Considering quitting your job to travel is not really something many people will seriously be thinking about in 2020. However, it is a good point in time to reflect on this, because everyone who actually thinks about doing it will always ask; what’s the worst that can happen?
Having pretty much experienced this scenario in 2020, I can confidently answer this question. In January 2020 both my partner and I quit our very respectable, well-paid jobs (with good benefits) at companies we liked.
We’d also given up our perfectly located, wonderfully decorated apartment and pretty much sold everything we owned. 3 months later we got stranded in Australia, during one of the strict and longest lockdowns in the world.
With all of this in mind, would I do it all again? More importantly, if you are reading this in the future you might be wondering if you should do it.
What’s The Worst That Can Happen?
Making the decision to go travelling, was a tough decision and one we deliberated over a good couple of months. We were torn between buying a house or leaving the UK for 1 to 2 years to travel south-east Asia and live in Australia and New Zealand.
As part of this decision making, I asked myself, what I could do to prevent, mitigate or repair disaster. However, after 3 months of travelling and 1 week in Australia, I never expected a stage 4 lockdown, a recession and the closing of borders globally.
I always thought if the worst came to worst in Australia I could always leave and continue to travel, through Japan, South Korea, the Philippines etc. With many people desperate to get home, flights were expensive with people spending thousands of pounds or dollars on cancelled flights. At this stage I wasn’t sure we would even be able to make it back to the UK.
The casual job market dried up overnight and finding work was especially difficult as we had a 6 month (max) working restriction on our visas. We were faced with the prospect of having no stable or affordable place to endure lockdown in.
Being locked down in an expensive country with limited working rights, no stable accommodation or the option to travel within or outside of that country is a stressful situation to be in.
Enduring Through The Crisis
We made the best of the economic downturn by finding some very affordable rent at just $300 a week in South Yarra, Melbourne. One of the nicest but usually one of the most expensive suburbs in Melbourne. Being located just off Toorak Road and nearby to the Botanic Gardens and Riverside, was really a saving grace during the lockdown.
Miss MSU got some regular $45 hours. At one point I thought I offered a 2-year sponsorship to live and work in Australia. Which would have required a financial commitment on my part also. I left after just 5 weeks due to the fact I did not react well to the cut-throat consultancy culture that I had joined.
The reason it didn’t work out was that I refused to back down on my principles, respect for other people’s ways of working and beliefs about work-life balance. My line-manager was a micromanaging psychopath and was too busy bending over backwards for the client to have any respect for other people. It was quite clear that the stress of the role became more than it was worth.
Deciding To Move Back To The UK
With everything going on in the world, my heart was never in staying in Australia for 2 years, away from family, so this worked out for the best in the end. The silver lining was that in 5 weeks I earned around $10,000 AUD. Which is three times as much as I would have done in the UK.
Although this got us through the most stressful or turbulent months of Covid-19 we came to realise that we definitely were not having fun in Australia (the whole point of going). We felt very isolated and couldn’t even travel as the border between Victoria and the rest of Australia was closed. The border is expected to be closed until 2021.
However, I feel glad that we decided to stay until this point because it felt like we were making a choice on our terms rather than fleeing back to the UK in a state of panic.
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1. Most Things Are Survival, Even The Worst-Case Scenario
Those first few months in Melbourne were some of the most stressful I’ve had, as some pretty essential psychological needs were stripped away (e.g. a sense of security and belonging). However, even whilst all of this was happening it was important to practice and maintain consistent behaviours and thoughts of optimism; remembering that this would not last forever.
There would always be more good times ahead and more opportunities. In tough circumstances outside of your control, you have to focus on what is in your sphere of control and maintain your wellbeing where possible.
This is necessary in order to make effective decisions and take advantage of opportunities when they arise. Succumbing to stress and fear will only diminish you.
Mitigating The Damage
Despite actually coming back with more money than we left with, it was difficult not to be left feeling we had given a lot up for little gain.
