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Last updated on January 7th, 2024 at 01:52 pm
If you’re wondering how to travel more with a full-time job, we’ve got your back. After many years of putting up with our full-time jobs getting in the way of our dream to travel more, we’ve become experts on saving time to travel and we’re here to share with you all the tricks we’ve learnt along the way.
Who wouldn’t want to roam the world freely on a full-time basis? Sadly, not everyone can. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t travel as much and as often as you’d like. Travelling while working is not that bad. It all comes down to a few time-management tricks that anyone can master.
When it comes to learning how to travel more with a full-time job, there are many factors at play. Sometimes, the nature of your job can hinder or assist your travel plans and dreams. For instance, there are people whose jobs involve a lot of travel for business purposes. We do hope they know how lucky they are.
Moreover, your country of residence is an important factor when it comes to how much you can travel annually. For example, European citizens get a vacation leave of 20-25 days per year on average, without counting public holidays. However, vacation days for Americans are at the discretion of their employers who allow them 10 days per year on average, as the USA legislation doesn’t even ensure a minimum annual leave.
If you love to travel as much as we do, nothing should come in the way of your dreams. All you have to do is be smart and make the most of your vacation time. How? Here’s our list of the 10 best tips on how to travel the world with a full-time job.
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How To Travel More With a Full-Time Job: 10 Smart Tips
1. Ask Yourselves The Simplest Question
The first on our list of tips on how to travel with a full-time job is a very easy one. All you have to do is ask yourselves why you are reading this article. Why do you want to travel more? If the answer is something along the lines of Because everyone does it on Instagram, there is no need to read any further. But if you reply Because travel is the thing I love the most, then you’ve come to the right place.
Making time to see the world may be easy but only if you really want it. Like 1000% want it. Otherwise, neither your commitment nor your efforts are worth it. If travel is your number one priority, then you’re already halfway to enjoying more frequent travels.
Warsaw, the vibrant Polish capital, was a very pleasant surprise for us.
2. Set an Achievable Goal & Plan Ahead
Setting a goal regarding how many times you want to travel per year is key to managing to travel more, despite your full-time jobs. Therefore, you should try to figure out an achievable goal. For example, trying to plan a trip every single weekend might not prove to be that easy.
Also, make sure you set a goal that suits your budget and lifestyle. Travel is all about having a good time. You don’t want all the stressful logistics to ruin everything. Once you have a clear picture of your goal, stick to it and start planning.
Make sure you make a rough annual plan of your travels in advance. Around September or October of each year, have a look at the following year’s calendar and start highlighting the dates that seem ideal for long or shorter trips. This brings us to the next very important tip.
We had been planning our Puglia road trip for many months before actually going there.
3. Make The Most of Public Holidays
This is a crucial step in the process of learning how to travel often with a full-time job. It has to do with learning how to manage your time in the most effective way. A yearly calendar can be your best friend on this one.
Check out all public holidays in advance and use them to your advantage. For example, let’s say that you want to go on a week-long trip abroad in spring. Scan all spring months on your calendar until you find that gorgeous week that has one or more public holidays in it. That’s when you’ll plan your trip. This way, you will indeed be away for a week but you will have used up fewer paid vacation days.
On a related note, don’t forget about the weekends that come before and after this week. Adding these to your trip means that you’ll get to enjoy an almost 10-day itinerary at your destination. It sounds a lot better than a week-long one, doesn’t it?
We visited many castles during our almost 10-day itinerary in Romania.
4. Reserve All Your Annual Paid Vacation Time For Travel
Regarding your paid vacation time, you will have to use it all for travel. Taking days off just to relax at home or run errands is out of the question. We know you will be tempted to stay in bed on a cold, stormy day or take a day off to attend to those thousands of other things that torture your minds, but no, you can’t. Travel is your number one priority, remember?
Therefore, you should make sure your precious paid vacation days are reserved for this sacred purpose alone: vacation. If you need a day off for either chores or rest, you could use some of your paid sick leave, if that’s possible. But don’t tell anyone we told you to call in sick, OK?
If you realise towards the end of the year that there are vacation days you haven’t used, discuss it with your employer and do everything in your power to roll over these vacations days to the following year.
5. Choose Your Travel Times Wisely
Another time-saving hack you must consider if you want to know how to travel the world with a job is to choose your flight (or other means of transport) times wisely. For example, book a flight that departs in the evening. This way, you can go to work in the morning and head to the airport in the afternoon, without taking a day off.
