How to Quit Your Job and Travel (from a former HR Manager)
Congrats! You’re quitting your job to go travel. That’s awesome. Just pump the breaks for a few minutes and review these 4 different “ways” to quit your job and travel.
Prefer to watch instead of read? We’ve got you.
How We Decided to Quit
Way back in 2015 after saving money for two years to travel, we quit our jobs to head off on our year-long round the world honeymoon. Since then we have built three businesses that support our life of travel. While we mostly talk about how we make money while traveling, there is a whole lot to be said about just taking time off and traveling!
So you might not expect this is you’ve seen some of our videos of Finney caked in mud, but she actually used to work in Human Resources for quite a few years. This makes her pretty much a pro at all things quitting and hiring. If you’re looking to travel, there are more options out there for you than simply quitting your job. If you’ve only looked at this from the angle of quitting your job to travel, you might be interested in knowing that this isn’t your only option!
So before you walk in the door tomorrow to tell your boss you quit… keep reading to learn some other ways to quit (or pause) your job to travel.
4 Ways to Quit Your Job and Travel
Ask For a Sabbatical
If you love your job and your job loves you back, you really can’t underestimate how valuable you are in the position you are in. If you’re in this situation, you might have a little bit of leverage then to talk to your boss about a sabbatical.
If you’re planning on going the route of asking for a sabbatical, the most important thing to figure out is the length of time you’ll be asking for off completely. It’s also important to come up with a plan for if your request doesn’t go as planned. If you’re asking for 4 months of leave but your boss only allows for 3 months, are you okay with changing up your plans for this change? Have these scenarios in mind before starting your conversation with your employer.
2. Ask to Work Remote
Still not quite ready to leave your job? There is an option of asking your employer if you can work remote. Just like asking for a sabbatical, there are pros and cons to this.
Pros of working remotely
A major plus of working remotely is that you’ll still be earning a paycheck on the road. You’ll also still have the job that you really like so you won’t have to give up a salary or your position to work remote.
Companies like Remote Year have set up offices globally specifically for people who work remotely while traveling!
Cons of working remotely
A con in itself is simply working remote. Time schedules are a very difficult aspect of working remotely while traveling. You might have to end up working second or third shift depending on where you are in the world just so you’re in your “office” at the same time as your coworkers.
Ensuring that you’re in a place with reliable internet is also an issue with working remotely while traveling.
3. Quit! (The Right Way)
If you don’t like your job and want to quite there is definitely a right and wrong way to go about it. The wrong way is posting it out on social media of you on a beach somewhere; #iquit #dontcare #neverdid.
Typically people give 2 weeks’ notice before quitting a job. If you’d like to give more of an advance that’s great too, but two weeks is pretty standard. It all depends on your relationship with your employer and how long you’ve been there.
Giving notice to your employer
We don’t recommend giving too much of a notice like three months before you leave, especially if you’re not planning on coming back to your job. This can cause some tensions in the workplace that you don’t need especially during the stress of planning your trip too. It can become a strange lingering thing so while giving notice is important, giving too much notice isn’t the best idea either.
You have no idea how freeing it is to travel with no concept of time while traveling or deadlines. While it can be stressful to not know when you will have a steady source of income again, but it is such a freeing experience and planning accordingly can take care of all of those unknowns.
4. Career Change and Starting a Business
While traveling abroad, you meet incredible people who are doing different things, some of which you’ve never even heard of! This can really begin to inspire you to make a career change or even to start a business of your own (like us!). If you’re not working while you’re traveling, you’re going to have quite a bit of downtime. So instead of popping on Netflix when there’s a rainy day, you can begin to research industries that you are interested in.
Balancing work and play
There’s a difference between quitting your job and going to travel with a plan to come back and seek employment at a company and going out and traveling with the mindset of starting a business on your own. You’re going to be spending so much time traveling that it’s more than 2 full-time jobs to be spending full-time traveling and full-time starting a business. As long as you can find time to manage the two, it can be quite exhausting.
