How You Can Afford Long-Term Travel

Hands up if you’d love to travel the world. Who wouldn’t?! Many people spend their whole lives trying to save enough money for that one big, dream trip. Others, like Nina Ragusa, appear to be in a travel class all their own .

In 2009, Ragusa began saving for an open-ended ticket, so she could travel the world and fulfil her goal of residing on all 7 continents.

By 2011, she had managed to acquire $16,000 in savings. Unfortunately, yet responsibly, Ragusa used $10,000 to pay off credit cards and 8 months worth of student loans.

With her remaining $6000, just one month shy of her twenty-sixth birthday, Ragusa jetted off to Bangkok and used her TEFL certificate to teach English for 2 semesters there.

She then spent the next few years working as an online English teacher, travel writer, and bartender to continue funding herself. In the meantime, she visited places like Indonesia, where she hiked into a volcanic crater, and Malaysia, where she swam with blacktip reef sharks.

“I’m not rich, but I definitely want to stay longer than a couple of weeks, longer than a few months”, Ragusa told Business Insider. “I decided to teach English so I could make money while living abroad and travelling. I live abroad so I can get to know the country and the region a bit better”.

To keep up-to-date with Ragusa’s travel endeavours, visit her Instagram and Facebook pages.