Traveling long term has been a dream of mine almost my entire adult life.
I regret not having taken a year off before or after university to travel the world, experience different cultures, and make lifelong international friends.
You know what they say, though – Better late than never!
My husband and I are 29 and we’ve finally decided that taking time off from work to travel has to happen right now, before kids and real responsibilities come along.
We originally wanted to take an entire year off, but since I got a new job that I actually love, we settled for two months.
It’s long enough not to feel like your average vacation, but short enough that we don’t need to quit our jobs or sell our condo.
So if you’re in your late twenties or even in your thirties and you’re thinking it’s too late for you, think again.
Here’s how to negotiate taking time off from work to travel for two months.
Check your company’s time off policy
Before you do anything else, inquire about your company’s unpaid time off policy. Companies normally have documentation on time off requests. If you can’t find it, you can ask HR about it.
Depending on how long you’ve worked at your current job, you might even be eligible for a sabbatical. That’s the best case scenario because you get paid for it.
Come up with a plan
You can’t tell your boss you’re taking time off from work to travel without devising a plan first.
You need to think long and hard about how much extra work you’ll have to do before you go (and whether or not it’s feasible), and who can take care of urgent matters while you’re away.
When I asked my director for two months off, I told her I would put in some overtime to get all top-level tasks done before leaving.
I also told her she can email me while I’m away should anything urgent come up and I’d take care of it from abroad.
Book a meeting with your boss
This is when your anxiety kicks in and your stomach turns to mush (or does that only happen to me?).
In any case, taking time off from work to travel requires a serious meeting with your manager or director – there’s no way around it. Hopefully you have a good rapport with her.
Tell her why you want to travel, how long you want to travel for, and the plan you’ve come up with that won’t majorly disrupt the team’s workflow.
If she sees that you’re serious and that they can hold down the fort without you for a couple of months, chances are she’ll say yes.
Keep in mind that replacing you and training a new person will take more time and money than just waiting for you to come back.
Her only reservation might be that others would want to follow suit, and the company probably can’t afford all their employees leaving for months at a time.
Pack your bags, or…
If you get your time off approved like I did, you’ll jump for joy and immediately start looking for the best flight deals and start planning your itinerary.
If you get a hard no, you have two options:
- Cry, be miserable and accept your fate
- Quit and live your dream anyway
The main things holding people back from traveling long term are financial fear and responsibilities.
And I’d be a hypocrite if I told you that those weren’t major factors for me.
But if push came to shove, I’d ultimately quit and travel for even longer. Yes, I love my job and it would suck to leave, but I love traveling even more.
And ultimately I decided that the fear of regretting not having traveled in the future is worse than the fear of spending all my savings and being jobless upon my return.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to decide between the two this time.
I settled for two months, but my dream of traveling for a year (or longer) still remains. I hope that someday I can make it a reality.
