Travel Is Worth The Debt

We invest in formal education, relationships, real estate, children and material collectivism. What about travel and personal growth? Here's why travel is worth debt and the gamble of a lifetime.

The true destination of any travel is self-knowledge...

     This is being planted into the collective consciousness that is the internet to inspire all who find it along their own journey a fresh perspective on life. To encourage the growth of this seed project to sprout and take root to offer a different kind of culture into the American paradigm of today. One that finds university education, marriage, children, home ownership and material collectivism as hallmarks of a successful life. 

    While these may be for some, it would seem there needs to be another offering and encouragement to this world that goes beyond all of the above. This is a culling of sorts to bring forth those who desire to travel, explore and adventure across the world at a fraction of what they would spend for the American Dream. This is your invitation to live it forward so that others may lead lives that resonate with their visions. Debt is considered worthy if it is an investment, and this piece is here to encourage you to consider a different kind of investment.

    Travel.... That feeling of getting physically lost in order to discover more of yourself… That exhilarating feeling of getting onto a plane only to know you'll be stepping off of it in a land foreign to you… That beautiful ability with just a few clicks of a button online that can embark you on a journey of culture exchange that has the potential to forever change some of your habits, behaviors, perspectives and actions… That poetic sense of freedom walking paths you've never walked before, meeting people you've never known before, experiencing cultures you've never experienced before… That risk that comes with all the variables of unknowns that you will encounter… That challenge of literally feeling your spirit grow through your journey and how you may meet people that will impact your life in a scope or fashion you hadn't expected… That sense of freedom realized in atmospheric entanglement with your consciousness and your new surroundings...  

    This is what it means to travel to me. To step into the mystery of journeying in locations I hadn't traveled before, in order to cultivate this experience called human life. It is one of the greatest on-going decisions I continue to make in my life. To travel each year to somewhere new, regardless of my financial situation, etc. With the only exception being severe health or death in the family. I want to encourage you, yes you who are reading this right now to evaluate your life and consider doing the same before assuming it is poor financial advice please read-on ^_^. I like to think in the long-term and not the short-term as much as I can. This being said sometimes my visions or ideas may seem too fantastical or big to be considered wise at first glance. However, with a longer scope one can see the value of big journeys earlier on in your life provided some variables are in check. I am not talking about reckless abandonment, what I am talking about here is an investment unto your future self and personal growth.

“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.”
Dalai Lama
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One of my favorite parks in Russia ^_^.

    It has struck me as rather short-term in scope of vision for sometime now, as to why as a society we commonly find great value in investing in mortgages, university educations, marriages, children, material acquisitions and businesses with large overhead? Now, while none of the aforementioned is bad, unwise, etc. It would seem we are delving into all of these at a rather young age while arresting our financial, creative and otherwise vital resources that could be spent to explore more of who we are before making these long-term decisions. I generally find it to be an effective functional belief that everything happens for a reason and there really is no right or wrong on this subject. I simply want to present a seed of an idea to inspire others to really consider this decision of how to differently live life.
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    This is coming from an individual that only since the age of 26 has really begun traveling, and I recently turned 29 in Barcelona just last month of writing this article. I spent it with an awesome host (now friend) in a Spanish taught German class and eating bloody good food. I have managed quite a few travel excursions over the last three years and see no end in sight for the continued ventures. So back to the travels. Here is what I find interesting.

Just for some financial perspective here are the average costs of the common investments in life as of 2012-2013:

• One child from 0-18: $241,080
• Private College: $129,700  (Public/University (in-state resident): $38,300)
• Mortgage of $125,000 with a fixed 3% rate for 30 years: $189,720.81  (That's $64,720.81 of interest)
• Wedding: $18,086 (this is not taking into consideration the number commonly reported for 2012 in America which is $25,656, not including the honeymoon)

    That’s just education, children, mortgage and marriage. Not including the material collectivism that we as Americans are often brought up with. I couldn’t find reliable figures to feel confident in posting them in this article. To get a top-view, that is over $578,000 to go the route of your usual investments in life, love and education. Now granted you can certainly be the exception as opposed to the rule regarding these numbers. Family, loans, grants, etc. All this cuts costs for some of these. As well you may be thinking the ROI (return on investment) for a house and college are well worth the initial debt. This may be true, depending on each case. This may all bring you a deep sense of fulfillment? If it does, that’s great and I say more power to you ^o^.
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    When it comes to education here is something for you to take into consideration. Did you know ‘nearly all’ of college is now online for free? Here are three great resources for those who want to explore outside of the box:

• MIT has now open-sourced its curriculum.
• Khan Academy is revolutionizing education.
• Coursera is bringing world-class high-level education to your laptop for free.

