Written By Chara A.
Someone once said, “We travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us” and as cheesy as it sounds, it is damn true. We follow all these travel pages and travel bloggers on Instagram and wonder whether we will be able to ever travel to such amazing destinations. Many of them will tell you to give up your job, hop on a plane and work online or give you similar tidbits of advice which might sound absolutely shambolic for a risk-averse person like you (or like me?) or if you love your job like me (and hopefully like you again).
So let me tell you something. Neither do you need to give up your job, nor is it necessary for you to sell your house and personal belongings to be able to see the world. All it takes is saving. Working so that I can travel, is good enough for me.
First of all, let me touch on savings. A friend of mine once asked me, what the point of saving was if I wasn’t saving towards something. And he was absolutely right! I get it, you might be saving towards a house, or a new car (hopefully only if your other one is of no use). You might be spending a small percentage of your income on a share portfolio – and fair enough, you know, it might even get you to more places. But why else would you save? Well, you would save for traveling!
Traveling is the healthiest addiction and once you get to it, you try to find ways to make it work. Every. Time. Traveling allows you to get to meet new cultures and explore things you might have never thought of – or in the contrary, it will make you question daily habits you got which you might have to ditch ASAP. And history? The way traveling is feeding your history is so spectacular and so far away from the boring history books thrown at the back of our bookcases in school. It works the other way round too, knowing history you might get worried and curious about the country’s future. Traveling helps you appreciate nature, wildlife, and humans’ stupidity that follows.
Traveling helps you grow and teaches you more about yourself and your limits. No matter how organized you are, something will always crop up whilst you are traveling which will make you reflect on yourself. Not only you will get to meet yourself better, but you will get to meet a great number of other people – both locals and other travelers. Some people say they don’t like mingling with other travelers as they fail to meet the locals. I say traveling does not necessarily mean meeting locals only. At the end of the day, most of the countries are so diverse in the composition of their citizens and travelers, you can’t really run away from people. Plus, getting to make friends with other travelers (ideally from different nationalities), is always a bonus for your cultural exposure.
No matter how much you love your job, most of the people have their run-away moments and to be honest, traveling is what keeps you going. You have something to look forward to and you have an aim for that paycheck at the end of the month.
If you can afford big travels and all the goodies of the world, you probably shouldn’t be reading this article anyway. But if you can’t, then always remember that buying things you don’t really need as a means of reward, can only give you short-term satisfaction which is usually followed by guilt. However, spending your savings on your travels will give you lifetime memories. Choose wisely.
Going forwards, every month, make a small contribution to your annual travels.
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