How could I travel so much?

   One of my most asked questions, after quite a bit of travel talk, is “What do you do?” and when asked this I have reached the point of asking “Do you really mean to ask me how I could afford to travel so much?”- “Yeah, I guess”.

   Honestly, it's easy... I am stingy, really stingy, well, stingy when I am in Australia. And I made some good investments, and had great help (most importantly the advice) when I needed it. And travel is cheap (when you do it like I do).

   Let's start with stingy. 

   When I think that I know people who spend one hundred dollars every week on booze (alcohol), then I think, really, if you take that $5200 a year and invest it wisely, then a lot more people could afford to travel. Other people spend a few thousand on cigarettes a year.... you see my point here. I don't drink much, and I never smoked because I couldn't bare to spend the money on it... that might make me stingy.

   I also don't spend much on clothes, makeup, shoes, home entertainment, sports or clubs or the myriad of other things people spend their money on. They just aren't things that interest me much. Big screen tv's being sold for thousands of dollars equate to me thinking how long I could travel for on that much money. I rarely buy gifts for friends or family, I don't think the planet needs more consumerism and I would rather they reciprocated and didn't buy me anything (.... although frequent flyer points are always welcome!).

   What I do like to spend money on is experiences. I splurged in South America and did what many Backpackers wouldn't do – the Galapagos Islands.

   I don't want the world to have more people like me, but I dislike it when people imply that I shouldn't be having all this travel, when they clearly have other things they spend their money on. It is your choice, for the most part, how you spend your money.

Investing:

   I was probably 16 when I read a highlighted newspaper text that said that something like 90% of the world's millionaires became so through real estate. That text planted a seed, I didn't want to be a millionaire, but I would be wanting enough money to travel. I even went and discussed the investment idea (though it was only a seed) with an old local guy who had also invested in Real Estate (Jack Gosden was his name). Jack advised me to buy industrial property. At 18 I failed to take Jacks advice and bought a cheap 4 bedroom house instead.

   To buy a house at 18, it was really cheap ($55,000), and I got a Building Society Home Loan because the deposit needed was less. Whilst renting out the unused rooms, I painted it and did some minor fix ups, mostly with the help of family and friends, and then moved out and rented it out to a family (about a year later)... with my outgoings needed to keep it just 10c a week more than what I received in rent. Imagine! Ten cents per week, and your house is being paid off! I paid extra every week, and later redrew some to buy another house.

   I have since sold the houses – perhaps a silly move financially speaking – but I had the money to travel, and that's what I wanted.

The first house I bought.

   I have just mentioned the help I got from family and friends in the repairs to my first house, and also the advise I got from Jack. My parents were instrumental in their encouragement to invest, without them I would never have had the confidence. I realise now that it is this confidence that made the difference, it was them saying “go ahead, do it!” that made all the difference.

   Skipping university, although not always the best option, also meant I could work, invest and renovate in a way that I couldn't have afforded the time or money for had I gone to University. I followed my dream, and my dream wasn't for any career, so this suited me.

Travel is Cheap:

   Travel really is cheap, when you travel as a backpacker. Airfares and Insurance are the only real big expenses. Typically in South America I would spend less than $10 a night on accommodation, often with breakfast included. Menu of the day usually would be a big lunch for me at $2-$3, eaten late and then just an evening snack to see me through the night.

   My big expense was sightseeing, but even so, as a backpacker you could often find other backpackers to do the sightseeing with cheaply. Guide book in hand, walking the streets, you can often discover a lot in the city for no additional expense.

   Even in the USA, when I was backpacking alone (prior to meeting up with my mother) I planned my trip to stay with friends and to couchsurf (www.couchsurfing.org) and I would take a packed lunch. Washington DC, with all it's free museums, and me being accommodated in a friends house, was really cheap.