Why I quit my job to travel

Hola from Mexico! This is my first blog post!

In May 2022, my husband and I finally pulled the trigger and left our jobs to travel to Mexico and South America. This is considered an unorthodox move in Singapore where the general expectation for people in their 30s is to be climbing the corporate ladder, focusing on your career, having kids and building a family- the Singapore dream. We were both leaving our cushy jobs in banking, dipping into our nest egg, and throwing our futures into the air.

Reasons I quit my job to travel

There is no better time

Age was definitely a consideration here, we don’t have any major commitments yet (aka. kids). I still want to start a family eventually (I think), and my biological clock is ticking. We are in good health and fitness and can handle some backpacking hardships. Honestly, when it comes to health and body, the best time was yesterday.

Search for experiences

We had both spent around 8 years or so in the banking industry. While it was considered a ‘ideal’ job by Singapore’s standards, it had started to lose its meaning. It was a cold, dog-eat-dog, numbers game. Our experiences make who we are and I had an inner calling to do something totally different, to jump into the unknown, and search for something real and tangible. We had also signed up with a volunteering organization in Ecuador -more on that in the future!

Practicality

South America is really really far from Singapore. It took me almost a day and 2 flights to fly into Mexico. We had several bucket list items including Machu Picchu, Galapagos, and Patagonia region. Imagine trying to fly to those places from Singapore. It would not have been possible to do this via taking vacation days off, which is generally limited to maximum of 2-3 weeks.

Yolo

Call it the great resignation or a millennial trend, but we all know that life is short and anything can happen. This may sound morbid but if something were to happen today, would you be satisfied with the life you lived so far? Would you think that you should have spent those extra hours working or should have grown your client portfolio 15% instead of 10%? I like to observe people in the central business district in the morning while on public transit, and I always noticed a similarity- slumped shoulders, eyes glued to their phones, and for the lack of better word, lifeless… I couldn’t let myself just go through this grind and trying to fulfil the stereotypes of a ‘successful’ person, I just wasn’t truly happy and satisfied and had to do something, anything, with my life.

Why not?

Many people that we spoke to mentioned something along the lines of “I wish I could do that” or “ I’m so envious” and I kept thinking to myself, why not? Of course, I’m really grateful for the privilege of being able to quit my job, having fewer major commitments in my life that grounds me to a place, and being able to travel freely with my husband. Asking yourself 'why not?' is the first step in breaking out of the mold and chasing your dreams.

I hope that this post will inspire you. If you wished you could do something different, and the only thing holding you back is fear of the unknown and defying expectations, I encourage you to thoroughly reconsider! Fear was a big factor for me here, quitting my first and only job was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. Don’t make hasty decisions, think through your situation but don’t hold yourself back either. For us, we had planned and saved for several years and had to factor in many aspects, including our careers, liabilities, and our financial situation, before we finally pulled the trigger. The future is still uncertain but at least we're certain about what we're doing now.