\n<\/p>\n
Almost a year ago, Claire Zhu and Peter Ovendorf quit their finance jobs and gave up their apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. They haven\u2019t let dust on their suitcases settle ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve bopped everywhere from Egypt and Jordan to Thailand and the Czech Republic. \u201cFrom the outside looking in, it seems like this was such a crazy, rash decision,\u201d Zhu, 27, tells Fortune.<\/em> \u201cBut really, it was very thought out because we\u2019re both pretty risk averse.\u201d<\/p>\n Their great adventure began in 2020 when Zhu started to realize finance wasn\u2019t for her. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t getting me up in the morning\u2014not that jobs should do that,\u201d Zhu says, adding that she felt burnt out.<\/p>\n After falling down an internet rabbit hole following full-time travelers who quit their jobs, she turned to Ovendorf and said, \u201cWe have to do this.\u201d Ovendorf, 28, who enjoyed his work, was hesitant. But a stint working remotely in Colorado together went so smoothly that it convinced him to do a much longer trip.<\/p>\n The couple is part of the average 4 million people a month<\/a> who joined the Great Resignation over the past few years. While some reshuffled into a different job, others, like Zhu and Ovendorf, exited the workforce entirely. The pandemic led many people to rethink how they want to live life, fueling a growing restlessness and existentialism among younger generations, who were already disenchanted by the increasing costs of buying a house, starting a family, paying for college, or simply just living. Remote work gave people the wheels to act on these dreams, accelerating alternative lifestyle trends like digital nomad living or working from a van<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zhu and Ovendor opted for a yearlong mini-retirement<\/a>\u2014a break from a traditional career trajectory to explore and unwind. Zhu says their generation is \u201ctold to go to school and then get a degree and find a job and stick to that job for 40 years.\u201d But things have since changed. \u201cA lot of people are realizing\u2026that 40 years is a long time. And, for us, we didn\u2019t want to exactly wait until we were 65 to start doing all these things that we wanted to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n So, they assessed their careers, finances, and other people\u2019s travel itinerary and budgets to create a game plan: Save $45,000 and a small emergency fund. For about two years, they socked away an estimated $800 a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n They shared with Fortune <\/em>how they brought their mini-retirement to life and kept costs down while on the road.<\/p>\n Zhu and Ovendorf were saving for a house in 2019, but decided to use that savings for their travel adventure. They cut down on going out, eating out, and buying non-essential items like clothes. At one point, Ovendorf had four roommates to help make rent more affordable. They also took advantage of low-cost alternatives, such as taking public transportation to get to work, carpooling for other outings, and enjoying free activities like hiking. Zhu even created an additional income stream, making and selling paintings on the side.<\/p>\n They finally hit their savings goal last March and took the plunge, narrowing down their top travel locations and scheduling the trip around rainy seasons and flight costs. \u201cOur plan was to not have a plan,\u201d Zhu says. \u201cAnd I think we purposely stuck to that just because you never know what new thing is going to pop up on your radar.\u201d<\/p>\n But they did know they needed to stick to their $45,000 budget. Ovendorf, maintained an intensive Google<\/a> spreadsheet tracking how much the couple spends in each country and how in-line with their goals they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n They post every purchase they make on their website and TikTok to an audience of more than 189,000 followers<\/a>. Because spending varies by the country, the duo doesn\u2019t have a set budget for each spending category, but they follow general guidelines. They typically choose the most affordable hotel in a safe area, whether it\u2019s a hostel or a campsite. In more expensive countries, they\u2019ll buy groceries and make their own meals, and in cheaper ones, they\u2019ll take advantage of inexpensive restaurants.<\/p>\n \u201cTo live how we are living, we\u2019d probably spend more living in the United States,\u201d Ovendorf says. \u201cSome people just don\u2019t realize you can travel for cheaper than we were living.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n For anyone looking to take a similar adventure, they advise getting a budgeting app or inputting expenses in a Google or Excel sheet. They say if you\u2019re a more responsible spender then you can give yourself leeway when budgeting and acknowledge spending will change monthly; but if you\u2019re someone that needs structure, then create budget categories and a doable goal.<\/p>\n Zhu and Ovendorf spend an average of 10 days to three weeks in one place. But their pace and the cost of plane tickets has hit their wallet harder than expected at times.<\/p>\n Despite all their careful planning, there are days they go over budget\u2014but it\u2019s usually the result of a calculated decision. In Turkey, they once wrestled with taking a hot air balloon trip that cost around $225 per person. After polling their audience with a 50\/50 split, they decided to just go for it.<\/p>\n \u2018If you\u2019re on a super strict budget, you can rob yourself of having some great experiences,\u201d Ovendorf says. \u201cSo I\u2019m glad we\u2019ve paid to enjoy and experience certain things.\u201d<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean you have to pay top dollar for memorable experiences. Zhu says she thinks about the time they took the Ha Giang Loop, a winding mountain range in Vietnam that borders China. Riding on the back of their tour guides\u2019 motorcycles, they ate every meal with them and stayed with their families, singing karaoke together and drinking \u201cHappy Juice\u201d liquor at night.<\/p>\n Of course, there were lows too. Zhu cautions that full-time travel is very different from a vacation: It requires constant planning, which can lead to decision fatigue. They\u2019ll return to the U.S. in March, with plans to look for jobs that would allow them to be digital nomads.\u00a0<\/p>\n Along the way, the two have found other people who also are flipping the script on what work should look like., \u201cYou realize once you get outside your bubble,\u201d Ovendorf says, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of different ways to live life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n Almost a year ago, Claire Zhu and Peter Ovendorf quit their finance jobs and gave up their apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. They haven\u2019t let dust on their suitcases settle ever since.\u00a0 They\u2019ve bopped everywhere from Egypt and Jordan to Thailand and the Czech Republic. \u201cFrom the outside looking in, it seems like this was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45220"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From carpools to $2-dollar meals<\/strong><\/h2>\n
When traveling the world, going over budget isn\u2019t the end of the world<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"