Why I Decided to Work Instead of Travel

We often hear people say that they can travel the world and work when they want from a laptop. This is nice and all, but as for myself, and the majority of people, I decided to work instead of travel. Here’s why.

I saw another YouTube creator and his family traveling America in a converted school bus, which is known as a skoolie. I wanted to do the same thing, but instead of just traveling throughout America, I wanted to travel to nearly every country in my skoolie.

Keep in mind, I wanted to do this right after high school. So I thought of multiple ways to fund this journey. My main focus was on crowdfunding, especially with Kickstarter. I began working on my campaign, but ultimately I gave up to explore my other options. This was with government grants. Still to this day, I am not sure how this would have worked, but it could have been a viable option nonetheless. I also considered trying to get a company to sponsor this journey. This one seems to have been the best option, but like the with the other options, I gave up. I also thought about trying to get a loan, but it would likely be difficult to get one. And finally, I just decided that it would be better to work and save my money. It would have been an absurd amount of money for a teen to save in a couple of years, so this option probably wouldn’t work like some of the others.

Like I said, my goal was to travel throughout the world, but at the very least, I wanted to travel to all 50 states. Despite that, I would travel to every country that is part of a major land mass because obviously you can’t drive a bus to islands. During my travels, I would want to experience the local culture, especially the food. I wanted to learn the history and see the architecture of these areas. But in the end, I wanted to find places that made me happy and that I knew I could go back to over my lifetime and still be fulfilled.

To make money while traveling, I would make videos sharing my experiences and, if necessary, I would create a documentary. I would have wanted to invest or start a business before beginning to travel. If I wasn’t able to start a business by then, I would work on that while traveling. But social media, especially YouTube, would be my biggest money maker.

When I wanted to do this crazy adventure, I wanted to settle in New Jersey after traveling, but I later changed my mind to want to settle in Wyoming. I would have lived in the bus while I built a home, so hopefully by the time I finished traveling, I would be making enough money to do what I wanted.

I decided that I did not want to travel after watching a video by Casey Neistat. It made me realize that I would rather worry about my future now, in my teens, rather than when I was older and potentially unable to make risky changes. Plus I realized that I did not want to see the world all at once, but rather be able to see all of it slowly over my lifetime.

Now I have decided that I will work and save my money while in high school and buy a multi-family property in Wyoming to begin my investing career. Afterward, I would either work in construction or become a real estate agent. I still think it would still be fun to convert a school bus to have a quality home to do some travel in.