5 Ways To Travel WITHOUT Leaving Your Job

As much as I LOVE travelling, I for one have not plucked up the courage to up and leave my job to travel for the rest of my life. I just simply haven’t, but I must say I admire those who do, can and have!

Contrary to popular beliefs, you can still travel a decent amount EVEN if you are working a full-time job. There are many ways you can do this – some ways are more obvious than others (but are not fully taken advantage of).

1) Use your annual leave

In Budapest

This is quite an obvious one, where I know you’re probably thinking (well duh Temi! We know this already). However, you will be surprised at the number of people who do not use their annual leave and leave it to go to waste (shock bloody horror). If you want to travel more, use your annual leave for vacations and also be strategic when using it which brings me to my next point.

2) Bank Holidays

Plan your annual leave around bank holidays so you have a longer holiday time without using up unnecessary annual leave days. For example, my brother sent me the picture above on when to take annual leave around bank holidays in the UK.

3) Buy Holidays (Work Benefits)

I’m not sure if this work benefit is available for all companies, but it was definitely available in the company I previously worked for.

Employees had the choice to buy or sell up to 5 days of holiday (and because we’re trying to get more annual leave without leaving, of course, the method here is to buy holidays). This is perfect for those who do not mind spending a bit of money to get a few extra days of annual leave.

If you haven’t heard of this benefit prior, enquire at your workplace and learn more about buying annual leave.

4) Weekends

Weekend trip from Hamburg to Berlin

Weekends, weekends, weekends! What I love most about weekends is that

1. you’re not at work
2. you can sleep/laze around
3. or you can go on a weekend getaway

Travel is travel, whether you go for 1 day or 1 month. Or whether it is a STAYcation or a VAcation – honey you have travelled!

Weekends are another way to squeeze some travel into your schedule. E.g Leave work on a Thursday/Friday afternoon and head back Sunday evening or Monday morning (if you’re feeling frisky and also have the option to work from home).

The advantage of this is method is that you don’t have to use your annual leave. Whereas, the disadvantage of this is that tickets tend to be stupid expensive on the weekends (because operators be knowing that this is when most people are free to travel).

The best way to make the most of a weekend trip is to go to a country/city where you only need 2/3 days to explore – e.g London to Amsterdam; Hamburg to Berlin (I used to do this trip often and also in 1 day lol!)

5) Sabbatical Leave

If a few weeks holiday isn’t enough time for you and you would like to travel for a longer time period, a Sabbatical may be for you.

Sabbatical leave is a period away from work, agreed with your employer. The word is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘career break’ or ‘adult gap year’, but the specific feature about a sabbatical is that you will come back to the same job.

• Taken from The Career Break Site (http://www.thecareerbreaksite.com/sabbaticals)

Sabbatical leave can last between 2 months and 1 year (depending on the company). Again, depending on the company there could be a certain criteria you must meet in order have your sabbatical leave accepted (e.g. You should have worked for at least 5 years with the company)

It is worth to have a chat with your manager or HR team to find out how sabbatical leave works in your company.

I hope I’ve given you at least one way that works for you, to travel without leaving your job.

If there are other methods which work for you please do share below!