Hi, I’m Xin En.
Hi, I’m Xinen too.
I think only the two of us are excited about that.
Yeah, because maybe our name is special.
I’m a 28-year-old professional who decided to quit her job two years ago to travel the world full-time.
I wanted to quit my job because I didn’t want to spend my twenties hanging out in a cubicle.
I didn’t want to spend all this time worrying about whether I could climb the corporate ladder.
But I wanted to chase something that I was really passionate about, which is traveling,
and encouraging others to chase their dreams and go down this path as well.
I ended up in North America after a month, decided to work my way down to the tip of
South America in Ushuaia, and after that I went on to Africa for three months,
and then Europe for another three months.
And then I came back to Singapore, and it was like a total of two years.
Well, my parents definitely do not contribute to a cent of my travel expenses.
This entire travel experience is funded by myself and my savings.
I saved about S$50,000.
It was definitely a challenge to save that, but I feel that if you have a goal,
it’s easier to find motivation to work towards that goal.
Another way that I saved that S$50,000 was to break it up into different segments, like different
quarters in the year that I would have different mini-goals I would work towards.
It’s a little bit difficult to travel hack in Singapore as compared to people in the U.S., but it’s still possible.
I travel hacked by using a few different credit cards and I split my expenses across three
different credit cards and racked up enough points to fly around the world...twice.
In four years?
In four years, yeah.
Every bill that I can pay, I will pay with a credit card because
it's money that I'm already going to spend, so I might as well make it work for me
by earning some points instead of just me withdrawing money.
In Africa to save money, because it's an expensive continent for tourists to travel to,
I spent a lot of my time sleeping in a tent.
Yes, I camped throughout Africa and people might think, “Oh my god, that's so crazy.”
But it's actually really comfortable because it's your private room, you have a mosquito net
and you have all the privacy in the world while still enjoying traveling Africa.
I guess I sacrificed a little bit of comfort in the sense of my accommodation
because after recording my expenses all around the world,
accommodation is the majority of where your money goes to.
So if you can can save a little bit of money on accommodation by staying in hostels or
even in a tent, you definitely can make your money go a long way.
Interesting souvenirs don’t have to be expensive so if you're going drinking anyway,
why not save the beer bottle labels as souvenirs for your scrapbook?
And then you can use your money for your other travel fun.
Of course, a lot of them were very like wistful and said they would also want to do, or they
wish they had done it when they were younger, but they have lots of responsibilities.
And I feel that in your twenties is the time to take that risk and for me I have no regrets,
absolutely no regrets taking the time off to travel the world.