Facing Your Fears
Personally, we were pretty stressed about the whole “quitting our jobs” thing. We had spent our time in Chicago, working our way up in the corporate world and it was terrifying to think we were going to lose that all. Coming back from traveling, we completely switched industries and job roles and now here we are, less than a year into our company, and we’re already better off than we were before.
We have better jobs, we’re happier, and overall more fulfilled!
Getting away from the grind for a little allows you to reset to be able to focus on what’s truly important to you and what will overall make you the happiest.
The Challenge of Returning
The biggest challenge for us was the fear of the coming back part. It wasn’t the safety, or the money, or the directions, it was the fear of the unknown once we got back. We had to find a way to give ourselves permission to take such a big step. We went to other travel events and researched people who went out, traveled, then came back and got jobs.
Hopefully, this blog does that for you and gives you the permission you need to get out there and chase your travel bug.
Happy Quitting!
We used to always say that while the goal was a year of travel, there is always the possibility of getting a ticket home. If you get out in the world and realize it’s not for you, you can always buy yourself a return ticket and come on back. It doesn’t have to be permanent!
Everyone has their own circumstances whether they want to return to their job or never see their boss again. Whatever your situation may be, good luck and happy quitting!
Or instead… work and travel…
Video Transcript
If you prefer to read…
Fin: 00:00 Cheers.
Tim: 00:00 Cheers and congrats. You're quitting your job to go travel, which is awesome.
Fin: 00:10 Way back in 2015, after saving money for two years, we quit our jobs to travel on our one year, around the world honeymoon. Since then, we've built three businesses that support our life of travel. Welcome to our new series, How to Make Money and Travel. While in later videos we'll walk through different ways to live a life of travel while earning an income, there's also something to be said about just taking some time off and just traveling while you travel. Today, we discuss some options like asking for a sabbatical from your employer or how to approach quitting your full time job.
Tim: 00:43 You might not know this from the videos where she's caked in mud, but Fin's actually worked in human resources for quite a few years.
Fin: 00:49 That's true. I do have some authority on the subject. If you're looking to travel, you're assuming to quit your job, but really there's more options than just that. If you've only looked at this from one angle so far and said, I'm going to quit my job, maybe consider one of these options that we're going to address in the video before you walk in the door tomorrow.
Tim: 01:10 If you love your job and your job loves you back, you really can't underestimate how important and how valuable you are in the position you're in.
Fin: 01:19 Maybe you have a little bit of leverage then in talking about a sabbatical.
Tim: 01:24 And if you're going to do a sabbatical or ask for it, the most important thing is I think figuring out the length of time that you need to take off completely.
Fin: 01:34 If you ask for four months and your employer comes back with two months, are you going to talk about three months? Are you okay doing two months on your trip? Have that in mind before you begin the conversation with your employer.
Tim: 01:50 The other thing to do, if you love your job and your job loves you back, is you can ask to work remote. And just like the last situation we talked about, there's some pros and cons to this. Pros, you're still going to be earning a paycheck while you're on the road. You're ...
Fin: 02:04 Good.
Tim: 02:04 Good.
Fin: 02:04 That's a good thing.
Tim: 02:06 Always bring enough money. You're still going to have the job that you really like. The con of it is you're going to be working remote, and all the negatives that come with that. I mean, it's kind of nuance here. If you have to stay on the same time schedule, working second or third shift, depending where you are in the world, just to be in the office at the same time as your coworkers can be a drag. You're also going to probably be tied to a place with great internet.
Fin: 02:32 Right, so something to be said for working remotely, and then there's so many organizations now that put together, I'm sure you've heard of remote year or I think there's even competitors, but there's just many more alternatives that are out there now that you can look into.
Tim: 02:50 If you don't like your job and just want to straight up quit, the best way to tell your current employer is not through an Instagram post of you on a beach somewhere. Typically people give two weeks notice and I think that's pretty well known. You can give a little bit more to your employer depending on your relationship, how long you've been there. I would not recommend telling them three months ahead of time, especially if you're planning to quit and not come back.
