your job at home - TravelPUNK Backpacker College Student Budget Travel Message Boards!

nena · 05-02-2006, 04:18 AM

im not sure if this is the right forum to post this in but its kind of about money and stuff :P

you have a job and you want to travel for months at a time, how does this work, really?

do you quit your job? worry about not having a job when you come back?

or would you get unpaid 'holiday' time? how easy is this, if you do this like every one or two years, would any boss agree with this?

and what do you do with your house/flat? do you rent your house to someone while youre gone, do you leave your house waiting with no one living there, or do you just leave and hope to find a couch to sleep on for when you return?

**florencia9699** · 05-02-2006, 04:23 AM

I guess it varies with every job... It depends on your boss, on your contract, etc... So I'm guessing it would depend on your office-situation.

I'm planning a one month trip to Europe. I get one month off every summer (in January), but like I wanna go to Europe in the springtime I'm gonna ask my boss if I could take that month during May instead. Hope he agrees!

Perhaps you should ask your other co-workers ands see if they ever tried to pull that off.... better ask them first than your boss if he's not cool with that...

**aliz** · 05-02-2006, 05:54 AM

my job ends in september anyway (its just a winter gig) so I'm just not getting a new job and jetting off to europe instead... as for career plans when I get home... meh, cross that bridge when I come to it. I guess it depends on how settled you are in your life right now and whether it would be easy to re-enter the workforce after a period of time away

**bluepea** · 05-02-2006, 10:01 AM

Quote:

do you quit your job? worry about not having a job when you come back?

or would you get unpaid 'holiday' time? how easy is this, if you do this like every one or two years, would any boss agree with this?

and what do you do with your house/flat? do you rent your house to someone while youre gone, do you leave your house waiting with no one living there, or do you just leave and hope to find a couch to sleep on for when you return?

Good questions. Last summer, my husband quit his job. It was a well paying job, but it was also contract work. Everyone thought we were crazy to give it up for some pipe dream, but in all honesty, we weren't planning on staying around that area anyways, plus it was not like it was a job we could bank on (turns out most of his coworkers got permanent positions [federal government] but I still wouldn't have wanted to stay). So, yes, we pretty much just winged it. Got rid of our apartment, put our stuff in storage and took off for an indefinite period of time (which turned out to be a little less than 3 months

).

Essentially we were coming back to a very uncertain world. No jobs, no home... heck, we weren't even sure where home was. We were applying to Americorps positions down south, when bam, out of nowhere, Jake got offered a great job in Chicago and here we are.

We contemplate doing a backpacking trip in South America in the future. We wouldn't take it to the extreme though. Leave of absence from work is what it's called and it'd be up to your employers whether or not you'd be granted one (pretty much like quitting your job knowing you'll get rehired).

As for as your residence? You could sublet it. You'd probably want to discuss this with your landlord first though. You could always just leave it, if you could afford to make the payments while you're gone.

**LostFarmboy** · 05-02-2006, 03:15 PM

Well, i get 4 weeks paid leave every year, so i use that for the short trips. For the longer trips i take leave without pay, last year i asked for 4.5 months off and my boss had no probelm at all approving it. However, not all jobs are as good with leave as mine. For my next big trip i am quitting, there's a lot of jobs out there, i'm sure i'll be able to score one when i get back.

As for where i live, i've never owned a house so it's really not a big deal, i just bugger off when my lease is up and find a new place when i get back.