Whoever tells you that quitting your job is the only way to see the world, is wrong! Absolutely, 100% incorrect!

It’s more than possible to have adventure-filled days, long weekend-breaks, and even those once-in-a-lifetime experiences while holding and maintaining a full-time job.  Sure, waking up at 7am to head to a 9-5 job everyday isn’t so glamorous, but the consistently of a paycheck is what keeps me going.

Hey, it just means we have that steady income we need to travel.  Less stress, for me at least.  Personally, I feel more comfortable knowing the amount of cash that’s being deposited into my checking account each and every month.  It makes travel budgeting and planning that much easier.  Plus, call me a diva, but I sure wouldn’t survive without my memory foam pillow and mattress each night.  And having my fridge stocked with all my absolute favorites, an absolute must!

I travel part-time >> on weekends and breaks from work. I’m a speech pathologist working in an elementary school, and thankfully have built-in extended breaks off, including two very lovely months off in the summer.

But I’m not the only one (!!!). Enjoy the stories and inspiration from those below, and let me know in the comments if you’re a part-time traveler!

MEET THE PART-TIME TRAVELERS:

1) Diane Williams | Wife with Baggage

In the last year, Diane dog-sledded with friends in Colorado, hiked glaciers with her husband, Michael, in Iceland and sipped wine with family in the vineyards of Napa Valley, California. When not traveling, Diane is a full time pediatric speech language pathologist (just like me)!  Her career affords her 5 weeks of travel time each calendar year.  Diane’s travel blog, Wife with Baggage, aims to educate working professionals on how to incorporate travel into their lives, without sacrificing their careers or families. Her articles give destination inspiration, no-nonsense time and financial budgeting tips, and even travel-inspired home décor ideas for those of us who have a home base.

Travel Tip #1: Budget your vacation time in the same way you budget your finances. Save them, plan how you will use them and value them.

Travel Tip #2: Use credit cards responsibly and make them work for you. Choose a credit card with perks and rewards that you like and are travel related. Hello free hotel stay and plane ticket!

2) Adelina Wong | Pack Me To

Adelina is the globetrotter and food lover behind the blog Pack Me To. Based in Vancouver, Canada, Adelina works in marketing, helping brands tell their stories using social media and online platforms. This year, Adelina has traveled as far as Budapest, Hungary and Hong Kong, China, but has also explored areas closer to home like the state of Oregon. By combining trips with statutory holidays, Adelina is able to squeeze more travel time out of her 10 annual vacation days. Additionally, she is able to gain a few extra travel days by working remotely or taking a few unpaid days just by asking.

3) Manouk Bob | Bunch of Backpackers

Manouk Bob is a medical doctor in the Netherlands and is currently in the final stage of her Ph.D. traject. She has about 25 vacation days per year (excluding the holidays) and this year her vacation days were spent on a Muay Thai trip to Thailand and short trips to Trapani (Italy), Athens (Greece), Tallinn (Estonia) and Vienna (Austria). This year (for the first time) she did not use all 25 vacation days because she aims to finish her Ph.D. before next summer. After this she will be ready for yet another long-term travel adventure: Overlanding from Rotterdam to Beijing.  Manouk blogs at Bunch of Backpackers.

Travel Tip: Don’t be afraid to ‘pause’ your life to travel. Things will still be there when you get back. Trust me.

4) Katie | From Shores to Skylines

Even though she’s been traveling since 2001, she has kept her full time job as a biologist, where she works in genetics research at a children’s clinic. Her passion lies in conservation biology, which she gets involved in when she travels. Also a certified diver, she spends a lot of time in or near water. This year alone she has traveled to Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and Ireland. She gets 35 vacation days a year and extends her travels by traveling around holidays, and takes weekend trips whenever possible. Katie is the founder of From Shores to Skylines, a blog that focuses on two of her favorite things: food and travel. She grew up in the US and still resides in Kentucky.