Returning to our home country in a deep economic crisis did little to help our expectations around getting jobs, especially ones as good as we left.
However, at least back in the UK, we could live with family until we got jobs. This put an end to our concern that we would be stuck in Melbourne burning through our hard-earned savings for no gain, as the job market continued to dry up.
Repairing The Damage
After just 2 weeks back in the UK and 4 job interviews between us, we both landed jobs. I used my simple but effective approach to job hunting which had also succeeded in Australia.
The job offer I received was actually £4,000 more than I earned back in December 2019 and surprisingly my new company offered more than the role was even advertised at. It’s interesting that the negotiating of this salary was about 95% easier than with the company I worked for in Australia. This required some more intelligent negotiating tactics.
At the time of writing this article, I had just moved into a new apartment. One that is even better than the one I gave up back in December 2019, as it overlooks a park.
2. Everything Apart From People Is Replaceable.
After finding not one but two jobs since the start of Covid-19, it is clear that even in the worst of circumstances there are jobs out there. Even if it takes time a job is always replaceable.
Therefore should you be weighing up quitting your job to travel it’s worth remembering that it’s not like you’ll never work again. There are probably plenty more years in your life for that and you will always earn more money.
It’s more common for someone in their early 20s to go travelling and strange as it may seem for us to have quit our jobs in our late 20s, it did mean that we had an advantage in the job market on returning.
At the end of the day when making these types of lifestyle choices it’s important to remember that, everything is repairable and everything material is replaceable. What is not replaceable are your friends and family and that is one of the main reasons we decided not to try and wait out the storm in Australia.
3. You Can’t Prepare For The Unexpected But It Can Help
No amount of fear setting (a practice I discovered from Tim Ferriss) or accounting for risk can prepare you for the unexpected. However, in some ways, we did have a good 5 or 6 years of unknowingly preparing for our trip in 2020 in financial terms.
There were many people in Australia in a similar situation to us, but they had the bare minimum needed to get to Australia in order to travel and work casual jobs (e.g. farm work). As a consequence when the crisis hit, they had little money left to catch a flight home, or wait out the worst of the storm (as we did).
How Much Money Do You Need?
Therefore I would always advise having a significant emergency fund just in case of a worst-case travel scenario, should you get stuck in another country. This meant we could book good quality temporary accommodation to isolate in (Airbnb) until we found a longer-term solution. We could also continue to food shops without the need for food banks or charity and many did.
I would therefore say that you should probably take a good 6 months of funds with you. What also helped us was the elasticity of our funds, in the form of two, 24-month interest-free credit cards. Although we had the cash to pay this off at any time it spared us from burning into cash, meaning we can pay off some of our expenses now we are back in jobs.
Alternative Sources Of Income
Despite having a significant cash buffer, this did emphasise just how important passive or diverse sources of income (e.g. side hustle can be). If you are some way of financial independence as I am, I would definitely consider alternative and online sources of income that you can take with you anywhere.
For example, at the time I had got my blog to a point where I was earning $30 a month in ad revenue, but I severely wished this was $300 at least. So if you can, start working towards this goal when you are 18 not 28 (like me).
Other Ways To Prepare
One other aspect of preparation, is that of your CV or skills. If you can identify and learn a niche skill or work for recognisable employers.
Diversifying your skill set or niching down in an in-demand sector, will put you in good stead in a challenging job market (e.g. finance, computer science).
It will also most likely help you to stand out if you need to try and freelance or work remotely. If I was going to restart my career I would be thinking of a skill set that I could take anyway e.g. developer / web developer.
4. Taking An Extended Break Is The Best Way To Travel
Whilst it was a stressful time, I did enjoy what I saw of Australia and there is no feeling in the world like travelling around places like Vietnam, with no place to be. You can travel freely without counting the days before you have to be back at work. You are also able to enjoy a destination for longer without jet-lag overlapping a significant part of your holiday.