Similarly and most importantly, try to book the last flight back home so that you get to spend an extra full day at your destination. Of course, this isn’t always easy as there are many factors at play here. But it’s certainly something to keep an eye out for.
6. Don’t Underestimate Weekends
We feel that we’re stating the obvious here but we can’t stress the importance of weekend escapes enough. Going away for just a couple of days is enough to recharge your batteries and keep your wanderlust tamed until the next big(ger) trip. However, if you want to be mindful and responsible travellers, avoid flying for short trips and travel by train, ferry or even by car to nearby destinations instead.
After all, a weekend away to someplace near home can be as satisfying as a long trip to a destination abroad. All trips matter. People who say that it’s not a trip unless you’ve travelled for thousands of miles or spent zillions of euros simply don’t know what they’re talking about.
7. Think Outside The Box
Sometimes travel opportunities pop up when they are least expected so keep your eyes and ears open. Perhaps a city in your country or abroad is hosting an interesting conference which could prove to be beneficial for your career. Or what about those friends of yours, whom you haven’t seen in ages, but have just invited you to their wedding on the other side of the world? Such fortunate instances are never to be overlooked, let alone dismissed.
8. Discover The Treasures Hiding in Your Backyard
Travel is, above all, a mindset. So, if you love to travel, you must know that it has nothing to do with distances. When it’s not easy for you to plan a proper trip, you should make the most of your hometown or place of residence by going out and exploring all of its treasures. Every single place on the planet has something special that makes it stand out. Go out there and find it.
Start seeing your hometown with the hungry eyes of the traveller you become when you travel to someplace new. Do all the touristy things visitors do but also go on a quest to discover your city’s hidden gems as well. Take day trips to all nearby wonders, either cultural or natural ones.
The bottom line is to know and love your city/town/village. It is such a pity to have learnt by heart every little detail about the destination you visited during your last trip abroad, to have visited all of its museums, parks and landmarks but never given a similar chance to your hometown.
Take it from us. No matter how busy we are with this website, our YouTube channel and our content creation business, we always make time to see Athens. Sometimes, we walk its ancient paths among crowds of tourists or join guided tours to beloved places we have seen a million times over, such as the Acropolis. Other times, we choose to take the roads less travelled and discover parts of the city we never knew existed. Try it, you’ll love it.
Click here to read our full guide and the best 3-day Athens itinerary!
How could we possibly get enough of this view?
9. Consider Finding a Job That Involves Travel
Remember those lucky guys we talked about at the beginning of this article? The ones who travel for a living? Well, if you really want to get a taste of this lifestyle, perhaps it’s about time you considered taking a huge step that will literally change your life. After all, nothing is forever, so if you change your mind along the way, you can always go back to your regular 9-5.
10. Take a Career Break
In many countries (Greece not included), taking a gap year to travel is an option. There are employers all over the world who see the benefits of a career break in their employees’ personal growth and understand that an experience like this will help them become more efficient once they’re back from their gap year.
If you’re thinking about taking a career break but wouldn’t know where to start, Lisa and Alex of Career Gappers do an amazing job explaining everything there is to know about career gaps and how to survive them.
Pictured here is the marvellous seaside town of Polignano a Mare in Puglia.
How To Travel More & Work Less
If you follow these time-saving travel tips, you will most certainly increase your days of travel per year significantly. That said, we know first hand that the more you travel, the more you want to travel. So, if you find that your travel bug has grown to become a wandering beast of epic proportions, then you should perhaps start working towards adopting a strategy that will enable you to travel full-time.
To do so you will have to squeeze your heads until you come up with all those skills that lay hidden in the depths of yourselves. Those skills that will, ultimately, enable you to work remotely and travel 24/7. Therefore, even if you now know how to travel when you have a full-time job but you are not happy with your full-time job itself, don’t let it consume you. There is limitless potential inside all of us. All we have to do is reach out and touch it.
Can you think of any other tips on how to travel more with a full-time job? Let us know in the comments!
2 Comments
A great article.
I particularly love the advice not to ignore your back yard. I am a UK National and can’t believe that I saw New Zealand before I visited Scotland!
I feel very fortunate that I have now found a way to travel full time without working, although remembering those days, I appreciate Bad**s Tip No 2.
I actually asked my employer for maternity leave so that I could take a year off to travel and have my job back when I returned. “But you don’t even have a boyfriend!”
When I explained, he was so surprised that he actually said yes!
Hey Jackie, thank you so much for your kind words. It’s so great that your employer was so understanding! Not often the case here in Greece I’m afraid. Happy travels!