Can I be real with you guys? You don’t have to quit your job to travel. YES I SAID IT! Lol I know you’re probably thinking “Ebonee, you quit your job.” And yes, that is true. I left the corporate world in 2016. Making the decision to leave a job to travel definitely isn’t easy. In fact, it was something I thought about for a while before finally deciding to pull the trigger and go all in. With that said, I believe it’s a personal decision and everyone’s situation is different.

Before I decided to leave the corporate world, I traveled to a few countries while I still had a full-time job. I went to the United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Brazil. I know a lot of you reading this may be working full-time and want to travel more. I’m here to tell you it’s possible because that’s how I started traveling in the beginning. Even as a full-time employee, I was savvy when it came to incorporating more budget-friendly travel into my life. It was something that was (and still is) important to me and because you’re reading this post I’m assuming it’s important to you too. Here are three ways you can travel while working a full-time job:

Plan trips around holidays and long weekends

Taking advantage of holidays and long weekends can be the perfect time to travel if you have limited vacation days. It may seem impossible to find deals around holidays and long weekends, but the truth is often times you can find a deal if you book in advance. If you’re going to go this route, check out my previous post “The Secret to Finding Super Cheap Flights.”

And this is going to sound really crazy, but sometimes you can even find cheap places to travel to at the last minute. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen friends book extremely discounted trips due to some sort of glitch in the system. In my free travel download, I list the best sites to follow to be notified when deals or glitches happen. (Enter your information the side of this page to get your free copy sent right to your inbox.)

Negotiate a Work From Home Schedule 

This one can be a bit tricky, but definitely not impossible. More people are putting emphasis on the whole work/life balance concept and therefore companies are working to make sure their employees are happy. Now more than ever, companies are considering a more modern approach to the 9-5 lifestyle and allowing their employees to work from home. The main thing to remember when negotiating a work from home schedule is that it’s all about positioning. It’s not all about you and what you want to get out of this experience, but it’s also about your employer and whether or not they feel they can trust you to handle your workload and get things done when you ’re not in the office. You have to be very clear on what you can offer your employer. There are amazing online resources, such as the “Quit Commuting” course, that is dedicated to showing you how to go about doing this. The Quit Commuting Course was created by Libryia Jones, a friend of mine who works remotely and who has helped others land remote gigs. She has been successful landing remote jobs since 2008 (way before Digital Nomad was an overused buzz phrase). In 2015, she landed a six-figure remote job. In 2016, she helped five people convince their employers to let them work remotely so they could travel the world and she’s passionate about teaching others to do the same. Click here to find more about her course.

Full-Time Remote Work

It’s no secret that there’s a shift in how we work and it’s becoming more common to see companies offer remote positions. During my trip, I met so many people who work remotely and live comfortable lifestyles around the world. Because of the demand to work remotely, there are several websites dedicated to helping people search for remote gigs. I’ve done some digging and found two sites that I believe are the best and ones that I’ve personally heard success stories from. They are FlexJobs and Remote.co. With FlexJobs there’s a fee you have to pay to get access to their remote jobs database. However Remote.co, is free and they post remote positions daily in almost every job category (Writing, Design jobs, Accounting, Sales Jobs, Virtual Assistants, Customer Service, Developer, IT, Online Teaching, Healthcare, and HR jobs)

As always, I’d love to hear from you guys. Let me know in the comments if you found this information helpful. xo