    If spending half of a million dollars on the usual suspects above doesn’t appeal to you, consider this. What if you spent just 10% of the half of a million dollars on travel over the course of 5-10 years? To keep it simple I will lower the number down to a simple $50,000 over 5 to 10 years of travel. Now you can do some pretty epic travels with that kind of investment-capitol. Especially if you do Couch Surfing which is my top recommendation as I have met some incredible people this way. Here’s my profile so you can get an idea of how to fill out a profile and reference the hell out of your peoples ^_^. I’ve saved literally over $5,000 the last 3 years of travel let alone made great connections and even at one point fell madly in love with a wonderful lady from Russia. Granted we parted ways, but it was a significant aspect of my life journey. 

    Think about that.... $50,000 to travel the world over the next few to several years? How might that change you? How might that dramatically accelerate your growth? How might it change your career path? How might it change your love life? It is endless potential. You may even encounter great misery on one of your travels? Who knows? Clearly this isn’t for everyone. Of course you don’t have to go into debt to do this, you could work hard to pay it off as you go or at least speed the payments up. I personally like to keep up on the debts, but certainly have gone forth not knowing how I would pay said ventures off as well.

    You can get creative with debt by juggling no-interest credit cards, etc. Granted opening a ton of credit cards affects your credit score, of which you can easily check for completely free on Credit Karma. Boy that feels like a shameless plug but I have no connections with the Karma of the Credit as it were. 

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"People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."
Paulo Coelho
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    I’ve seen debt accumulate by the hundreds of thousands from life and death situations that were spontaneous in nature... or I should say I have experienced this before by personally racking up hospital bills around $36,000 a pop. On multiple occasions from spontaneous lung collapses which were delightful experiences to say the least -_-..... That's sarcasm if you hadn't noticed ^_^. The moral of the story is not to say 'don't save', but rather just to bring some light to the plight of saving all your earnings. You could save your entire life and see it all vanish in a blink of an eye, as well you could lose your life and not have a second, or third, or fourth chance to make more soul-resonate choices with your money, energy, focus and awareness. 

    What I offer you here in this article is some perspective. Not a blanket recommendation saying you should go into debt to travel the world. Rather what I am hoping to inspire inside of you is to reconsider the model demonstrated around you that is commonly accepted as ‘the way to success’. Cause let me tell you, achievement without fulfillment is a heartbreak that will make your many years and debts seem like a waste if you didn’t invest wisely. By wisely, I mean by your own personal definition of 'what success really means to you?'.

    So here are my gifts to you. I have been writing for over 14 years in great detail regarding virtually every subject in life and in this immersion into life via language/creativity I have come to some interesting questions. One realization is that we direct our life by the questions we ask and the honesty we put into answering them. 

The following 8 questions are what I want to leave you with:

• What does travel mean to you?
• What is your definition of a successful life?
• What has to happen for today to feel like a success?

Then follow-up with these:

• Where do you want to travel to and why? 
• When was your last travel? 
• How did your last travel make you feel, during and after?
• Are you leading your life via your definition of success or someone else’s definition?
• Are you feeling fulfilled by your recent yesterdays, todays or visions of tomorrows?

    Depending on your answers to the above will determine very much your course of action that you will know to make in order to expand your life experience and self-knowledge. Provided that is what you are currently looking for in life? I’d like to think this article will have increased your self-knowledge whether from knee-jerk reactions to it cause you oppose some of the ideas or because you resonate with it and found some value in the questions and thoughts it inspired during reading. I am in the forever end of writing books, articles, etc. You can find some of my nutritional work here if you are interested in expanding your knowledge of healthy lifestyle choices backed by medical research.

    I will leave you with one more piece of perspective... Contemplate this, you have all your middle age and elderly years to pay off debt, but you won’t always have today or your youth to make epic travels a reality. You can recover faster younger in all ways including financially, career-wise, health-wise, relationship-wise, etc. We are all gambler of dreams and I hope your gamble is paying off making you emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially and physically rich. Maybe you can write books about your travels or create pieces of art inspired by your travels? Or open a business in another country that has a need you could more easily fulfill than those native to the land? The options are truly endless and I hope you find greatness in your journeys.

    Thanks for coming along this ride of why travel is worth debt. I look forward to sharing more groovyness with all of you cats as time moves forward ^_^.

Cheers,
Brandon A. Trean BCTMB, HHP, NC