5) Jenn Malka | Who Needs Maps

Jack and Jenn are the two behind Who Needs Maps. Jack is from Australia and Jenn is from America, so together, they use travel as en excuse to see each other in a brand new place. Jack is a digital Marketer and Jenn works for marketing music festivals. They both love their jobs so travel is more for fun rather than an escape! Together, they have traveled bits of Australia and Southeast Asia. Australia gives you more vacation time compared to the US. Entertainment jobs are very seasonal so it was easier to get vacation time and Jack gets to work full time right from his computer!

Travel Tip #1: Just because you aren’t taking a plane to some destination doesn’t mean you aren’t traveling. You need to learn to take advantage of what is around you. Every coffee shop, restaurant, or place you have never been is still traveling. If we love to travel, take each opportunity as its own and you will be discovering new places and traveling within your own city

Travel Tip #2: Get a job that allows you to travel. Jobs like concert touring or conferences allow you to go around the country or even the world! Or find a job that you can do on your computer anywhere in the world.

6) Ashley Hufford | Under The Ash Tree

Ashley Hufford is a part-time traveler and full time NHL production assistant, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Last year with 10 vacation days, 7 personal days and 2 “sick days” she visited 8 countries, and 17 states with her boyfriend, Brandon. For stories of her travels, her cat and her Saturday brunches, check out her blog Under The Ash Tree. 

Travel Tip #1: Usually when I take a long weekend trip, I’m not picky on the destination, so I use the Sky Scanner Everywhere feature to book the cheapest ticket available. Thanks to that, I’ve gone to Denver, Charleston, Vancouver and San Francisco for way cheaper than I would have otherwise.

Travel Tip #2: I love road trips!  My favorite app to travel with is Roadside America.  It maps your GPS location and shows you random, off-the-beaten-path attractions that are within 50 miles of where you are. It lets you explore things like Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska, Mark Twain’s grave in Elmira, NY and World’s Largest Chest of Drawers  in High Point, North Carolina, so you always have a fun place to stop on your road trip adventures!

7) Michelle | A Traveler Rests

8) Jen Seligmann | The Trusted Traveller

Jen was born and raised in beautiful Sydney, Australia where she lives with her husband Mick and works full time in administration to help pay the bills and fund her shoe collection, but mostly to fulfill her need to one day visit every corner of the world. She’s visited over 100 cities, towns and regions around the world with this list growing fast, as she tries to discover something new, whether it be in her own backyard or in a faraway land, every month. Her website, The Trusted Traveller, exists to provide others with reliable travel tips and inspiration to get them out there seeing the world in the most prepared way possible.

Travel Tip #1: Travel doesn’t necessary mean going overseas or interstate. Discovering something new in your own backyard can we just as fulfilling to your wanderlust as a trip that takes you half way around the world. The months when I am not travelling overseas I prioritise one weekend to take a day trip or explore something new in my own city.

Travel Tip #2: I can’t stress enough how important it is to use weekends to travel when you are working full time. On top of your allocated number of vacation days and public holidays throughout the year you have 104 weekend days that you can use to go anywhere. I like to use one or two of my vacation days around weekends to make a three or four day vacation to somewhere within a few hours from my home.

9) Anna | Travel with Penelope and Parker

Anna is a chartered accountant, working in London and the south east of England in practice.  This year Anna has been lucky enough to have some luxury breaks in the UAE, Venice, Ireland/Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Sardinia, Greece and Vienna – all justified as being birthday celebrations in a key milestone year for her husband!  Alongside this, work has taken her to Washington, Miami, Helsinki, Brussels, Zurich, and Leeds!  Anna is entitled to around 30 days of paid annual leave a year and is a master of planning short, but relaxing trips away.  She currently blogs at Travel with Penelope and Parker.

10) Lucy Dodsworth | On The Luce

11) Mary Solio | The World Is A Book

Travel Tip #1: My husband and I both work full-time and travel with our school-age kids. So, we also have to take into account school days and extracurricular activities and try to balance all of these factors. For traveling families, get the school calendar as soon as possible. Find out when the kids’ holidays are and try to plan trips during the vacation times and long weekends early.  Chances are everyone else will be traveling around that time. I set fare alerts through Kayak and airfarewatchdog to get the best airfare deals for the time we want. I also follow many of the airlines and sites like FlightDeal and Travelzoo on Twitter and turn on mobile notifications. I get their important tweets, including mistake fares, on my phone as text messages. Some of our recent trips have resulted from these low airfare alerts.

