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<\/a><\/p>\nIf you’re reading this, chances are you’re at least mildly interested in travel, which means you’ve probably witnessed the vacation shaming phenomenon first hand.<\/p>\n
The worst offenders of course, for those of you that have full time jobs, are your employers.\u00a0 The ones you have to gain permission from before heading out on your next adventure.\u00a0 This is somewhat understandable.\u00a0 I get it, you have to work harder to schedule someone in my absence, but don’t have a “request-off” procedure and then get mad when people use it.\u00a0 In fact, I was recently politely asked to leave a job because I took too many days off.\u00a0 I can sort of understand, for every person like myself that’s gone as much as possible there are a hundred weirdos that pride themselves on never using their allotted vacation days.\u00a0 If that’s what a company is looking for than we are simply not a good fit.\u00a0 Alas, someone else will have to make sure those mid-western businessmen get their Coors Light.<\/p>\n
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That sounded bitter, but it’s not.\u00a0 I’m actually pretty cool with it.\u00a0 The worst of the vacation shamers are just regular people, your friends, family, and coworkers.\u00a0 You have literally no obligation to these people.\u00a0 It’s absolutely none of their business how often you’re traveling.\u00a0 Yet, I still hear things like;<\/p>\n “Oh, you’re going on vacation again?”<\/p>\n “I’m surprised you’re here.\u00a0 I look at your Facebook and you’re like always out of town” (That one is especially great because it’s for vague acquaintances that are extra not entitled to an opinion on the matter)<\/p>\n “Are you dating someone in the travel industry?”<\/p>\n and my personal favorite,<\/p>\n “How can you afford that?”<\/p>\n Let’s talk about this last one.\u00a0 It’s mostly a tone that’s hard to get across in a blog post.\u00a0 I have absolutely no problem with people that ask “how can you afford that?” out of a genuine curiosity and desire to emulate my lifestyle.\u00a0 That’s great and I love giving people travel tips, helping them find cheap flights, etc.\u00a0 It’s when they ask, “how can YOU afford that?” that we have a problem.<\/p>\n Here’s the big secret… How do I afford that?\u00a0 I just do it.\u00a0 I don’t have kids, I don’t wear designer clothes, I drive a 2004 Toyota, I live in a very affordable house, and I set up what I called my ‘impulse travel fund’ when I was 18 years old.\u00a0 It’s not a big fund and I deplete it all the time, but I try to find good deals and travel as cheaply as possible and I don’t splurge in other areas of life.\u00a0 Like everything else in life, it’s all about priorities.<\/p>\n Here’s my problem.\u00a0 Travel is the only area I can think of where this is at all considered an appropriate question.<\/p>\n Super rude right?\u00a0 And a lot of those things cost way more than I spend on traveling.\u00a0 So what makes it okay to ask anyone how they afford traveling?\u00a0 Most of us are not trust fund babies or working some fancy job. Just look at pinterest.\u00a0 It’s full of “how I afford to travel” and “how I traveled the world on $x a day”.\u00a0 Most of those will be stories of people who made the conscious decision that they wanted to see the world and then did it in the most cost effective way possible.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n