How to Afford to Travel Full Time Without Being Rich (2026)

Long-term travel feels financially impossible to most people. There’s this myth that you need a trust fund to make it work. I believed this too, until I left my corporate job and spent months backpacking around the world on a modest budget. What I learned is the biggest barrier to going travelling usually isn’t your actual bank balance – it’s the fear you’ll never have ‘enough’. This guide breaks down how to afford to travel full time – what this actually means and how to decide if it’s realistic for you.

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Quick overview of how to afford to travel full time

• Long-term travel often costs less overall than repeated short holidays
• Affording it means understanding your burn rate and accepting conscious trade-offs
• Most people combine saving beforehand with slow travel in lower-cost regions
• Three months in Southeast Asia can cost roughly half the same time in Western Europe
• Extended travel becomes unrealistic with no savings buffer and overall inflexibility
• In practice, travellers rarely run out of money — they adjust pace and plans as they go
• Often, the real decision is not ‘can I afford it?’ but ‘what am I willing to compromise on?’

Why long-term travel isn’t only for rich people

There’s this deeply embedded belief that extended travel requires either inherited wealth or financial recklessness. But the truth is, long-term travel looks expensive because we’re conditioned to think about holidays in a specific way.

A week in Spain can easily cost around £1,000 ($1,400) per person once accommodation, food and activities are factored in – not including flights. So it’s natural to assume that six months of travel must cost £40,000 or more. This is where short holidays distort everything.

When you take a week off work, you compress every decision for convenience and comfort. You fly at fixed times, stay in hotels, book tours and eat out for most meals. Those choices make sense when time is limited – but they’re expensive.

Long-term travel works differently. You’re not trying to see everything at once. You can take fewer flights or even an overnight bus or train. You can stay somewhere long enough to negotiate cheaper rates. You make fewer rushed decisions and your daily costs drop as a result.

What ‘affording to travel full time’ actually means

Before we go any further, let’s clarify what affording long-term travel actually means. Many people dismiss the idea of quitting their job to travel before they ever look at the numbers, based on misconceptions.

Being realistic about how to afford to travel full time isn’t about eliminating risk or having unlimited funds. It’s about understanding your burn rate, meaning how much you spend each month. It also involves accepting trade-offs around accommodation, transport and daily spending.

Once you stop holding yourself to an impossible standard of having ‘enough’, more useful questions start to emerge, like: ‘How long could I travel on what I have?’ Or ‘what would I need to change to make this work?’

Three ways people afford to travel full time

Understanding how to afford to travel full time becomes easier once you realise there isn’t a single, narrow path. There are actually three broad approaches.

Saving before you go

The first is the traditional career-break model: saving upfront, then travelling. You calculate roughly how much you need, build in a buffer for emergencies and leave knowing your time away is financially covered. This approach is about front-loading the preparation so you can travel without needing to earn while you’re away.

Choosing strategic destinations

The second approach is to travel slowly in lower-cost regions. Here, time replaces money as your main asset. Instead of trying to see twenty countries in six months, you might spend two months in Vietnam, two in India, and two in Mexico.

You stay in one place for weeks rather than days. You cook more meals. You use slower, cheaper transport. As a result, your daily burn rate drops significantly, allowing a modest budget to stretch much further.

Saving or earning on the road

The third option is to supplement your savings while travelling. This could mean using a working holiday visa, doing occasional remote work, house-sitting to reduce accommodation costs, or picking up short-term work in hostels or on farms.

You’re not necessarily trying to fully fund your travels this way. More often, it’s about extending how long your savings last and giving yourself flexibility.

Most people combine two of these approaches rather than relying on just one. What works for you will depend on your circumstances, risk tolerance and how you want to experience travel.

What long-term travel actually costs

In places like India, Southeast Asia and parts of South America, a comfortable budget backpacker lifestyle often costs around £800–£1,200 ($1,000–$1,500) per month. This usually includes hostel accommodation or basic guesthouses, a mix of street food and restaurants, local transport and some activities. It’s not luxury, but it’s far from hardship.

In regions like Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, travelling in a similar way can cost £2,500 ($3,200) or more per month. These places are incredible, but everyday expenses are significantly higher.

What this means in practice is that three months in Southeast Asia can cost roughly half the price of spending the same time in Western Europe.

Seeing real numbers like this often changes how people evaluate the decision. As we outlined earlier, it’s easy to assume you’d need £40,000 ($53,000) in savings to take six months off work to travel. Realising that £10,000–£12,000 ($13,000–$16,000) could cover extended travel in certain parts of the world often sheds a different light on it. Instead of dismissing long-term travel outright, people can assess whether it’s workable for their situation.

Why most people don’t run out of money

One of the biggest fears around long-term travel is running out of money halfway through. I worried about this too. It’s easy to imagine worst-case scenarios: being stranded somewhere, unable to afford a flight home or having to cut your trip short.

In practice, I didn’t come close to running out of money. I tracked my expenditure in each country. For Malaysia, I actually came in under budget and used the extra cash to take scuba diving lessons. I also secured a working holiday visa for New Zealand, which gave me the option to earn money if I needed to. In the end, I had more than enough to travel around the world for a year and return home comfortably.

With even a basic system in place, most long-term trips are financially survivable.

When it makes sense to stay at home (for now)

Long-term travel isn’t realistic if you only have a small amount of savings. When the idea of travelling first came up for me, I was £10,000 in debt, so the right decision was to stay put until I’d paid it off and start saving.

If your bank account would hit zero within a month of not working, you’re not in a position to take several months away. You’d spend the entire trip stressed about money rather than actually enjoying where you are.

It’s also important to factor in ongoing financial obligations. Mortgages, car payments or student loans don’t disappear just because you’re travelling. Some people make long-term travel work by renting out their home or restructuring payments, but in other cases it simply means the timing isn’t right yet.

How to tell if you can realistically afford it

Ask yourself a few practical questions:

• When you think about travelling, do you have fixed destinations in mind or can you adjust your plans based on cost?
• Are you willing to spend weeks in one place instead of days?
• Are you able to estimate your spending in each place, even roughly?
• Would you rather travel for three months in relative comfort, or six months more simply?

If the idea of staying stuck scares you more than the numbers themselves, affordability may not be the real blocker. Sometimes money becomes a stand-in for deeper fears: about change, leaving a job or what happens afterwards. I explore some of those questions in more detail in this post.

On the other hand, if you know you’d feel anxious spending that amount on a trip, that matters too. There’s no point making such a big investment if it would keep you in a constant state of stress.

Affording long-term travel isn’t just about having enough money – it’s about whether the version of travel your budget allows actually feels feasible for you.

Final thoughts on how to afford to travel full time

The people who successfully take extended trips aren’t usually wealthier than everyone else. They’re the ones who did their research, made conscious trade-offs and decided that a few months of incredible experiences mattered more than accumulating things.

For me, it was about intention. I wasn’t saving for a mortgage or the latest gadgets – I was saving for experiences I knew I’d remember for life.

So no, you don’t need a trust fund. But you do need a buffer, a plan, and a willingness to accept that no version of this is risk-free.

Most of the time, when someone says they can’t afford to travel, what they really mean is that they haven’t decided whether it’s worth the trade-offs. That’s an honest answer — and sometimes the right one.

But if you’ve read this far, run the numbers, and worked out how to afford to travel full time in a way that fits your life, then this is permission to stop telling yourself you don’t have enough.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is based on my personal experiences and is not intended as professional advice. Please conduct your own research and consult with a financial/tax advisor or official government websites before making decisions.