Fin: 03:17 Let's have that conversation, because I think that's important coming from a human resources standpoint. You don't want to ask for a sabbatical or to work remotely, because you have this plan to travel for a year, three months before you're going to travel, and now that's kind of this strange lingering thing in the air and now maybe you're going to quit if they don't give it to you, but your trip isn't booked and you have nothing in place and now maybe you're losing your job in two weeks. There is this walking this fine line process.
Tim: 03:46 If you are just straight up quitting your job with no plans to return to that employer, do not underestimate how awesome it is to just have no concept of time while you're traveling and just to truly be free from that. Definitely a little more stressful because you don't know about money when you're coming back necessarily, but a little bit of planning later in your trip can take care of that, so don't stress about it too much. Finally, here, there's the option to completely change your career while you're abroad. You're going to meet a lot of people who are doing different things. There's just going to be a lot of downtime where instead of watching movies while you're in the hostel, because it's raining outside, you're going to be learning about industries you're more interested in online.
Fin: 04:30 I think that there's a difference between quitting your job, going to travel with a plan to come back and seek employment at a company. It's with going out for a career change to start something of your own. You're going to be spending so much time traveling that it's more than two full time jobs to be full time traveling and full time starting a business. Just as long as you have that in your head to manage the two, the two of those simultaneously happening is very challenging.
Tim: 05:02 Exhausting. Okay, we wanted to keep some of the personal stories to the end, but I think it's really important to talk about, because personally I was really stressed about the whole quitting jobs and, oh we'll just go travel and then we're going to be homeless, [inaudible 00:05:18] home, I had personally clawed my way off in jobs. We switched probably every year and a half. Different corporate positions back in Chicago and I was worried to lose that all. Coming back, I completely switched industries and job roles and here we are, less than a year after getting home, and we're already better off than we were before. We've gotten better jobs, we're happier. I'm in a, oh that'll work too. We're in better, more fulfilling roles. It just gave us that time and clarity and this is getting kind of touchy feely, but getting away the grind for a little while, it lets you reset and get that focus on what's more important or what's going to make you happy.
Fin: 06:06 Well said Tim.
Tim: 06:07 That's adorable. That's a Disney movie right there.
Fin: 06:09 So stinking cute. We were really nervous before leaving, because, for us, the biggest challenge in leaving was the coming back part. It wasn't the safety of travel or where would we go, or the money, it was like, that was all mathematical and we can figure that all out, but the coming back and the unknown was our biggest challenge. I think the biggest thing that ended up giving us the permission to feel like it was okay to go and do something like this was going to different travel events and meeting other people who had successfully gone out and traveled and came back and got jobs. Like, oh my gosh, wow. But hopefully this video for you can at least give somewhat of a feel of permission. I know you're not meeting us in person, but we're putting out this video to share that, yes, it's okay.
Tim: 06:57 It's going to be okay.
Fin: 06:58 It's going to be okay.
Tim: 06:58 It's going to be okay.
Fin: 06:59 And you know what I always used to tell Tim, was like, even though we always said that it was going to be one year, the next ticket could have always been home. So you can leave at anytime if you're not having fun or you feel like you're running out of money or you're worried about a job, you can just go home. You're not committing to anything except for this arbitrary date in your mind.
Tim: 07:20 20 seconds. Wrap it up.
Fin: 07:21 Okay. It's like new year's. What should we ...
Tim: 07:26 Everybody's going to have their own circumstances, whether they want to return to their job or just leave it and never see their boss again.
Fin: 07:31 You have to finish your drink.
Tim: 07:32 Good luck quitting your job. Hopefully this helped a little bit. Don't be nervous. It's all going to be okay, I promise.
Fin: 07:39 And if it's not, just like blame it on us and ...
Tim: 07:42 Don't.
Fin: 07:42 Two, one, bye.
Tim: 07:50 Are you sick and tired of hearing travel bloggers, travel vloggers, travel people telling you that you can make travel blogs, travel vlogs, travel stuff online and travel full time and make a reasonable income? We are too, because for the most part it's complete bullshit.