Travel Tip #2: We love airline stopover programs (connections of more than 24 hours between flights) that extend our vacations and allow us to see more places with our limited time. Explore the multi-city option on airline websites to maximize your itinerary and budget. Iceland Air and Fiji Airlines are two of airlines we’ve used to take advantage of their stopover programs. Chances are you get to visit another country or city for little or no additional cost. These stopovers are a great way to break up the long flights especially with kids or while battling jet lag.

12) Kamila Napora | Kami and the Rest of the World

 13) Anu | Country Hopping Couple

A couple from India with their endless dreams of travelling the world in search of best kept secrets and off beat destinations, that’s Anu & Sri behind Country Hopping Couple who work as HR professional and IT Consultant respectively.   They kick-started 2014 in Portugal, travelled to Paris to rediscover the city of lights, chased the Aurora Borealis in Tromso (Norway), explored the hidden gems of Isle of Mull in Scotland,  spent a long weekend traveling around North York Moors, snorkeled and road tripped in Gran Canaria, savored early autumn in Denmark, and spent myriad weekends either camping with friends or road tripping somewhere in UK in search of best kept secrets.  They are now continuing their sojourn of weekend traveling for the next few weeks around UK, before spending Christmas and New Year in Dubai. That’s a lot of traveling isn’t it? Considering they work full time, do you wonder where they get all the time to travel? They get about 20 days annual leave, and 8 national holidays.  They prioritize travel over anything else,  manage other daily chores on weekdays so that they can escape over the weekends in search of new undiscovered destinations.

14) Hannah | Not in Kansas Anymore

Hannah has sent postcards from African lion parks, European castles, Asian jungles, Middle Eastern deserts and beaches that nobody has yet named. She’s an Aussie journalist with a British passport living and loving doing ‘The London Thing’ while exploring Europe and beyond. As part of her day job in wine PR, Hannah travels throughout Europe and often extends her visits to make the most of these exciting opportunities. With a passion for history, writing and adventure, Hannah’s blog ‘Not in Kansas Anymore‘ resonates around the essentials of travel: brain, heart, courage… and a gorgeous pair of shoes.  She gets 23 days off a year, and has traveled to Germany, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, England, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, and New York in 2014.

Travel Tip #1: If you’re fortunate to be sent abroad for work, always tack on some extra leave to fully explore and always get the earliest and latest flights.

Travel Tip #2: Public holidays are obvious dates for people to get away, take some time off the week leading up to it when the destination is a little quieter. You’ve already got an extra day’s leave so you don’t need to ask for as much time off.

Travel Tip #3: Explore your own backyard. There’s always a stone unturned and often it’s much more surprising if it’s in your own town or city. Short day trips or weekend breaks all add to your portfolio of traveling experiences.

15) Samiya Selim | Selim Family

Samiya Selim is a conservation scientist and is finishing up her PhD in Marine Biology at the University of Sheffield. She combines her love of science with her passion for travel, whilst at the same time juggling family life (raising two kids with her hubby) and pursuing her other passions – yoga and running! She gets 6 weeks holiday plus Bank holidays. Fortunately, her work also allows her the flexibility as well as opportunity to travel numerous times a year. She had just been to China this October, combining travel with work. Earlier this year, she has travelled to USA for 3 weeks, did a 6-country Europe roadtrip and is now off to Morocco next week! She blogs at Selim Family.

Travel Tip #1: Combining travel with work has been my best option for traveling more! I got to go to Rome, Turkey, Ireland, Scotland, France and now China just for conferences.

Travel Tip #2: Travel Tips: Travel on planes the most before kids are 2, it’s free for them! Our two had been to USA and Bangladesh several times before they turned 2. Take them out of school and travel, much cheaper than in the school holidays!

 

16) Maria | Traveling Buzz

Maria from Travelling Buzz is a travel blogger from Bulgaria. She works full time from an office as an editor for a big online media in Bulgaria. Recently she discovered the true meaning of travelling and now she is trying to do everything possible to see as many places as she can. Maria is trying to prove to people that it is possible to keep a 9-5 job and to travel all the places you dream about at the same time. While struggling with the underpayment system in Eastern Europe, she is also trying to travel on a budget.

