Preparing To Travel Full-Time, Part 1: Make Sure You’re Ready

We’ve been traveling full-time for almost a year. People often ask us what we did to prepare to travel full-time. The short answer is a lot of long discussions and then a lot of preparations.

The best advice we can give anyone thinking about traveling full-time is to make sure you’re ready! This article will examine what you need to consider before taking the leap.

The first step is deciding if the lifestyle is right for you. Traveling full-time may not be the best option if you’re looking for an easy life where you can sit back, relax, and be surrounded by your possessions. Instead, occasional vacations may be a better fit. Here are just a couple of things to consider:

Some people like to sleep in their own bed at night. Full-time travel may not be a good fit if you’re one of those.

Some people like to vacation in the same place every year because they know what to expect and they know they’ll have a good time. The desire to experience something new does not outweigh the risk of something going wrong. Traveling full-time may be a bad idea if you’re not willing to take risks.

Full-time travelers are constantly dealing with change. If this isn’t something that feels manageable (or even desirable), then traveling full-time may not be a good choice.

It’s important to consider your finances when deciding whether or not full-time travel is right for you. Depending on how and how long you do it, traveling full-time can be expensive.

You need to make sure you can afford to travel with the level of comfort you require. If you’re not comfortable, you’ll burn out.

The cost of travel can vary greatly depending on the level of luxury. For each destination we have visited, we have created budgets for a range of luxury levels. These articles, titled “Budget for a Month in …”, can be found under the Slow Travel category. Check them out to get some idea about how much it will cost to travel full-time.

We spent several years getting our finances in order to ensure we could travel comfortably. In the end, we were able to advance our departure date because of good planning.

You need to make sure you can afford to travel for the period of time you’re planning to be gone. This is pretty simple if you plan to travel for a month or even a year. Make sure you have the money available to fund your travel costs.

The math gets a little more complicated if you’re planning to travel indefinitely. Significantly, you’ll need to make some assumptions and projections. Specifically, you’ll need to make assumptions about how much the cost of travel will increase over the time you will be traveling (i.e., inflation) and how much income your savings or investments will earn before they’re gone (i.e., income).

With these two pieces of information, you can project how long your money will last at any given annual budget. The most important thing is to ensure you have enough money to support your lifestyle so you can enjoy traveling and not have to worry about finances.

Make sure you’re committed. Sometimes things won’t go as planned. If you’re not committed, throwing in the towel and returning to a more normal lifestyle will be easy.

Full-time travel is an adventure. Every adventure has risks. There’s a risk your flight, train, ferry, or bus will be canceled. There’s a risk your Airbnb host will cancel your reservation at the last minute. There’s a risk the destination will not be what you expected. There are lots of risks involved with traveling constantly.

If you’re not committed to the plan, it will never work. At some point, you’ll decide traveling is not worth the hassle, and you’ll go back to “normal life” where things are more predictable.

However, if you’re fully committed to making your new lifestyle work for you and your traveling partner, there’s always a solution to the problem. When the issue is resolved, you’ll remember that the excitement of traveling the world is worth the occasional headache.

Full-time travel is a fascinating concept, and it’s no surprise that there has been so much talk about it in recent years. But full-time travel is not a good fit for everyone.

If it doesn’t work out, you’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. Your home. Your career. Possibly your relationship. It’s too big a commitment to take lightly. You should definitely test the waters before committing to a life of full-time travel.

Last but certainly not least, if you’re in a relationship, you need to make sure your significant other is ready and your relationship is ready for full-time travel.

If you’ve ever gone on vacation with a significant other, you know how much time you spend together. You’re together in the airport, on the airplane, in the train station, on the train, in the bus station, on the bus, in the rental car, at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in your small apartment. You’re together almost every waking moment. This can be a blessing – or a curse.

If you enjoyed lockdown during the pandemic because you got to spend more quality time at home, then full-time travel will be perfect! On the other hand, if you’ve never spent months at home together or have never been on an extended vacation with your significant other, you should make sure your relationship works under those conditions before you start traveling full-time.

If your relationship doesn’t work well under ideal circumstances, it’s going to be very difficult when things don’t go according to plan – and, trust me, things don’t always go according to plan!

Stuff happens. You have to deal with it. Transfers aren’t always easy or fun. Sometimes you have to run to catch a train. Sometimes you miss a train. If you’re not at a place where you can work together and forgive each other when mistakes happen, you might not be ready to travel full-time with your significant other.

Once you’ve decided that full-time travel suits you, it’s time to start taking action. There’s a lot to do. Check out our article, “Preparing to Travel Full-Time, Part 2: Minimize and Mobilize Your Lifestyle.”