Welcome back to our series about the nuts-and-bolts of meandering minimally. If you’re not ready yet, we offered alternatives. Part 1 asked if you like travel. Part 2 encouraged you to think through obligations. Then Part 3 talked about potential travel companions, and Part 4 talked about health and health insurance options. Part 5 talked about having less stuff, theoretically and practically. Parts 6 and 7 encouraged you to make your lifestyle portable, in terms of fun and routines. In Part 8 we discussed language anxiety. Then we shared our philosophy of financial planning for travel. Most recently, we offered some tips about starting to budget your long-term travel expenses. This post is all about generating income on the road.
Active Income on the Road (aka, Working)
We think working while travelling is grand! Especially if you like things like a roof over your head and the occasional meal. We anticipated needing employment for some or all of our meandering. So we spent a lot of time trying to figure out reliable sources of income. (Luckily, we’re under-budget to date.)
We’ll assume that if your current job can be taken on the road, you don’t need our help with that. But, probably, it can’t. You might nonetheless have a transferrable skill, and pick up jobs in various locales as you go if you have a visa that allows you to work. There are the classics: teaching English, working in a hotel or bar, being a nanny, cruise ships, and seasonal labour like picking fruit. Be creative; if you’ve been working for a long time in one career, you may be able to use your skills elsewhere in the world.
You could also consider freelancing in your current industry. We have used Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer, and there are many other sites, some for specific skill sets. Each of these has plusses and minuses, and it’s worth spending the time to write an effective profile. But be sure the work you accept is worth the hourly rate to you, as pay can be low, especially for virtual assistants. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk offers data entry and other jobs that require human intelligence. We’ve heard that there is plenty of work available here, and it’s a not-terribly-demanding way to earn some income on the road.
For most of these, you will need to do some advance legwork: you might want to pick up a technical writing certification, or work on building up a client base, or even do some work for free in exchange for a referral.
Passive Income on the Road
This, friends, is the dream: a stream of income that comes to you while you sleep, drink margaritas by the beach, or go hang-gliding! Once you get to be a certain age, hopefully, your pension will fall into this category. Or you might have investments and plan to live off the interest or dividends. Chances are good that a pension or investments, however, won’t cover all of your budgeted expenses, no matter how well you trim them down.
In-Between
There are other options available, though, which require some effort. If you aren’t ready to sell your house, you could rent it out. You might consider doing the same with other big-ticket items, like a car or a boat. You could create a product service and sell it. (Or many of them, like photos.) There are also riskier options, like peer-to-peer lending, REITs, and being a day-trader. We don’t recommend these unless you and already have some expertise. [Also, now is a great time to remind you that we are not financial professionals. We’re just hoping to help you travel the world.]
Volunteering in exchange for room and board is an income-adjacent option that helps cut down on your costs. Worldpackers is a well-known and trusted site, and there are lots of others. We have heard great things about WWOOF. A different spin on this is house-sitting. We know people who have worked for Trusted Housesitters and mind my house; they are great options for animal-lovers who want to stay in fancy places in exchange for a bit of work.
Finally, there are credit cards that offer rewards and the like; we’ve switched from one that gives us airline miles on an airline that is no longer convenient to one that gives us cash back. If you use credit cards regularly (and most people do) this is a pain-free way to get back some of your money.
We hope this post on earning income on the road gives you a few ideas about how to afford to travel the world even if you can’t quite afford to travel the world.
