Contact Me
Email: dnunneley at gmail dot com
Twitter: @FeastingPhoenix
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Feasting-Phoenix/265548660124219
-
-
Search
Enjoy this blog? Please consider making a donation to cover the costs of maintaining it. If you include your address I will send you a postcard or trinket from wherever I am.
Also, please share this blog and individual posts that you enjoy with your friends - it means a lot to me! Follow me by clicking on the floating tab to the right. Thanks for your support!!
Popular Posts
Tags
airlines alternative careers for lawyers asian-latin fusion Bali barbecue Barcelona bbq bbqfest bbq ribs billable hours bookstore british airways bryan christy budget career break crawfish credit cards Denver drum circle ethiopian food fennel fira food free things to do in DC inspiration lamb legal nomads lost girls memphis meridian hill park Milan mojito pizza restaurant Rioja santorini saving Tag Tattered Cover travel deals tuna taco venice visa wants washington dcPost By Topic
Old Posts
Facebook
Twitter
Email
StumbleUpon
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hola Devon! I just stumbled upon your journal. (I am having a very productive morning facebooking.) I LOVE that you are doing this!!!! It’s truly an inspiration. It makes me want to save up money (when I get a real job) and do the same. Please keep updating us about your adventures! If you are done in 6 months with your travels you should consider a stop in Gainesville. It’ll be right around the start of football season. (I’m doing a small animal internal medicine residency at the vet school in Gainesville.) Hope this message finds you well.
Mayrim
PS. Claire is visiting me this weekend so we’ll have a fruity drink at the top for you
Hey Devon! You really are living the dream. Thanks for showing all of us, stuck at home, what a life of adventure is all about. I do have some questions though….How long are you planning to travel? How are you surviving monetarily? Did you simply save before leaving? If so, how do you budget yourself? Hopefully, your answers will assist me in making the trip of a lifetime soon.
Hi Jill! Thanks for the nice comment – it definitely feels like a dream! It has been such an amazing adventure so far. I hope to write a series of more detailed articles about planning for long term travel when I get home and have a bit more time. But I will give you the short answers now
I am traveling for a little less than a year, I left in the beginning of October, went home to Florida for about two months for Thanksgiving and Christmas (although I did a bit of domestic travel during this time – DC, NYC, and Vegas), and left again in mid-January. I will probably head home around the end of July, when the money runs out. I set a savings goal before I left (30k total for the year) – I saved for a roughly $100 dollars a day budget. A lot of backpackers survive on a lot less, but I wanted to have enough money to eat good local food, do some touristy activities, and occasionally stay in a nicer hotel. I have also flown quite a bit because I wanted to see so many different areas of the world. A year long trip could be done much more cheaply if you traveled only by bus or train (totally doable in SE Asia and Central and South America).
To raise the money, I moved to a cheaper apartment in DC and saved more of my paycheck, sold almost everything I own (check out this post: http://thefeastingphoenix.com/2011/08/04/its-just-stuff-right/ ), and have even gotten a few small donations through this blog, which was awesome – even a small donation can buy an extra day or two of travel. I even shut off my cell phone, so I have no bills to worry about while I travel, with the exception of student loans, which I set to auto-pay.
It can be a little bit intimidating to give up a steady job and apartment – I would be lying if I said that I don’t occasionally experience some anxiety about heading home broke as a joke – but it has been totally worth it. There will always be more jobs and apartments, but I will have experienced more in one year than many people do in their whole life. So – if you are thinking about it, do it!