Living in Melbourne was a great experience, even with everything that happened but on the other side of the coin is a certain degree of trauma. One that would put me off from ever doing anything like that again, at least until I am financially independent.
Yes my career break could have been better but it also could have been much worse. Although I missed some investment opportunities in March/AprilI 2020, I didn’t have to sell any of my investments either.
So all in all, taking the break was an amazing experience and taking the time to do it, was all part of that. It’s definitely something I would do again, but in a different way (e.g. agreed 1 month break from work).
5. Understand & Accept What You Can & Can’t Control
Despite the slight trauma, it’s instilled in me some very positive beleifs and living a pretty basic lifestyle made me appreciate home comforts and stability. I also came to truly understand the power of stoicism and taking care of the things you can control (physical and mental wellbeing), side hustle etc. and letting go of those that you can’t (e.g. uncertainty of covid).
I’ve learned to appreciate the silver linings and the small wins in daily life and how lucky I am in terms of having a good job, place to live and good food. I think being grateful and practicing gratitude where we can is a real positive driver of wellbeing.
I know that I blog about creating wealth, but you really do only need the basics to be happy, everything else is a bonus. This has further defined my approach to personal finance in terms of being healthy, wealthy and happy.
Approaching life with an aim to tackle what you can control and letting go of what you can’t is a great discipline to master in this crazy world and travelling can help with that to some extent.
6. Don’t Feel Like You Should Be A Natural Nomad
My journey also helped me realise that I am not a natural nomad. Although I like to travel, I don’t want to be nomadic when I reach financial independence. I prefer to have a home base from which to plan a two, three or four-week breaks.
The nomadic lifestyle is very much idealised by social media and vloggers around the round, and for good reason. Under different circumstances and with a different approach e.g. working remotely, it could be very enjoyable. However, I don’t think I’m entirely suited to it.
Personally, I came to realise that being able to create and maintain successful habits is what makes me happy and I struggle to create them whilst on the move. So even though there were some major disappointments, I also had a number of realisations, done some amazing stuff and was able to tick off some dream holidays like a month travelling in Vietnam.
So, although I’m not sure I would actively encourage someone to quit their job and to travel, I wouldn’t reduce anyones optimism. Even if you don’t enjoy it, you will still have some great experiences and learn many things about yourself.
If you are curious, then, by all means, you should try it, but just don’t be under any pressure to enjoy it.
7. Be Grateful
Having worked closely with many people from around the world, many of whom are friends, I always had major respect for the challenges they’d overcome. However, my experience in Australia in 2020 has really supercharged my respect for people who even attempt to make a new life in another country.
Even with all my privilege, this was difficult and stressful, so I can’t begin to imagine what some people must go through. Even things I take for granted such as finding a safe place to live and getting a job because or working restrictions (e.g. visa costs) can be difficult.
…And Enjoy The Small Things
Although I always enjoyed my life in the UK, my experience has also taken my gratitude and appreciating for the life I have in the UK. I also seem to experience everyday life with heightened enjoyment of things which might even have felt tedious or dull.
Creating daily routines and consistent lifestyle choices are not restrictive as I might have previously thought but freeing as they allow you to have more mental bandwidth for more important things.
Living through some challenging circumstances and stripping away everything I owned or carried with me, made me realise that there is little more required than simply being able to and practising enjoying life every day.
Wow. What an experience. Some of it good. Some of it not so much. But an experience nonetheless. Incredible that you came back with more money than you went with. That says plenty about you. Not least your resilience and resourcefulness. Amazing as it is that your better off now than you were before I’m not surprised. All the evidence I’ve seen suggests you’ll always be a success in what choose to do.
Thank you for taking the time to leave such a kind comment. Yes it really did require a level of adaptability, determination and ability to stay calm under pressure, that I didn’t know I had. As with everything in life, it was half chance too and we really did get some luck go our way.