How I afford to travel as a college student
People who follow me on instagram see a lot of the adventures I go on and I often get asked when I have time to work with all the travel. Or if I work. Welllll here’s the deal. I’ve paid for just about everything in my life since I was 18. In other words, I’m a typical college student. I’ve got a lot of expenses, Insurance, tuition, and housing to name a few, but I make things work. Here’s how I do it:
Prioritize a work schedule that will make room for adventure
Listen, this should be a no-brainer but If you don’t MAKE time, you’ll never go. Trips don’t plan themselves. AND, when someone else does the planning and invites you, it will still mean sacrificing some things in your schedule to make it happen.
Before my mission I went and did summer sales, and then I worked as a custodian for BYU during my freshman year of college. I woke up at 4:30am monday through friday, got home around 11am and then went to classes and did homework for the rest of the day. For nine months. Aside from Christmas and Thanksgiving break, I only took 3 days off of work. Two of those were right after I got my wisdom teeth out. I never had time to travel because I never MADE time. I could have taken more days off work, and there were a lot of students who did. It wasn’t like I was hurting for the extra money, I was stable. But I was too busy pushing for…something? And it almost became a big problem.
So before we get to the how here’s the why
Let me be so clear. You SHOULD be future oriented, and you SHOULD work really hard. I have long term goals that are always on my mind, and there are few things more satisfying to me than a productive work day that gets me closer to achieving them. What you SHOULDN’T do is get permanently stressed because there’s always a new deadline, a new expense, a new “what if,” to plan for. It’s a mindset I fell into my freshman year, (and again this past winter, rip) and I didn’t realize it was getting out of hand until I started struggling to focus on homework and hitting deadlines.
After I got home from my mission, I knew it was really important that I made time for fun in order to avoid losing my fire when it came to my work ethic. I’m a normal person: I love working hard, I love seeing improvement and accomplishing big things, BUT burnout is super real and can slow your progress and motivation like crazy. Here’s how I do my best to avoid it:
“long term averages.” You can do the, “all in for a bit, all out for a bit”, thing. Or, you can grind hard during your scheduled work hours, and then take a proper break to refill your cup. Your progress is not going to halt. In fact, it will be more consistent. And even when you take breaks, If you are averaging really effective work during your growth hours, the long term average will be a positive financial increase. Regardless of the breaks. Another way of putting it is, “shortening the middle.” Here is a very cool TedTalk about that if ya want:)
So to summarize, I work really hard monday through friday afternoon. I have three income sources, and I maximize them as much as I can. But on friday and saturday, if the oportunity arises to go on an adventure, shucks man I’m gone. If I feel like I didn’t give 100% to my work throughout the week, I know taking a break won’t satisfy me so I just keep working. Take breaks BEFORE you burnout and you will find that it increases your weekly productivity. As evidence, this has been the most financially successful summer I’ve ever had. And I still get to do what I love.
What work looks like for me
I’m primarily a caregiver. I have two clients who I’m with monday, tuesday, and wednesday. I use to work fridays, but I got that off so I could have time for my side hustle (and so I could take off on the weekends without needing to get a shift covered).
The side hustle is pretty straight forward. Before I served my mission, my brother and I washed windows. Our relatives had a business in idaho that was quite successful and they trained us on how to do a professional job with the right equipment. When I realized I wanted a more flexible work schedule with decent income, I decided to pick it up again. Since I’ve done summer sales in the past, knocking doors is no big deal. I went and got some customers, and since then about 90% of my sales have come from word of mouth. Business hack: If you do a good job for a fair price, people will tell their friends about you. It’s pretty sweet.
Window washing has been perfect for a travel lifestyle because when I want to be gone for a weekend, I just fit my customers in after my caregiving shifts. This means I don’t get home until 9pm some nights, but it also means I make more in three days than a lot of people my age make in two weeks, and I still get to go camping 🙂
When I have time, I donate plasma. Usually this is just gas or grocery money. It basically means that what I’m earning with my two jobs stays in the bank and usually doesn’t get spent on anything. Kinda rad.
In summary, when I’m home, I’m doing my best to make it count.
Inexpensive travel is all about who you know
It’s time for you to find a sugar daddy. You knew this was coming. Nope I’m kidding but let me tell you a quick story that is entirely unrelated to sugar daddy’s. Like actually haha.
I was just offered free tickets to Philidelphia. No sir I’m not kidding. Here’s the deal. Since I’ve made time for adventures, people know I like to go on adventures. So they invite me on adventures. ALSO, since I’ve made it a priority, I have met people who also make it a priority. And they invite me on even MORE adventures. Life is all about connections, and I’m blessed to be connected to a lot of really cool people. I make a lot of friends, and I keep them. On my trip to Oahu last year, I reconnected with my middle school best friend and she invited me to live with her on Maui for a week so she could show me her home island. And suddenly I got to see a whole other island and I didn’t have to pay for accomodations.
I am absolutely not saying to use the people in your life. I’m saying, find good friends and be a good friend. Good things will come from it. Opportunities will come from it. This applies in every walk of life. Surround yourself with go-getters and you’ll go-get more often. Every self-help book on this planet will tell you something to that effect. You just gotta live it to see how magic it really is. Grant Cardone likes to say, “You gotta get known.” We don’t argue with Grant Cardone 🙂
The philidelphia tickets? I’m not taking them 🙂 because:
You have to know when to say “no”
My business is simply not going to do well if I’m not around to make it happen. A large part of how I afford travel is that I know when to say no to a trip. Even though it looks like I’m gone a lot, I say no to quite a few of the adventures I’m invited on. Maybe even the majority. Because as much as I like to have fun, it isn’t nearly as satisfying if I don’t feel like I’ve worked my little booty off beforehand. It’s like a hamburger after a hike. Hamburgers are great. They’re way better after a hike though. And, hiking is pretty cool too.
Traveling can be pretty inexpensive if you can figure out the loopholes
There are expense loopholes everywhere, you just gotta find them. Pinterest is actually a really good resource for finding travel loopholes. So are travel blogs. I have a blog post full of websites that give you discounted flights if that’s usually your limiting factor. Just take a couple hours to hash out where you can cut expenses and you can usually have a great time wherever you want to go, while you’re still ballin’ on a budget.
Also, if you live in Idaho or Utah, you simply have no excuse. You’re like an hour tops from some cool location, go find it. This is probably the biggest “secret” to how I travel as often as I do. My trips really just aren’t that expensive, and a lot of them are local. The trips to Alaska? Practically inherited and make me as close as I’ll ever get to being a trust fund kid. My grandpa lives out there part time and we go visit him. My parents pay for it 🙂
What does this mean for you?
I think a lot of people forget that they can have more than one source of income. You’ve got your regular job, now pick up something small on the side (like donating plasma for isntance) and make that your adventure money. If needles aren’t your thing no big deal. You have a skillset that can be leveraged. Everyone does. find it and use it. I knew how to wash windows and sell services. So I started a business and it’s doubled my income.
AND, if you want to travel, just start saying “yes.” “Yes” get’s you on so many adventures. Make the time. Work harder when you’re home so you can afford to get out more often. It really is that simple. At least if you let it be:)
If you want somewhere simple to start, try this link right here. This quick adventure is about an hour away from Provo, super easy to get to and really popular. You’re welcome 🙂
Thanks for reading!
I’m glad you’re here:)
– El
