Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs to travel the world, how did it go?

In May 2012 my wife and I did this. It went well, but little went to our initial plan.

The experience was far more stressful than either of us expected. Constantly having to find food, a place to sleep, and figure out where/what is next, was tiresome. However, we really enjoyed the experience and found some places off the beaten path that we really loved. We found out that we love hiking and that we wanted travel more in the future.

I can't remember how we ended up settling on a budget, we targeted $80/day for two people. We saved 60k for the trip which from what I can remember was somewhat arbitrary. We also saved 20k as a 'return fund' to ensure that we had ample runway to find jobs. Returning home was incredibly expensive, we sold everything we owned before we left, make sure you budget accordingly.

Finding work after traveling was simple for me, a bit harder for my wife. I had two job offers, both from people I worked with prior to leaving, before I'd been home for more than a couple weeks. My wife wanted to change where she worked, so it took her a bit longer. None of this was to plan, we had planned to move to the west coast, the sway of a job was too strong.

If we did it again... that is hard to say. Both of us wish it was planned a bit more completely, but I see no way to actually accomplish this. I might say stay in one place a bit longer that we did (maybe a week/city). My wife says she would blog less, and I think I agree, documenting the trip was a lot of work. We did it for ourselves and our family, but it was more work than anticipated.

In the end we finished traveling after only (sorry I know "only" sounds ridiculous) 8 months. We thought we would travel for 1.5 years or more. We spent way more time in South America than initially planned and took a boat to Antarctica which was entirely unplanned. It was really amazing.

If you have questions I'm happy to address them further, I tried to keep this short as I can talk about this for hours.

I quit my job for a year and did this with my wife. We didn't work while traveling -- it would have been too hard / distracting. This might sound odd, but traveling takes as much time as a real job -- the amount you spend just figuring out where to go next and what to do is significant. If you want to work while travel then your best bet is to taking a break from travel and live somewhere for a little while. It's not a bad way to go but it's not what we did.

One interesting thing is the amount we spent for a year of travel was slightly less than the amount we spent simply living at home. If have saved enough where you can spend a year without salary then you can afford to do it.

A few recommendations -- don't plan ahead. You can't. Just plan the first place you want to go to and go from there. You'll have ample time to figure things out and be open to changes in plan. A corollary to this is that if you plan on spending less than 5 months traveling then you may not be able to travel quite that way. It takes a few months just to get into the swing of things.

Lastly, don't stretch your budget thin just to hit an arbitrary length of time. Spend what you need to and leave a few months earlier. You won't enjoy yourself if you have to scrounge for every dime. I'd see people stay in super nasty places for $5-10 / night in places that had simple, clean, and comfortable places for $15 / night.

curious...why the last point? what makes you "homesick"?

Best decision of my whole life so far. It requires attaining an incredible amount of humility, selling everything, even that couch you like. You probably won't be back and storage costs a fortune, basically get rid of all of your material possessions. That's really by far the hardest part then take the smallest amount with you that you can.

And... suddenly, life seems brighter. I left north america probably 5 years ago, wasn't satisfied with the uk though. I don't need to spend all of my money financing a stressful lifestyle. Most places outside of na make it easy to rent a furnished apartment. Life outside of na is largely much cheaper when compared to large na cities. And life outside of na is much more interesting because it's there due to longer than 250 years of history.

Feels great man.

If you're a software engineer, you can basically work anywhere.

>One of my friends spent two years in Japan and claims that she was more homesick upon returning home (USA) than she ever was in Japan.

I can empathize with that. I spent a year and a half in New Zealand and near the end of it I travelled back home to spend Christmas with my family and old friends. Upon returning to New Zealand, I experienced that distinct "coming home" feeling more so than when I returned to what I had been thinking was my home.