing to do. There is the odd article here and there of people in their late thirties taking sabbaticals. But I struggled to find anyone in my age bracket who had quit in pursuit of a different way of life.

Despite that lack of insight from other people’s experiences, in May 2022, my wife Lauren, and I quit our jobs and embarked on a six month road trip across Europe. If you’re thinking about making a similar decision big change and wondering what it might be like, here are some of my experiences.

Unpredictable reactions

When I shared the news of my decision to quit my job and travel, there were mixed reactions…

Supportive

There were those who wished they were doing it, or have done it in the past; for them, no explanation was needed. And there were those who didn’t share the aspiration to quit and travel, but were supportive anyway. Most people fell into the latter category. Many of my friends were in a very different space; having families and enjoying career progression but they were still happy for my choice.

Tentative

No financial advisor on the planet would recommend quitting your job to travel, but that wasn’t the point for me. I had made the decision to trade-in my security and replace it with a more adventurous and uncertain lifestyle. I found it best to listen and appreciate the input from the ‘tentative’ people. Their concerns were not personal attacks; they were not right or wrong, they were just coming at it from a very different perspective to my own.

Negative

Some reactions were initially negative. But no one stayed out-right unsupportive for very long. Generally these seemed to be people who struggled with change. But in my experience these people reacted strongly at first then came to be understanding in the end. They just needed to time to come to terms with it.

Passive

Of course, I am lucky to have people who care enough to have a reaction at all. Most people simply did not have a reaction at all when I told them I was quitting my job to travel. They were just busy living their own lives. While monumental to me, my decision has very little impact on most other people. So, if someone responds with a “that’s nice” and then wants to talk about something else, it really is nothing personal.

Money on my mind

Living within my means, while having a decent income meant I have always felt financially secure. Quitting my job to travel changed that. My bank balance was only getting smaller from now on but I was keen to make it last as long as I could. I saw it as a simple equation: money = time and every spending choice became a conscious trade-off.

I had an amazing time travelling for six months with my wife. But when we returned I had no intention of going back to a corporate job. We wanted to pursue a new, more adventurous lifestyle, with variety and flexibility. A lifestyle where we were not tied to one place. The inescapable reality is that a nomadic lifestyle, no matter how frugally lived, still requires money. While I toyed with how to solve this dilemma I became fixated on making my remaining savings last as I long as I could. Depriving myself of socialising with friends and trying not to leave the house for big chunks of time. As a sociable person, this can be quite deflating. Now I try a more balanced approach: frugal but budgeting to still have fun.

Holiday vs travel

Having less money means travelling in a different way to how I would have done in the past. Nice restaurants and fancy hotels were mostly off the menu, replaced by couch-surfing, Workaway, house sitting and bargain rooms. For me, this frugal way of travel enhanced the experience, taking us off the typical tourist trail and onto more unusual experiences.

Lauren and I were both quite happy with this more basic way of seeing the world. It was what we had consciously signed up for. But we did have to make sure we didn’t fall into old habits. When we were working and leading busy lives in the UK, we constantly justified “splashing out”. This could be a take-away, a bottle of wine, a weekend away. And in our old lives, we found ourselves doing this, in some form or other, quite regularly. We knew that our mindsets tended towards rewarding ourselves for anything difficult or unpleasant. This habit of rewarding ourselves had to be kept under control while on the road, for sake of our wallets and our health.

Unexpected change in habits

During the first five weeks of our travelling, I seemed to go from one mild illness to the next. Picking up a new cold right after getting rid of the last one and feeling generally low on energy. I was still having a great time but it was the opposite of how I expected to be feeling having left the stresses of work and everyday life behind me.

In those first few weeks, I lost my taste for alcohol and aside from the occasional beer in the evening, I drank almost nothing. A drastic change from my lifestyle in the UK. At the same time my appetite dwindled and when I was hungry I found myself craving light, healthy, vegetables-centred meals.

Lauren and I got married in the second week of our travels and we had planned for our first few weeks to be celebratory. Our wedding was followed by a week in Berlin where we had planned to enjoy the famous night-life. Visiting clubs that opened on Thursday and closed three days later. But as the evenings came around I found myself depleted and in bed before eleven most nights.

We had certainly not intended to hold back from the things we enjoyed: eating, drinking and staying up late. This was a completely organic and natural change in our habits. It felt as though my body was adjusting and I made sure to listen to it.

Finally getting healthy

When we weren’t on the road, Lauren and I were spending a lot of time outside, walking and exploring in the sunshine. It felt good. Our energy levels were improving and we would finish every day with a satisfying level of exhaustion. I was sleeping well; long and restful nights and waking up naturally, without an alarm.

After the first few weeks of adjustment, I started to feel good. I had lost weight and people back home were commenting positively on photos and videos, saying I looked happier and healthier.

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Quitting my job to travel was definitely the right choice for me. In the six months we travelled I never got tired of the constant moving around and I always found myself energised by arriving in a new destination. I would have happily carried on travelling much longer. As with any major decision in life, there are trade-offs and consequences. Some predictable and some surprising, and I hope this article has given you some insight into both.