I like to travel to some interesting City and then find the one coffee shop and sit in there everyday and do nothing but work

I suppose I could start running across the US ala Forest Gump 🤔

I could but I chose not to visit my family back in the home country this year as I need to make my severance pay last for I don’t know how much longer.

I can. It’s not the most financially responsible decision. I’m supposed to be budgeting carefully to stretch my savings for the next 3 years.

Travel how? I can get on a bus or train and head into NYC or Philadelphia any time I want. If I wasn’t engaged and totally in love, I could head off to Boston or Baltimore any weekend. That’s travel, but just a longer version of my old commute.

Not unless I want to pull another personal loan out and be paying that off for multiple years just to say I went to a place not home or not in my country.

I have plenty of vacation time I could take, but I don’t have the money to cover the costs.

ability to take time away from work without pay

Tell me you’re a US American without telling me that you’re a US American

All but the desire to do so.

Yes.

Is it in any way financially responsible?

Absolutely not.

The only real limiting factor is my family - If headed somewhere that isn’t work related, it would only make sense that they come with me, which increases cost, so driving only.

As for flights, sure, if it’s only me. I’ve accumulated enough points with most airlines to upgrade my seating to something really nice for free.

No.

I can’t even afford a bus ticket and I haven’t been on a plane since before 9/11/2001.

The last travel I did was three years ago when we took my elderly dog to the beach one last time, and that was only about an hour and a half drive. It was a purposefully special occasion to get him to the beach one last time. Honestly, I’d probably trade never traveling again just to have him back. Miss you, Jack.

Yes, but my spouse and I are DINKs, and we specifically chose that, one of the big reasons was for travel. No judgement to those with families, but it’s pretty clear that if you have kids then your disposable income is completely going to them. There’s a ton of other reasons we chose not to have kids too, but in the context of this post, well we wanted and continue to want to travel.

I’m retired, so yeah, time off work isn’t an issue. We get away pretty regularly, domestically and internationally. I guess about two months a year, in aggregate, on average?

Yes.

I haven’t flown in four years. Even longer since I flew for a vacation.

Me and the Mrs work remote. We have 25 days of PTO each, but often extend our vacations as workations. We have two dogs to bring along, hence we avoid flying.

We had a sailboat that we’d spend four months of the year on. Hitting four different countries in one season.

We now have a toddler that takes too much time and focus for sailing, so we’ve traded the sailboat for a caravan/travel trailer. We’ve only had it one season, but did about 4000km. Spent nights in 9 different towns.

They say vacationing with kids is just parenting without the home field advantage. Towing your vacation home evens the advantage out a bit, at least.