Ever since we started blogging and travelling full time, the question we get asked most often is HOW we finance our travels. Despite having answered this question in several videos and articles, we keep getting this question again and again. How do Savi and Vid finance their travels? How can I travel full time? etc etc. So we thought we would dedicate an entire article to explaining how we finance full-time travels. We’ve always been completely transparent about this as there’s nothing we love more than helping others reach out for their dreams. So here’s how we finance our travels and you can too 🙂
How do Savi and Vid from Bruised Passports finance their travels
We were schoolmates, friends, we dated for eons, and then got married. Our passports are full of bruises and stamps because we’ve been travelling extensively for over 15 years now! Together we’ve been to over 90 countries and hundreds of cities. But it was only seven years AFTER we first started travelling together that we decided to start our own blog to pen our favourite things about the world for fellow travellers. Gradually, it transitioned into a full-time profession for both of us.
Bruised Passports has all the details you would need to plan a trip to a new country – itineraries, accommodation suggestions, packing guides, and tips for budgeting. Over the past few years, we have won a number of prestigious awards for our work in the travel blogosphere, been featured on dozens of news channels, and delivered several TEDx Talks that focus on designing the life of ones dreams through passion and hard work.
Sustaining ourselves on the road:
We were both born in professional middle-class families, so we’ve spent most of our lives educating ourselves as much as we can and working hard. Growing up, our parents spent whatever they earned on us. So when we left high school, we promised ourselves not to take any money from them so they could finally spend their salaries on themselves too. We took up odd jobs, secured scholarships, did well at university, and finally landed nice jobs.In a nutshell, that’s how we financed our university education and our own wedding.
We also kept saving for full-time travel along the way. In 2015, after saving for 10 odd years, we quit our jobs to become full-time travel bloggers. Full-time travel blogging is an extremely demanding, yet fruitful, job. No matter where in the world we are, we spend over 10 hours every day penning detailed destination guides, clicking high-quality photographs, shooting and editing informative videos, juggling location-independent jobs, and answering all our readers’ queries and responding to as many comments as possible on social media. It’s time-consuming but we love every bit of it because we are passionate about travelling, writing, and sharing our experiences 🙂
We work as a travel photographer and travel writer duo to sustain ourselves while we are on the road. Our articles and photos are published in a number of renowned magazines, newspapers, and online portals including BBC Good Food Magazine, National Geographic Traveller, and The Huffington Post. We’ve also appeared in a number of TV shows on Discovery Channel and TLC Asia. In addition to this we have longstanding relationships with brands, who host us from time to time during our travels. Some of the ways in which we earn money include:
- Travel writing : This is Savi’s first passion. She has written for several magazines, newspapers, and websites in addition to the detailed guides we put up on our own website
- Travel and lifestyle photography : Vid’s hobby turned profession. He has now worked with several acclaimed brands in the hospitality and travel spaces ranging from Hilton Hotels & Hyatt to Finland Tourism and Copenhagen Tourism. His photographs are featured on their websites, brochures, and trade fairs etc
- Public appearances & public speaking – We love motivating people to reach out for their dreams and teaching them how to do so in a financially-sustainable fashion.
- Social media campaigns and product reviews – Sponsored work is a part of our job. However we believe in being very selective and delivering extremely high-quality content. Each day we are contacted by dozens of brands for advertorial purposes. We turn down 90% of the work that comes our way, so we can work with brands we truly love and create quality content that our readers can benefit from.
- Social media & hospitality consultants – We’ve been travelling for over 15 years and been on social media for over 8 years now. Our experience puts us in a great place to offer consultancy services to companies looking to grow their digital presence. We also act as consultants for hotels looking to improve their services and increase their rate of customer satisfaction. Our brutal honesty comes in handy as we provide honest feedback and help hotels improve their services.
All the money we earn from these jobs goes back into financing our travels. There are no rights and wrongs for how one should spend the money one earns – some people like to save to buy houses, some like to splash on lots of cars, some like to party, we love collecting experiences and travelling, so that has always been a priority for us. It’s really as simple as that.
We’ve also spoken about this in depth in 2 of our videos. If you would like to know how we designed our dream life or need tips for blogging, check out these 2 videos:
If you want to read more about our lifestyle, check out these 4 articles we’ve written over the years:
Q and A with Savi and Vid where we answer questions asked by our readers
Tips for bloggers and long term travellers including financing oneself on the road
You could also read Our Lives Are Changing