My Sabbatical

Source: Keith Roper at flickr

Perhaps the biggest thing stopping people who dream of taking a sabbatical is that they do not know how they are going to survive without an income for an extended period of time. That is why I spend a lot of time on this site talking about how to develop a location-independent income. Of course, you don’t have to have an income while you are away if you have sufficient savings to live off of, or an investment income of some sort.

If I asked you, “How much would it take to live in Spain for six months?”, what would the answer be?

You might run some numbers in your head based on your experience with European vacations. You might say, “My last trip for my wife and I cost us $5,000 for two weeks in Paris. So it seems logical that six months would probably run $50,000-$60,000. European hotels run about $200 a night even for basic accomodations, so that seems logical.”

And you’d be wrong.

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Source: viZZZual.com at flickr

It would be really interesting to me to see some type of study that compares the following two people from age 20 to 40:

- Person A, let’s call him Todd, who spends his entire paycheck every time he gets it, always having the newest computers, cell phones, cars, etc.

- Person B, let’s call her Sally, who never spends her entire paycheck and is happy to use older computers and may not even own a cell phone

Just based on those two descriptions alone, is there some way to predict the overall success of their respective lives? Or is it still completely 50/50 random chance until we know more about their habits?

First, let me define success: success in this instance is being free to do what you want, not bound by financial constraints. Failure in this case is being forced to do things because you need the money or stopped from doing things cause you don’t have enough money. Is that a fair definition of success? I think so.

Now it is certainly possible that Mr. “Spend First Ask Questions Later” will either meet a rich heiress while he’s away on some vacation and will go on to marry her and live a fabulous life of the rich and famous. Or perhaps he will luck into a lotto win, or his prolific spending and risk taking will propel him to start a new online business and make a billion dollars.

But it’s more likely that he’ll end up broker than broke 5 years later, with $100,000 in credit card debt and most of his income going to make the payments. He’ll then be in a situation where he will need to stay in a miserable high paying job, or not be able to take a once-in-a-lifetime backpacking trip through China that will make his heart sing.

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Source: Fosforix at flickr

OK, in Part One, I outlined a business idea I had to sell t-shirts online. This is part of my plan to create an income that will sustain me while I am spending 6 months a year in a warm locale.

In the part, I will decide which of several ways to create a web site for it, and how to sell it.

Step Three: Decide How to Sell Them

I have several options for running my t-shirt business

a) Have someone do all the work, and only get a few dollars of per-unit profit from each sale

b) Take on the retail sales job and let someone else produce the shirts, getting a bit more of the per-unit profits

c) Getting a company to produce the shirts for me in bulk, taking on the up front risk, for the most amount of per-unit profit

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Source: mesq at flickr

Part of the process of preparing to spend 6 months a year travelling, I need to establish some type of residual income that won’t take too many hours to manage while I’m away.

Can it be done? Can an idea strike you for a new business at 6pm, and by the end of the night you have something up and running?

We’ll see. I’m confident it can. Once it’s up and running, the job of marketing begins. Things can be tweaked and improved with the site once some sales come in and the business concept is proven.

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Source: Vlastula at flickr

“Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.” – Les Brown

“Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.” – Elbert Hubbard

“Nothing worth having comes without sacrifice.” – Unknown

One of the reasons most people are content to work 40 hours a week with 2 weeks of vacations a year is that it’s easy. As long as you make a respectible income and can afford to pay the house and the car, you can just keep doing that week after week, month after month, for 40 years. And at some point down the road, you can safely retire on your $1,000 a month pension as long as you don’t expect to live too extravigantly.

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Source: Kenzoka at flickr

After going to the same place on vacation two or three times in a row, it’s unavoidable to start thinking about buying your own place in such an idyllic place. Especially if you can see yourself visiting several times a year, or for an extended period of time, there are many benefits to buying versus renting or staying in a hotel:

• Cheaper annual ownership cost compared to renting the same unit (some units rent for thousands of dollars per week, when they only cost hundreds of dollars per month to own)
• Ability to profit from the unit, or at least offset your maintenance costs, by renting it out when you’re not using it (especially in popular tourist areas)
• Ability to profit from the unit when the property values of the area go up
• Increased level of comfort in having your own place compared to “borrowing” someone else’s (pillows, towels, linens, bathrooms, showers, kitchens, utensils, and other personal items)
• Ability to customize the unit to your tastes
• Ability to make friends among a consistent set of neighbors/local restaurants
• A place to eventually retire to

Those are just some of the potential benefits to property ownership in a vacation destination. These are usually the only things mentioned in the property developer’s brochure as well.

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Source: nattu at flickr

The following is a rough list of the jobs that allow you to get paid to travel, or write it off as a business expense:

1. Airline pilot or flight attendant

The downside to this is you generally are visiting the same places over and over again. The upside is you get to fly cheaply as an airline employee for personal vacations.

2. Travel Writer

There are travel magazines and web sites who need to publish fresh content every month. Certainly getting a job at “Luxury Hotels Magazine” would be a very very cool job to have. (Is there such a magazine?)

3. English Teacher

May not be the most glamorous job in the world, but if you’ve always wanted to try living a couple of years in Asia, there are places looking for English teachers. Korea is a favorite destination for this.

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