How You Can Travel The World And Keep Your Full-Time Job

People often wonder how I travel as much as I do while working full-time. Others ask how I afford my trips and assume that I am either paid/endorsed to travel the world or I have an “African Prince” who pays for my travels. 🙂 None of that is true.

Such questions usually come from an uninformed position, because most people either have an exaggerated opinion of what travel is or they don’t conduct enough research when planning their trips. This is why I am sharing these practical tips on how to travel the world and keep your full-time job.

For useful tips on how you can stop dreaming of an African Prince save money for your dream vacation and travel within your budget, read here.

We often hear people say “quit your job and travel the world”, or “fire your boss and travel the world”. Oh well, I love my job, and I love to travel the world as well, however, I do not have the time to travel as much as I would love to, therefore, I maximize my travels. I take advantage of every window of opportunity I have to travel and I travel differently.

Here are some tips on how you can travel the world and keep your full-time job.

Take Advantage of Weekends and Public Holidays

For you to fulfill your dream of traveling the world, you must want it. Wanting it means making travel a priority. When you have this mindset, then you would take advantage of any window of opportunity to travel and this includes planning your trips on the weekends and public holidays.

At the start of each year, I go through the calendar for the year and identify the public holidays to enable me to plan my small trips around these dates.  This is one of the most practical tips on how you can travel the world and keep your full-time job.

Split Your Annual Leave

Ask yourself, “do I really need to take a whole month off work?” Two weeks may be all you need at a time. If your job permits, you should split your annual leave over the year to fit into your travel plans.

I shared helpful tips on how to maximize your annual leave. If you missed it, read here.

Visit More Than One Destination When You Travel

Most people do not know that they can book a single ticket with a stop at a second destination at no significant extra cost. What do I mean?

Let’s say, I am traveling from Lagos Nigeria to New York City on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. I book a ticket to New York but decide to make a 7 day stop at Amsterdam, or I book a ticket on Etihad Airways, from Lagos to New York and decide to make a 5 day stop at Abu Dhabi.

Note that airlines will transit in their home country. i.e if you book a flight to London on Kenya Airways, your trip will include a stop in Nairobi, Kenya first, before you connect another flight to London.

So, let’s say I decide to visit Amsterdam for 7 days and perhaps make a quick trip (via train) to Brussels, Paris or Luxembourg. Then I return to Schipol (Amsterdam Airport) on the 7th day to board my flight to New York.

A typical example would be a trip I made to Dubai, UAE with my best friend. She booked a ticket on Emirates Airlines to Dubai and back to Lagos. My final destination was London and so I booked a ticket with the same airline from Lagos to London with a 4 day stop in Dubai, UAE. The difference I paid for my ticket was about NGN60,000 ($165).

My trip looked like this;

Lagos – Dubai (4-day stop) – London

London – Dubai-Lagos

Her trip looked like this:

Lagos – Dubai

Dubai – Lagos

So let’s say, while in Dubai, I decide to take 2 days out of my 4 days to see Abu Dhabi. Then in London, I take 7 days out of my 14 days to explore Lake District. At the end of my trip, I would have explored a total of 4 destinations.

Sometimes, you have to be willing to deal with some inconvenience to travel differently. So, break out of your comfort zones, see the world, meet new people, find yourself, create memories and have stories worth telling.

In the words of Randy Komisar:

“The most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”