Traveling is wonderful in many ways. It captures us with a sense of wanderlust and has us longing for more destinations to visit, cultures to experience, food to eat, and people to meet. As amazing as traveling is, most of us think we need to wait until our later years to really explore a lot of the world. I want to inspire you to travel more now and I will do that by sharing 9 wonderful benefits of traveling so you can take the leap of faith you’ve been waiting for.
Many people travel for business purpose or just for pleasure to see new places. Travel has become an important part of these people. Some travel routinely, some others travel frequently and some travel once in a while.
If there was one piece of advice I have for people today to experience more joy in life, it is to travel more. I don’t mean taking vacations or going on pre-planned trips. I mean making the journey out to somewhere you’ve never gone before with an open schedule. See what opportunities are waiting for you that you couldn’t have ever imaged before.
Here are some benefits of Traveling:
De-stress and Rejuvenate: By traveling and exploring new places you forget about your tension at work. You are going to a new pleasurable and enjoyable time. Today work pressure is too much. It makes it hard to keep up with the changing world and its increasing demands. Travel is one of the best opportunities to take you away from this pressure. And you will return more rejuvenated.
Traveling gives us the opportunity to disconnect from our regular life. You get to forget your problems and issues for a few weeks. It can also help you figure things out that you would not have understood without the distance traveling can give you. We all have crazy schedules. Work and a family to take care of. Going away alone or with some friends can give you distance. And perhaps even make you realize how important these people are for you. Like the saying says: we never know what we have until we lose it.
Read more about traveling benefits here:
“Now that’s a reason to save! The woman who retired aged THIRTY THREE… and now spends 11 months a year travelling round the world
- Anita Dhake, from Chicago, saved $700,000 working as a corporate lawyer
- She paid off her student loans and put her savings into investments
- Dhake now travels to places like Vietnam, Canada and South Korea all year
Anyone with a full-time job has dreamed at least once of making enough money to retire early.
But for Anita Dhake, from Chicago, that dream wasn’t just a passing thought – she put a plan into action and gave up her job aged 33 to travel the world.
Now the former lawyer spends around 11 months of every year visiting countries including Vietnam, South Korea, the Netherlands and Canada.
Anita Dhake is a former Chicago-based lawyer, who, after six years of smart saving managed to quit her job to travel the world. Pictured: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
After reading the self-help book Your Money or Your Life in her teens, Dhake, who writes a travel blog, made a plan that she would retire at an early age, then set about making it happen.
Dhake became a lawyer almost by chance after she helped her sister revise for her LSATs. While her sister didn’t pursue law school, Dhake decided to take the test anyway, which she aced.
After graduating with a law degree from the University of Chicago, she worked as a corporate lawyer, with the aim of making enough money to pay off her university debts and save a pot to permanently live on as fast as possible – within a year she had paid off all of her student loans.
Dhake told MailOnline Travel: ‘Once I had paid off all my student loans, these pay cheques kept coming in and I reread Your Money Or Your Life and started my wall chart plotting my expenses against my projected passive income.
‘I read a lot of investment books and decided on an investment path using things like Vanguard and Index Funds.
‘My initial target number was $450,000 which would theoretically give me $1500 in passive income per month.’
The 33-year-old lawyer created a blog, The Power of Thrift , to show others how to achieve the savings.
The 33-year-old has even created a blog, The Power of Thrift, to show others how to achieve the same. Pictured: Kyoto, Japan
She continued: ‘Then I moved to Sydney where I had a set work contract and when the contract was over, it just felt like a natural time to leave, but I had also blown past my initial numbers and now had $700,000 (£535,000) saved.
‘I knew that I could live very comfortably in Chicago with that amount but decided instead to travel and soothe the wanderlust.’
Dhake travels for most of the year on the money her investments make, but she heads back to a base in Maryland for around one month in every 12.
The rest of the time, she buys one-way tickets to places she has never been two and rents Airbnb accommodation for two or three weeks at a time, pretending she’s a local.
In the last couple of years, she has visited Australia, Brazil and Uruguay, to Spain Thailand and Vietnam.
Now she is free from the shackles of employment, she has given herself an annual spend of around $24,000.
She has recently ticked off her 49th country – Norway – and says that travelling the world has given her new perspectives and made her realize just how big (and small) the world really is.
She said: ‘Moving to Sydney for a couple of years felt life changing as it took me out of my nest of Illinois and showed me that I could make it on my own halfway around the world – it was very empowering.’
Dhake became a lawyer almost by chance after she helped her sister revise for her LSATs. While her sister didn’t pursue law school, Dhake decided to take the test anyway, which she aced. She is pictured graduating law school.