Travel Tip #1: Create and follow a strict saving plan. Try to put aside a certain amount of money from your paycheck every month. When you have enough money look for a cheap flight to somewhere and just go!

Travel Tip #2:Stay local. Travelling doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to cross borders and use your passport. Most of the time there are plenty of interesting destinations to discover in your area so just take a map and see what’s next to you.

17) Ravati and Charles | Different Doors

Revati and Charles Victor, (www.different-doors.com) both advertising professionals from Mumbai, India sometimes wish really hard that they could clone themselves. But for all the craziness of their jobs (with hours that often extend late into the night and weekends) it’s taught them to maximise every 24 hours and multitask in an organised manner. Skills that have gone a long way in helping them travel more and blog more. While their offices grant 13 public holidays, they also get about 24 days of leave. In 2014 they’re already spent 43 days travelling in India (Ahmedabad, Hyderabad), Australia (Melbourne, driving the Great Ocean Road, the Barossa Valley, Sydney), the Philippines (Cebu) and we’ve still got Bengaluru and Kuala Lumpur coming up in December.

Travel Tip #1: We’d recommend spending the first day of the year going over the holiday list and flagging off long weekends and combining holidays with leave. Buy your tickets in advance so they’re cheaper and your dates are locked. Sometimes it means hopping straight from work to the airport and back, it might mean finishing work while you wait to board your flight or check into a hotel, but wouldn’t you rather have that one more memorable experience?

Travel Tip #2: It also makes sense to skip the (time wasting) queues and book as many passes and entry tickets online (they’re also usually at a discount)

18) Hannah Logan | Eat Sleep Breathe Travel

Hannah Logan is a twenty something Canadian travel blogger from Eat Sleep Breathe Travel. She blames her wanderlust on Indiana Jones and she secretly still hopes to, one day, be as cool as he is. Hannah started her travels after completing university in 2011 and has since completed and exceeded her 25 by 25 goal in April of 2015. After two years as a victim’s worker she traded her work for something a little happier and currently works as a full time cake decorator. A lover of solo travel, Hannah aims to visit somewhere new at least twice a year.

Travel Tip #1: Travel during your work place’s off season: As a cake decorator there is no way I would get a chunk of time off during summer, aka wedding season. But when winter comes along and it gets a little quieter I’m much more likely to be able to get an extended holiday.

Travel Tip #2: Go with the flow: Busy season or not, some weeks are less busy than others, and your boss probably wouldn’t mind if you asked for a Friday or Monday off.  Sure you may not be able to fly to Australia for a long weekend, but an extra day or two makes for a great road trip or city escape.

 

19) Tianna

Tianna graduated with a BA in Media Communication with a focus in Journalism. She currently works for a radio station in New York doing digital strategy and social media coordination. This past year she spent time in Mexico, England, Belgium, France and Turkey. She receives only two weeks vacation a year. The other weeks she is away she doesn’t get paid for. To help afford her travels she works a second part time job on the weekends to save. She has begun to receive some sponsored work through her blog which helps off set travel costs. She doesn’t mind all the work while she is home because it means she gets to travel!

20) Vlad | Eff It, I’m On Holiday

Ever since he was a kid, Vlad has always loved traveling. From endless summers discovering his home country, Romania, to exploring new places abroad, the wanderlust feeling has never left him. With a full time job as a software developer and only 21 vacation days per year, he’s always looking for ways to travel more often. This year, his adventures took him from Paris on Bastille Day to the gorgeous Oslo and all the way to Portugal. He documents his trips on his part time travel blog, Eff It, I’m On Holiday, with stories and interesting pictures.

Travel Tip #1: Plan short trips around weekends – for 2015 I want to travel more often by taking Thursdays/Fridays and Mondays/Tuesdays off, this way having some special extended weekends.

Travel Tip #2: Travel in your own country – traveling abroad isn’t always possible so I like to take day trips or weekend trips to places close to home.

Are you a part-time traveler?!

Any travel tips to add?