{"id":48125,"date":"2026-03-23T01:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-quit-my-job-to-travel-for-a-year-here-are-5-things-id-do-differently\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T01:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:31:07","slug":"i-quit-my-job-to-travel-for-a-year-here-are-5-things-id-do-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-quit-my-job-to-travel-for-a-year-here-are-5-things-id-do-differently\/","title":{"rendered":"I quit my job to travel for a year. Here are 5 things I&#8217;d do differently."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b0fc88a96e437d6eb81a20?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A woman wearing glasses posing with a sandy road and moutain in the background.\"\/><figcaption>Maria Laposata quit her job and traveled around the world with her husband for a year \u2014 there are a few things she&#039;d do differently.<\/p>\n<p>Provided by Maria Laposata<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Maria Laposata quit her job and traveled around the world with her husband for a year.<\/li>\n<li>Looking back, there are things she would do differently.<\/li>\n<li>She would have bought a different type of backpack and better budgeted their return home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I retired at 29. Well, sort of. I took a &quot;mini-retirement&quot; \u2014 sometimes called an &quot;adult gap year&quot; \u2014 and traveled around the world with my husband, Nick.<\/p>\n<p>To say the trip was life-changing feels clich\u00e9, but that&#039;s exactly what it was. I stood 15 feet from rhinos during a safari in Zimbabwe; I took a pizza-making class in Naples; I learned to haggle like a pro in Morocco. I accepted uncomfortable truths about myself that made me a more compassionate partner to my husband.<\/p>\n<p>I also made plenty of mistakes along the way. The trip was sometimes exhausting; we navigated a lengthy medical drama, and I missed a big opportunity to rethink how it would impact my career going forward.<\/p>\n<p>If I had to redo our trip, here are the five things I&#039;d do differently.<\/p>\n<p>1. Planning like long-term travelers, not vacationers<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b0faaba7a4f9df67ba20f1?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A woman in green leggings is sleeping face down on a bed.\"\/><figcaption>Trying to do too much during her trip left Laposata feeling exhausted.<\/p>\n<p>Provided by Maria Laposata<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I&#039;m a planner at heart. So, of course, I made a robust plan for our trip around the world.<\/p>\n<p>I forgot one important thing: weekends.<\/p>\n<p>It had never occurred to me how important they were. Once a week, for nearly our whole lives to date, we had slowed down for two days. But throughout our trip \u2014 not wanting to &quot;waste&quot; any days on the road \u2014 I had planned a new adventure for every weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The result? A month into our trip, we were whooped. So, we changed gears. We added &quot;buffer days&quot; to each city we visited so we had time to rest.<\/p>\n<p>We also sought advice from fellow travelers who&#039;d already been where we were heading next. That firsthand knowledge was instrumental.<\/p>\n<p>We said yes to the sights and experiences that would be meaningful to us and no to everything else.<\/p>\n<p>2. Picking the right gear<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b0fb6da96e437d6eb81a19?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A man wearing a black hat and sunglasses, carrying three large backpacks.\"\/><figcaption>Her husband helped carry all of the bags after she sprained her back.<\/p>\n<p>Provided by Maria Laposata<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The worst thing that happened during our trip was spraining my back. I was in pain for months, and on the worst days, I could hardly move.<\/p>\n<p>The sprain was also preventable. In short, I bought the wrong backpack.<\/p>\n<p>Though my husband, an experienced mountaineer, cautioned me to buy a backpack with good back support, I had other thoughts \u2014 primarily about pockets, organization, and &quot;anti-theft&quot; features.<\/p>\n<p>I learned the hard way that long-term travel is rough on your body. The only thing I look for now in a travel backpack is great back support.<\/p>\n<p>3. Planning a &quot;last hurrah&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b119e7a96e437d6eb81a79?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A couple taking a selfie with the sunsetting in the Caribbean as the background.\"\/><figcaption>The couple flew to the Caribbean for a &quot;last hurrah.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Provided by Maria Laposata<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At the end of our trip, after visiting over 70 cities in 22 countries, Nick and I were in Buenos Aires, spending most of our time on our job search.<\/p>\n<p>We had agreed to return home as soon as one of us landed a job. It wasn&#039;t until we were nearing offers that I realized how empty that idea felt. &quot;We&#039;d just go home, and that would be it?&quot;<\/p>\n<p>We needed closure \u2014 something to give our trip a sense of finality. So, we spontaneously flew to the Caribbean for a &quot;last hurrah.&quot; If I could redo this, I would have planned for this in advance, picking a grand adventure to close out our trip.<\/p>\n<p>4. Budgeting for our return home<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b0fd5a4d65ec517529cc8c?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Couple taking a selfie on the desert\"\/><figcaption>The<\/p>\n<p>Provided by Maria Laposata<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>We budgeted meticulously for our trip and tracked our spending daily, ultimately staying very close to our forecasted travel spend.<\/p>\n<p>We set a $75,000 budget for the trip, covering everything back home that had to be paid while we were away \u2014 things like our Netflix subscription and the storage unit we rented.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the trip, I realized I had overlooked one massive expense: the cost of returning home.<\/p>\n<p>Putting a deposit down on a new apartment, paying the first month&#039;s rent, hiring movers to get our stuff out of storage, and restocking groceries added up.<\/p>\n<p>We should have set aside a budget for those expenses. Instead, we ate into savings we hadn&#039;t planned to touch.<\/p>\n<p>5. Rethinking my next steps<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b0fed34d65ec517529cca0?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A woman wearing sunglasses is posing next to a sign for Cairo and Cape Town.\"\/><figcaption>The trip inspired her to start her own travel company.<\/p>\n<p>Provided by Maria Laposata<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I knew I had changed because of our trip, but I had no idea how much.<\/p>\n<p>Then I started work. Back in the same demanding environment, the scope of my personal evolution suddenly became clear, as did my mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Fueled by fears that my career break had made me unemployable, I focused my job search on roles where I felt I could make the strongest pitch for my candidacy. In other words, I sought out jobs similar to the one I&#039;d left. I never took the time to consider if I might want to do something different.<\/p>\n<p>If I could do this over, I would have asked myself why I was on autopilot, returning to my old life. Instead, it took getting laid off years later to convince me to try something new.<\/p>\n<p>Only then did I return to the idea I&#039;d first considered during our trip: building Travelries, my own travel company.<\/p>\n<p>After a year of travel, I can confidently say that taking the plunge comes with its fair share of exhausting moments, disasters, and regrets. It also brings an ever-ballooning sense of pride for having done it \u2014 for taking the big trip. That&#039;s something I would never want to change.<\/p>\n<p><em>Do you have a story about taking a gap year that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: <\/em><em>akarplus@businessinsider.com<\/em><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Laposata quit her job and traveled around the world with her husband for a year \u2014 there are a few things she&#039;d do differently. Provided by Maria Laposata Maria Laposata quit her job and traveled around the world with her husband for a year. Looking back, there are things she would do differently. She [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}