Bonding with an elephant in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Dhake spent four years saving smart.
She continued: ‘I also understood how hard my parents had it when they first came to the United States from India and it gave me a new appreciation for them.
‘The first time I wandered around Europe for a month by myself felt life changing as I felt so confident and free and proud that I was doing something I’ve always dreamt of.’
While Dhake has clearly managed to save a considerable amount of money, it does also help that she isn’t interested in material things, which makes living on a budget much easier.
And she claims that anyone can achieve this goal as long as they are sensible with their cash
She said: ‘I have about $700,000 USD saved and that money is invested and working for me so theoretically, I can just live off the dividends and appreciation.
‘But most importantly, I have a pretty low-cost lifestyle that doesn’t take much and I can live pretty happily on $1500/month if I need to.’
Dhake is seen at the pyramids in Cairo, Egypt. She said that she hated shopping and was always a natural saver.
Dhake became a lawyer almost by chance after she helped her sister revise for her LSATs. Pictured: Overlooking Athens, Greece.
She added: ‘I don’t have a house, I don’t have a car, I don’t have stuff – I think that’s all luxuries. I just have a few clothes and my toiletries and way too many earrings.
‘I don’t feel like I’m deprived at all though as it’s the life I chose and I don’t miss the things. I felt free when I sold my stuff in Australia.
‘I’ve never liked shopping and I don’t care for stuff. Couple that with my high salary and saving was pretty easy.
‘I try to think of it as a good thing because maybe people can see there’s a different way and that non-consumerism is good for their wallet and their environment – it’s a little jarring, but it’s getting easier.’
Pay packet aside, Dhake insists that it was her thrifty personality that allowed to her save an impressive $700,000 in just four years. Pictured: Dkahe on the Great Wall of China.
Hand-me-down clothes were more appealing to Dhake than a splurge at Macy’s and she biked or walked everywhere. She is pictured in Sydney, Australia.
Dhake is seen hitchhiking in Dublin, Ireland.
And with a statue of the tallest man in the world in Copenhagen, Denmark.
But while Dhake is completely happy with her life choice, she admits that there can be times when she gets lonely.
She said: ‘Eighty five per cent of the time, I wake up excited and feel awed that I’m living the life of my dreams, but I do get lonely about 15 per cent of the time.
‘I miss my family and I miss having friends I don’t have to try with as it can get exhausting always meeting new people and it’s hard doing everything alone.
‘And I am giving up a normal dating life as I’m only in one place for a few weeks at a time, so it’s hard to get attached and meet anyone and develop any potential.
‘Eighty five per cent is still a solid B+ though.’
Dhake is seen in Poros, Greece.
And in In Punta del Estes in Uruguay.
But for all the tiny amount of cons, Dhake says that she loves the way her life has turned out and has no plans to settle down and get a job any time soon.
She has a reminder on her phone that pops up every January to think about where her life is headed and then her following 12-month plan is tweaked according to the outcome of her thoughts.
She said: ‘I feel like I’m living my life to the fullest. I feel like I’m seeing everything the world has to offer and I’m expanding my horizons and learning about other people.
‘It really makes me appreciate my life and it also gives me hope because there are so many amazing people out there, maybe humanity isn’t completely screwed after all!’
For anyone who reads this and thinks that they too might like to pack in their job and spend the rest of their lives travelling the world, Dhake has some advice.
She said: ‘Start small. Go on a three-week trip and see if this lifestyle really does suit you.
‘Take half as much stuff as you need and twice as much money and remember to always be flexible.’
She has recently ticked off her 49th country – Norway – and says that travelling the world has given her new perspectives. Pictured: Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3674505/Get-hedonistic-treadmill-Woman-retired-33-travel-world-says-thrifty-spending-smart-saving.htmlˮ
More benefits of traveling:
Enjoying food – Through travel you get a chance to taste and enjoy new dishes and flavors of many types of food. It may even help you to learn and experiment some of those unusual recipes later at home.
You’ll appreciate your home more.
“All travel has it’s advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
When we spend time away from home, we become more aware. Especially in a place where we don’t have the same luxuries available to us. Like a village in Fiji that runs without electricity. we become more aware and appreciative the luxuries we have back at home.
Active and responsible – Travel makes you more active and responsible. During the excitement of exploring new places, you may walk more than usual. You also become more active. Sometimes you may even wonder about your hidden capacity. Maybe you didn’t realize it untill then. Likewise, in a different atmosphere, you can’t just afford to take it for granted. You have to be more alert and responsible there.
