Recently we’ve received a lot of emails asking us how we financially supported our travels since we decided to take the plunge to live a life of travel in our unconventional life.
I realize that we’ve written a lot of inspirational pieces about following your dreams and pushing yourself to step outside your comfort zone, but we haven’t given real practical advice in quite a while. So we decided it was time to share some of our tips and tricks to living an unconventional life.
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How to Live an Unconventional Life of Travel
Our journey to becoming full-time travel bloggers was not a quick and easy one. We had many failures and setbacks along the way. It took time for us to find what we wanted to do with our lives and what would make us happy. We knew way back in 2003 and we wanted to be together traveling the world forever, we just didn’t know how to make that dream come true.
I realize that many people have that dream, but we felt it deep in our bones. It was more of a yearning than a fantasy. When we were traveling, we felt at home. We knew that on the road was where we were meant to be.
Another Backpacker
In 2004 we were like many backpackers traveling around South East Asia, but unlike the many others out there, we were already brainstorming with ideas of how we could continue to travel for the rest of our lives. We knew we wanted more than just a one-year escape.
We didn’t have the answers yet, but we knew that we couldn’t keep working at our current jobs for the next 20 years hoping that we’d one day be able to retire and finally live our dreams. So we started making plans. Check out more travel jobsby our pals at goats on the road.
Steps to Living a Life of Travel
1. Change your spending habits
We used to spend a lot of money on things that didn’t better our lives. We’d buy $4 lattes, go out to dinner several times a week and we’d buy new designer clothes. The more popular the brand name, the better.
On the weekends, we’d drop $200 on a meal and not even blink at the cheque, and then we’d go to movies spending a good $50 on tickets and popcorn.
Well, all that changed when we decided we decided that we were going to live a life of travel once and for all.
2. Find Affordable Things to do
It was a big decision but we decided to put away enough money to sustain ourselves for a year. We knew that once we took the plunge, we would have to go 100% into fulfilling our dreams, so we needed a nest egg while we worked to become professional travel bloggers.
We ate at home and cooked at home. We made our own gourmet coffees, and instead of going out to the movies all the time, we rented movies. When we wanted to go to the bar, we instead had a glass of wine at home and invited friends over, it was much more affordable.
Our activites changed from spending money on expensive meals and nightclubs, to doing free and exciting things on the weekend like mountain biking, rock climbing, or snowshoeing.
We didn’t drop cash at the bar, on expensive meals, or on expensive weekend getaways to a suite in Niagara Falls anymore. We did as many things as possible for free.
Wwe went camping and spent our time outdoors.It was much more fulfilling and a lot easier on our pocketbooks.
Note: At this time in our lives, we still didn’t know how we were going to become full-time travelers, we just knew that we wanted it to happen one day and that we had to be ready when we finally figured it out. By having a nest egg and by not having anything tying us down, we’d be ready to jump at any opportunity.
3. Downsize
People have often said to us “I wish that I could do what you do, but I can’t afford it” Well if you really truly want to travel. It can be really easy to save and build a nest egg. We sold our house and most of our contents and went back to renting a small one-bedroom apartment.
This freed up a lot of our income to put towards our travel savings fund. Getting a small one bedroom apartment that included utilities, cable and parking helped us plan our monthly budget.
4. Get Rid of Debt and Wasted Expenses
We also went down to one automobile. We used to drive two cars and paid an expensive monthly lease. But when the leases came due, we let them go and bought a used car. Our monthly payments were less, and our insurance cost less too because we no longer had to pay for the collision coverage since our car was so cheap. If our car was damaged it didn’t matter because we paid next to nothing for it anyway. We drove that car for the next 10 years.
5. Keep All Options Open
Like many people, we knew we wanted something more in life, but we didn’t know what it was that we wanted. We were frustrated. I remember always saying to Dave “If I only knew what I wanted to do with my life, I know I’d be successful.” The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing we both knew was that travel was to be a part of it.
So, we studied ALL THINGS TRAVEL.
We went to seminars talking about Teaching English as a Second Language, we went to travel trade shows, we watched travel shows like Pilot Guides and Don’t Forget Your Passport.
