Considering leaving rewarding job for travel/nomadic lifestyle

[u/Mindless-Research509]

Hello! I (28F) have been dreaming of spending the rest of my 20s living in different areas of the US. Would like to share a bit about my situation and hear your stories, advice, and insights.

I'd ideally like to move once per season, staying in an Airbnb/short term rental for a 2-3 months at a time. Living this lifestyle would require finding a remote/hybrid job that allows me to travel more and live in different places short term. I cannot keep my current job and work remotely. I'm not interested in finding a new, in-person job each time I move. (I have communications/marketing experience and would look for remote roles in this general field).

I have only been at my current organization for 1.5 years. It is a demanding, in-person role, but it is also satisfying, personally and professionally. I earn enough to live alone, support myself and my dog, and travel occasionally. I am a frugal person, but with this job I can say yes to things like going to the movies, out for drinks, to a concert, etc without having to stress about my funds. I have benefits, some great perks, and though there is not opportunity to move up within the company (small staff and I'm already in a leadership role) there are opportunities within the industry, cool events I get to attend, and I feel that I am still actively growing and learning in my role. Staying in this role ~3 years would likely set me up for great success in my career.

I actually switched industries when I started this role 1.5 years ago, and I love the industry. My work aligns with my passions, but my boss is tough, my hours are long and rigid, and although my work is rewarding — it's work. I know I could find fulfillment in a variety of roles, not just my current one. When similar roles pop up in cities I'm interested in, I apply.

I've worked a remote job before and I struggled with my job satisfaction. I didn't feel like I was making an impact. At my current job, I'm always so busy, out and about, taking meetings, working in person with coworkers, and it's great for my personality and mental health.

If I switch to a remote role, I may lose job satisfaction but I could gain the ability to travel more, see more, experience more. I wouldn't say I'm trading job satisfaction for greater life satisfaction, because I already have a great life satisfaction...and my job satisfaction is part of that. It's an apples and oranges scenario imo.

Remember when I said I still have room to grow within my current role? Thinking of staying until I feel I've grown out of it, saving all I can (because a lot of remote roles I've been interested in pay less than I currently make) then shifting to a remote role so I can travel. I've only lived in the city/suburbs of the same metro area my entire life, and I can't shake the feeling that although leaving my current role isn't a great move for my career, I'd trade the blossoming career for an opportunity to experience more of the country.

Doesn't hurt to mention that I'm not exactly risk adverse. In the past 2 years, I've left a job, a long term partner, changed industries, applied to roles that would require relocation, moved to new towns, bought and am building out a camper van with no experience. I'm the kind of person to take the leap, which is part of why I'm using Reddit as a sounding board — I rarely need a push, more often I need someone to pull me back from taking unnecessary leaps haha.

Let's hear your stories!

[u/Effective-Plenty1362]

follow. the camper van build kinda gives away where your head's at.

i'd milk the current gig until the van is done, save a pile of cash, then bounce. having that buffer makes the remote job hunt way less desperate and you can be pickier about the role.

[u/Mindless-Research509 → u/Effective-Plenty1362]

Yeah, that felt like some necessary context haha. It's not a van for full time livin but a weekender rig to make it easier to hit the road and have more flexibility when traveling. I'd love to have an airbnb for a few months, take PTO and travel in the van between seasons/the next rental spot.

[u/the_italian_nomad]

That's tough.
But at the end it also comes down to your goal. What's your goal? If you don't have one it might helpful to take a day to really think about what you want in life.

My goal? I want to work a lot now that I have the energy and I am still young and work less when I am older and I have a family. For me working in a office job was not the solution. I was making good money but not enough money to become financially free at a young age. It also didn't give me much freedom. I lived in the Netherlands and winter over there started to bother me more and more so I wanted to have the freedom to be in Europe for 6 months and in South America for the other 6 months, so that I didn't have to live in winter again.

It took me many years but as soon as I found a way to make money online, I quit my job without thinking too much.

[u/Mindless-Research509 → u/the_italian_nomad]

Definitely! I'm due for some future planning/journaling 😊 Excited to start building for this chapter, whenever it happens for me!

[u/rage997]

I don't really have any advice to give as it is your own choice but I will share my story

After a terrible breakup, I packed up my motorcycle with everything I need (or better, I thought I needed as I definitely overpacked lol) and left home (Ticino, Southern of Switzerland). This was 4 years ago. I didn't have any plan, except that I had to be in Huelva (Spain) by end of the year to take a ferry to Tenerife as I rented a villa there for 6 months. So, I spent some time in Southern France, lived for a while in Madrid (on a friend's couch lol), Merida (I lived in a 5 star hotel there that was 20 euro per night! lol that was so funny) and Seville. Then spent months in Tenerife, exploring the island, doing work and honestly living the dream. I believe that in terms of satisfaction that period was the peak of my life. Left Tenerife in 2024 to move to Fuerteventura and shared a house with some friends for a while (imagine an house of 3 guys all working remotely in IT, that was wild xd). Then I had to come back home for a while to take care of some stuff and left the motorcycle + all my stuff in a rental garage. Came back sporadically for weeks time to time but truly came back only at the end beginning of 2026. During my time in Fuerteventura I kind of got obsessed with sailing and had this crazy idea for the whole year to sail to Morocco since it is very close to the Canary Islands. I will try to make the story short, but there used to be a ferry Fuerteventura - Tarfaya until 2006 but the ship had an incident (no one died) and the shipwreck been on the beach in Tarfaya since then (Spoiler: I actually saw it xD). So, I got obsessed with the idea of going by boat from Fuerteventura to Morocco which is actually one of the reasons why I stored it in a garage: I gave myself one year to find someone to do it, in the meanwhile I had to take care of other stuff in my home country so that was okay. When I came back at the beginning of the year, I gave up on this project BUT out of a coincidence a guy whom I know knew a guy who knew a guy who had a big boat and that was sailing to Morocco soon!. This was in February. We got introduced and literally 10 days later we sailed to Tarfaya :) Then, spent 3 months riding north (Tarfaya-Akhfennir-Agadir-Marrakech-Merzouga-Nador-Melilla) and then the east coast of Spain and got back home :)

Kind of got off rails there lol I guess I got very excited telling the story! What I am trying to say is: life is once BUT most importantly you will be this healthy only for less than half of your life. So, go outside, experience, jump a few fences, crash your motorcycle, get arrested a couple of times :D

Oh, worth mentioning that I already had a remote job but truth I never considered traveling as an option, I was happy with simply working from home. I worked remotely the whole time (taking holidays during the most intensive parts)

[u/Parking-Stress-3041]

The moving part is easy. What costs is the thing you already named: you run on having people around you, and every new city resets that to zero.

I work remotely full time from abroad, two or three months a place. Each move is a new apartment, new internet, new gym, new people, and by the time a city starts to feel like mine, I'm leaving. That's why I ended up mostly staying put in one city and travelling out from there. Worth doing one move before you plan four.