At age 26, Kate McCulley, now a full-time travel blogger at AdventurousKate.com, quit her job to travel the world. The following post has been republished with her permission.
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When I started Adventurous Kate, my goal wasn’t to live off my blog (not that I would have objected to that!) — it was to run one of the world’s top travel blogs.
My initial plan was to travel Southeast Asia for seven months. I budgeted $1,000 per month (in retrospect, I should have budgeted closer to $1,500), plus airfare to and from Asia ($1,500), travel insurance ($800), gear ($700), student loan payments for seven months ($1,232) and some extra financial cushion ($1,500 — should have budgeted $2,000 or more).
My goal was to save $12,800 — which I dropped to $12,500 when I spent $280 less than I expected to on airfare.
I started with very little savings in February, having just paid off debt. From February 2010 until September 2010, a period of just seven months, I managed to save that money.
I didn't quit my day job –– at least not right away.
On February 6 — incidentally, the same day Adventurous Kate went live — I started a new job as an account manager at a search marketing agency outside Boston.
My salary was $50,000 (up from $48,000 at my last job) and my take-home pay after taxes was almost exactly $3,000 each month, or $1,500 on each semi-monthly paycheck.
At that time, I was still saving up for the RTW trip I would take “someday,” or the apartment in New York City that I would get with my sister. I decided to save aggressively. It wasn’t until March that I decided to travel through Southeast Asia for seven months instead and to start in October.
I came up with an aggressive savings strategy: $1,000 per month
My first task was to figure out my essential expenses. They were as follows:
Utilities: $100
Student loans: $176
Rent: $800 (half of a one-bedroom in Fenway, Boston)
CharlieCard (public transit pass): $59
Netflix: $10
Chiropractry: $80
Food: $300
Social activities and impromptu food purchases (bars, movies, going out for lunch or dinner, nights out with friends): $200
Miscellaneous Expenditures: $150
Total: $1,965
If I managed to watch my expenses, I would be able to save $1,000 per month. If I changed my lifestyle, I’d be able to save even more.
Then I traded in Whole Foods and my gym membership for long walks and Trader Joe's
I took a look at my spending and saw that I had a lot of ways to trim my expenses. It was easy to eliminate things like trips to Vegas and cocktails at fancy bars with the girls. The everyday things were much harder.
As much as it broke my heart, I gave up my gym membership. This was the only time I have ever been in shape — I found a gym that I loved, a high-end women’s gym with lots of fun classes. It was sad to give it up.
I stopped shopping at expensive grocery stores like Whole Foods and switched to the super-cheap Trader Joe’s.
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