Stop Asking Me To Fund Your Travels — If You Can’t Afford It Yourself, You Can’t Travel

Lately, I’ve been seeing a rise of crowdsourcing for travel trips and it’s really, really rubbing me the wrong way.

I get the urge to travel, trust me I really do, but starting a GoFundMe to backpack Asia is not right. Begging people for “just a dollar” in order to buy a plane ticket is not right. Going with little to no money and relying on the generosity of other’s to get you by is not right. It’s actually rather disgusting if you ask me. It’s fine to ask for funds for charities, sick friends and family or maybe even turning a business dream into a reality. But asking people to give you money to go travel? LOL, hell no.

You can’t ask people to give you their hard earned money so you can go fuck around in Asia and “experience the culture” or “find yourself” if that’s all you’re after (which I’m sure it is). How about you get a fucking job and fund your own trip!?!!?!

I get it, money is tight, but it’s tight for most of the world yet somehow a majority of people who travel can travel without asking people for hand outs. Instead of just deciding to take a gap year or trying to go when you have no money, why not get a job and save part of every paycheck for a couple years THEN go backpack once you are financially capable of doing so?

It’s no one’s responsibility to help you get to another country so you can blow the money on experiences and cheap booze. If you want to see the world then you have to financially support yourself to do so because guess what? You’re not the only one who has those dreams. Lots of people would love to travel but most people don’t get to because they never have the ‘time’ or ‘money’ they’d like to do it. And there are also a lot of people who do get to travel because they create the time and save the money to do so.

I was able to travel right after college but I’ve been working my ass off since I’ve been legally allowed to do so. I’ve always saved as much money as I could. I continued to work two jobs in college while being a DII athlete. After I graduated I bought the cheapest a one-way ticket I could find to Australia and worked four (!!!!) jobs during my time there. I backpacked South East Asia while still working remotely 40 hours a week and I still almost ran out of money, but I was frugal when I needed to be and I never had to ask a single person for a dollar, not even my parents. I made travel a priority and that also made me treat it as such with my budget.

And yes, I know I’m fortunate enough to have a remote job, but you can still work in Asia – teach English or do some freelance work. I’m telling you it is possible to do on your own. If you want to travel badly enough you will find a way to make it happen.

After I got back home to the states there was another trip I wanted to take. A social mission trip to build an animal shelter in Aruba, it cost around $2,500 and I knew I didn’t have the money, so therefore I couldn’t go. Simple.

I could have tried to crowdsource this trip because it was a ‘mission trip’ but that would be fucked, honestly. I wanted to go on a mission trip but I didn’t have the money to afford to go and I wanted to ask other people for money to support me? Yeah, nope!!! That shouldn’t be how it works.

Asking people to fund my travels while they’re sitting home, working hard, trying to support their families and pay their mortgage while I’m on a beach somewhere for a week building an animal shelter? That’s not right.

And while I’m on the topic, social mission trips are, in a way, kind of selfish. You’re going to spend thousands of dollars to go to another country and help them when I’m SURE your hometown or home country needs that help just as badly. But you only want to go to another country to feel better about yourself for “making a difference” and for the travel purpose because your own backyard just isn’t as appealing.

Maybe this is just my ~unpopular opinion~ but it’s not right to ask people for their money to go do something that would only satisfy you and boost your ego.

I mean, you wouldn’t ask people to help you pay for a new house for you to live in just because you want one, right? So, why do you think it’s okay to ask people to help pay for your travels to help you experience the culture just because you want to go?

But these are your ~*dreams*~, right? Well then work harder at them. Stop asking me and everyone else for a dollar, stop trolling the internet with your GoFundMe page and stop acting like this is so goddamn important. It’s selfish, honestly. It’s so selfish. So many people in the world would LOVE to travel but they’re not begging people for their money to do it, they’re working hard and saving up to do it.

In case you forgot travel is not a necessity, it is a luxury.

If you can’t afford to pay for your own travel and expensive then you can’t go. It’s a simple as that. Stop begging people for their money and go make some yourself. It’s a tough world but if you want it you’ll find a way to make it work or don’t go.

It’s as simple as that.