Global travel can be a reality for most people.  It is obvious that depending on your circumstance it may not be the right time for you.  If you are married with two young kids for instance, packing up and heading out on a global vagabond tour may not be the best thing.  However it doesn’t mean you can’t relocate overseas and start fresh there.  You could then use your new home country as a base of operations to go travel to other parts of the region on your holidays and vacation.

For single people it is a lot easier.  There will be some sacrifice involved without question, however sometimes we sacrifice some things in order to achieve the greater goal.  This may mean cutting back on expenses.  Forgoing payperview events, canceling your home phone and just using your cell, no more Starbucks, no more clothes shopping on a whim.  You get the idea.

The key is to make a plan, execute it, and stick to it.  This plan may need to be one to two years long in order to make it realistic.  So be it.  You must do what you need to do in order to achieve your goal and leave very little room for compromise.  I say ‘very little compromise’ because holding to strict a plan may cause people to give in early on because it is too difficult and miss out on their dreams.  You can have some compromise along the way as long as you realize you need to stay on path to reach your goal.

This advice doesn’t just apply to global travel, but is apropos to most any goals that you need or want to achieve.  It all starts with a plan, and then massive action.  You want to earn more money?  Set a goal, devise a plan, and put it to work with massive action.  The results will come.  Sometimes they come quick, other times it takes sustained amounts of effort before you achieve what you set out to do.

You may need to make so changes to the plan along the way, adjust to what is working and what isn’t.  That is what makes a it truly effective.  You need mile markers along the way to see what has been working and what hasn’t.  You then adjust your strategy accordingly.  No use banging your head against a wall doing the same thing over and over again if it isn’t working.  Part of the process is learning and adjusting.  That will make you successful.

Two of the most important things that I have identified with global travel is budget and income.  If you wish to sustain yourself traveling for an extended period of time you need to either have a very deep savings account, or a means to make money while on the road.  The optimum situation is to have both, however that is not always an option for most people.  It is recommended that you have a cushion in your savings, and then an income will traveling.   That way you spend from your monthly income but have a cash reserve should you have a light month or unexpected emergency.

The question always comes up of what can I do to make money while I travel.  There is no easy answer to this.  Some options are consulting, working remotely, or making a passive income online through such things as Internet marketing.  If you have a job that doesn’t require that you are in the office all day long, then you maybe able to do it while you are living overseas.  We call these location independent jobs.  However most of us are not that fortunate to have that option with our careers.  IT professionals are one such group that has that ability.

If you are looking at making money online, it is not as easy as advertised.  The old saying goes that internet marketers work 14 hours a day so that they can make money in their sleep.  It is slow going before you make any income online, and you have to know what you are doing.  Most people unfortunately don’t have a clue.  They are easily duped by some of the websites out there telling them to start a blog, tweet, social bookmark, and buy their ebook and they will all of a sudden be making millions of dollars.  It just doesn’t happen like that.  There are way too many things you need to know, like SEO, website or blog design, link building, etc.   This can all be learned and implemented for free.  However you will spend hours, days, and months learning, implementing, and trying again before you see any real income.  Am I trying to discourage you?  No, you just need to know the realities.  It is a business like any other.

Now once you have your budget and income squared away, you can focus on your travel plans and timeline.  If you are thinking of global travel then you probably already have a good idea of where you want to head and for how long.  Back that into your budget and cash flow estimates and you should have a pretty good idea of what your trip is going to look like.  Most people find that their budget doesn’t last as long as their dream trip does.

One good idea to get around this is to take several smaller trips with 6 to 9 months in between to build up your travel capital budget again.  IT professionals can often find it easy to come back home and take a consulting gig for 6 months, build up some savings then head back out on the travel road again for a few months.  Do this over and over, or until you are ready to settle down.  Sometimes settling down may end up being in a country that was different that the one you left.  Life is full of surprises, and you never know where you may end up.