The Work-Travel balance

Thank you, Ranga for this ever relevant piece ! (First appeared in 2014)

The desire to travel and “see the world” is inherent in most of us. We look enviously at pictures from National Geographic and wonder when we will be able to travel to all these exotic places.

Most of us do manage to do quite a bit of travel in our lives. Some of us use our savings judiciously to travel on a regular basis, some of us find jobs that allow us to travel, while many more of us work the extra yards in the hope that we can do all the travel that we want once we retire.

Any which way you look at it, there are challenges and compromises to be made. How much we manage to travel depends on how well we manage certain aspects of our lives.

1. Managing expenses

One of the first issues that come up while discussing travelling is the dreaded question of the expenses.

To understand how much money we really need is a huge task. A lot of us can barely explain how much we exactly spend out of our incomes. Some of our expenditure is fixed — rent, EMI, School fees etc while some of it is quite variable — dining out, clothing etc.

One of the key aspects of planning a travel-friendly life would be to identify exactly how much money you need in order to keep going. While the fixed expenses are pretty easy to quantify, it is important to look at the variable expenses more critically? How much do you need to spend on food and drink in a month? How much of this can be cut down without significantly impacting your life-style? Surely, you don’t want to end up being a skinflint who constantly looks at every penny that is being spent, but at the same time, you also don’t want to be spending too much of your money on things that don’t really matter.

2. Generating income

The other big question that crops us when it comes to travel is generating the income required to sustain ourselves. A lot of us have steady income jobs and have trained ourselves to think that way.

However, in the new economy, multiple avenues have opened up for flexible working. Geographically independent jobs are now more common than before, thanks to improved technology and connectivity. As more and more companies start looking at work-from-home options, it is not too far-fetched to think that jobs can now be managed from any location. Not just back-end, manual heavy work, even high profile roles like project management and product development are now being managed on a remote basis.

With a bit of effort, it is possible to reinvent existing job roles to make them geography-independent. And more travel-friendly !

3. Working for travel

Another development in recent times has been the availability of travel-friendly jobs. English teaching across non-English speaking countries is now a fairly lucrative job option for travel-inclined people. Such a job gives people the option to travel across and experience local cultures, while making a good living.

Transferable skills like project management, marketing, or even code-writing, can be harnessed into non-traditional job streams to create travel friendly career options. Options that did not exist earlier

4. Giving up the idea of job-security

Since the big economic meltdown of 2008–09, the concept of job-security is pretty much obsolete. One of the key attractions of a “regular” job was the security that it provided. However, once you get past the need for job-security, it is possible to embrace the idea of being a contract-worker. It is already an established concept in many developed nations and is increasingly gaining acceptance in the developing world as well. Going “freelance” enables you to manage your time better and devote more of your efforts towards travel. The 5-day week is slowly being replaced by the 9-month year, wherein people are increasingly finding ways to spend 3 months of the year travelling. The key is to be open to the idea of contract work and develop skills that continue to be relevant in a changing world.

What do you think? Are there any other aspects of your work-life that you can manage differently to enable you to meet your travel need?