his might sound weird and contradictory from someone trying to visit all 338 countries and territories in the world… However, you can’t deny reality. All of these issues wrestle around in the back of my head from time to time. While I’ve learned to put experiences before ‘things’ – there are some valid costs to travel that go deeper than your wallet.
“Travel is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer”
1. Travel obsession
It can become an obsession, especially when you get to the point you want to travel to every country on earth. When you’re not traveling or when you first come back from a trip you can get depressed. Unlike other obsessions (Netflix) travel is an obscenely expensive habit. I see people regularly give up their jobs, lives and take off trusting that they will ‘somehow make it work.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t always end in unicorns and rainbows.
2. We’re not promised the future
When you’re always planning for the next trip you sometimes ignore the ‘now’ of your life. For instance, if you have a 2-month trip coming up in December, and it’s June now – you have a lot of planning, ticket buying, research, etc. For me, I can spend a few days to a week researching each stop. That eats up time I could be doing things at home, with my partner or with friends and family. You lose today for the possibility of tomorrow.
3. Money go boom!
Your money gets spent like a fireworks display – in one big bang. Rather than having little comforts over a long time. As soon as you start your trip the hole in your pocket starts bleeding an endless breadcrumb of euros and dollars like Hansel and Gretel. While I can get by fine with the TV I have, and I’d rather spend money on a trip – the trip only lasts a month or two. The other 10 months I’m squinting at my TV or sighing at the leaking sink, the bathtub faucet that doesn’t produce cold water, or other little irritations that could easily be fixed with money if I just skipped a trip.
4. Work
Whatever you do for work, it won’t last forever. Your earning potential has an arc, like everything else in life. You’ll reach the peak of your earning potential (if you’re in the west) in your 40’s and 50’s, (in the Philippines usually much sooner) then it will dramatically fall off. What will you do for retirement – if you’re spending that retirement year after year to get to strange places with strange names. Also, as you get older it gets more difficult to get work or change jobs, people in their 40’s and 50’s regularly get passed over for cheaper and younger workers that fit the office place better in a youth-obsessed culture.
5. Bye bye compound interest
This one is just basic math: investments. If you spend USD $20,000 on travel per year. Try looking at a compound interest calculator for a second.. 20k for 15 years at a 10% average interest return annually will net you almost USD $800,000… At the end of 15 years of travel you’ll have a ton of memories and ten pounds of digital photos – but you won’t have that USD $800,000.
6. Your body
Sometimes we neglect our health because so much of our work and entertainment doesn’t require physical activity. A flick of the finger on your phone or trackpad, clicking the remote on Netflix. Instead of spending 20k a year on trips maybe you should buy an elliptical and treadmill, or at least a good gym membership. Maybe visit the hospital and pay for a full yearly physical, dental, or buy comprehensive insurance. Preventative things that can keep you healthy in the long run. Travel like anything else has its risks – I know a traveler that died of encephalitis in Africa not too many years ago. Not to mention Malaria, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever and a host of other illnesses that you expose your body to – and over time can lead to chronic inflammation, etc.
7. Is travel selfish?
Travel is a selfish pleasure, and being selfish isn’t necessarily bad. We only have one life and we each get to choose how we spend it. If you’re on this page you probably enjoy spending it on seeing the world. But that extra income could probably go a long way to helping friends in need or family members. I’m sure we all know someone close to us that could probably use some help.
8. Our relationships
Travel is a great way to build memories and deepen relationships with your significant other. However long months of scrimping and saving at home, avoiding movie night or date night so that you can save for Morocco can take its toll on your relationship. Who can say if those same travel dollars spent over a year on treats for both of you wouldn’t have made just as big (or bigger) impact on the health of your relationship? You end up in a relationship of months of patiently waiting, followed by a few weeks of ‘real living’ while on the road. Life is not a movie where you cut out all the in-between time.
9. Investing in yourself
Investing in yourself. Either in hardware that can help your business, continuing education, more time to work, additional skills that will raise your market value and money potential. If you’re off traveling months of the year it’s hard to hold a ‘normal’ steady job. When you’re tobogganing in Switzerland or drinking in Berlin it’s probably equally difficult to telecommute as a digital nomad. Using money to go on the road closes doors that you might have opened if you had stayed home and had some ingenuity.
10. Over tourism
Knowing that places like Venice are now made up of 90% tourist, and other cities are flooded with visitors (Bangkok 20 million, Florence 9m, Paris 17m). While it might be nice to look up at the Sistine Chapel with your own eyes – do you really have to? Most of the time the things we go and see we don’t even bother to learn about. I’m sure you’ve seen David in Florence – but what do you really know about it?
For instance:
- The block of marble that eventually became David had been discarded twice before as unusable. It laid outside for years untouched. When Michelangelo finally got the block it had been waiting around for 40 years.
- David was originally commissioned to adorn the roof-line of Florence’s Cathedral Dome. However once complete the people were so impressed they wanted to see it up close.
- Michelangelo sculpted David when he was only 29yo
- More than 8 million people visit David each year. Studies show that all that foot traffic create subtle vibrations that amount to nearly constant earthquakes that are damaging the marble of the centuries-old piece.
So, in the end, what’s more, interesting to you? To know the history of something, or to stare up at something you know little about just to say I was here and I took the same photograph that 8 million other people took just this year?
11. Dosh
Money is hard to get. You have to give someone else something of value to get paid. Be it some shoes, a painting, or just your time in a call center. If money were easy to get everyone would have it. Money is conversely terribly easy to spend. There is no limit on what you can spend it on. Once you get money, the single biggest strategy for becoming wealthy is to hold onto it. When you take a trip – you’re trading money for experiences. Often your paying high prices for hotels, hotels breakfasts, taxis, transportation, restaurant food and other things that aren’t really good value. There are plenty of tourist traps and scams in addition to the generally high price of travel.
12. You are not who you will be
The future is change. At some point, you might want to have a family, children, house, car, etc. If you’re 22yo now – then partying in Ibiza makes total sense… But we all change. The same things you want at 22 may not hold true at 42. While your friends were busy hanging out with each other – you were at home saving money for travel and then off galloping around the world. You can wake up much older and find that the travel that was supposed to set you free has annexed and distanced you from your friends who have stable jobs, houses, and full families while you struggle to even remember the capital of Slovakia.