Little did we know we were honing our adventure skills
We took up as many adventures as we could. We learned how to rock climb, mountain bike, scuba dive, and snowboard. We became avid campers and built our adventure gear arsenal to an impressive list where we actually started to look the part of Adventurer!
We said to ourselves, “one day maybe one of these skills would come in handy.” At the time, we didn’t know it, but all those skills eventually came in handy. We used to call ourselves “Jacks of all trades and Masters of none.“
6. Nothing is Waste of Time When Searching for your Purpose
We had doubts, of course, we did. We thought, maybe we’re wasting our time and energy trying new things all the time, but we knew that we had yet to find something that we truly loved.
We enjoyed everything, but we didn’t have the passion that some of our rock climbing or scuba diving friends had for one particular sport. Our friends found their passion and all they wanted to do was rock climb around the world, or go scuba diving when they went to a destination. They couldn’t care less if they saw the local culture or witnessed incredible landscape. They wanted to explore under the sea or a new climbing route and that was great!
It just wasn’t for us. We wanted it all. We wanted to be able to climb in one location, dive into another, and shop at the market in yet another. We realized that we wanted it all!
Our lack of focus helped us become true explorers. It was our “Jack of All Trades” mentality that eventually lead us to become travel bloggers.
7. Focus on Strengths
Once we decided that we wanted to have the word “Adventurer” on our business card, we made plans on how we were going to make that happen. After exhausting all possibilities we decided to focus on our strengths.
We had been working in the film business for a long time and learned from the successful people around us. I watched television hosts promote themselves and create their brand and identities and Dave picked the brains of photographers and cinematographers on the movie set.
We knew that we were good at self-promotion and that we knew the TV business well, so we decided to sell an idea.
8. Do Something Epic
We knew that we would have to do something epic to stand out from the crowd. In 2008, backpacking around the world was becoming very popular. When we did it in 2000, not many people were leaving their jobs to travel the world, but now it seemed to be that everyone was taking a sabbatical.
If we did something epic like bicycle from Cairo to Cape Town people would take notice. So that is what we did and Canada’s Adventure Couple was born.
We had a dream of turning our adventures into a TV show. We hired a publicist, sent out press releases, and announced our epic journey. We knew we loved traveling together and that we had the mental stamina to succeed in this race down the continent.
9. Make a Plan
We invested a good chunk of our hard-earned money into this cycling race. We saved for a year putting every penny away and buying new bikes, training, and investing in the entry fee and flights. We didn’t want to take part in an epic adventure only to return to our jobs and resume our lives.
We made a plan that within two years of signing up, we’d be traveling full time. That gave us something to focus on. Having a time limit and a plan to make it happen, kept us focus don our goal. We had no choice but to to figure out a way to keep the momentum going.
10. With Failure Comes Success
We tried pitching a TV series that had a lot of interest but eventually failed. That didn’t deter us though, we had made a lot of TV appearances and were becoming minor celebrities in the online world, so we decided to nurture our 15 minutes of fame and turn it into something bigger.
Drawing on our nearly decade of travel experience, we created a blog that had a focus. We decided to focus on being inspirational and to show people that happy couples are not obsolete and that marriages can last and that the opposite sex can have fun together.
Right from the beginning of creating ThePlanetD, we knew what our message was going to be. We wanted to show that adding a bit of adventure into your everyday lives can help you feel more fulfilled. We wanted to show people that if we can do it, anyone can.
It took us a long time to figure out our purpose, but we never stopped searching and if you really want to change your life, you can do it too. Don’t let age, money or fear stand in your way, if you want something bad enough, you CAN make it happen.
So the message is, never give up, never stop searching and seize the day. What are you going to do to live an unconventional life of travel?
Read More:
- How to Travel Around the World – The Ultimate Travel Resource
- 21 Ways to Get Paid to Travel
- How to Start a Travel Blog in 11 Easy Steps
- Our 27 Best Travel Tips from 10 Years of Travel
- How to Achieve Your Life Goals
- How Travel Can Change Your Life
- Best Travel Jobs to Spark New Ideas for Your Future Career
