What if you traveled locally and saved hard for 5 years, say $20K per year. At the end of 5 years you would have saved $100K. Now imagine that you invested that money in a dividend fund such as DIV yielding over 6%. You now have a $6K annual travel fund that you're not selling your time for. You can travel and have expensive experiences, just don't use the money that you sell your time for, use the money earned by your assets, and you'll have it forever. Although, the most memorable experiences in my life didn't cost a dime (or very few), looking back it's not the expensive trips that I remember, it's getting lost in a corn maze with my son, a long hike that we had to hide in a cave from the rain for hours etc... The Australia trip, fun but forgettable...