The Perfect Between Job Trip While Switching Careers
If you ever find yourself between jobs are recently let go from one position, you may find that it is a blessing rather than a curse. Many jobs have a short amount of time between finishing your prior position and starting your new position. In many cases, if you have been selected to join a new company, they are just found with your start day being pushed back 6-8 weeks from the time you have accepted the position. This is the ideal situation to pull the trigger on walking the Camino de Santiago. You should already have an emergency fund in place to handle 3 months of expenses so all you need to do is to start saving up for the trip in case the occasion arrives. To walk the Camino, you only need around $3500 for the entire 6 weeks. That is crazy cheap. This even includes airline tickets from the United States. You still have expenses back at your home, but maybe these can be dramatically reduced through these methods.
- Find a subletter or short term renter for the time you are away.
- Cancel all your subscription services including the internet.
- If you are not locked into a phone plan, downgrade your smartphone plan to a lower data plan.
- Start paying off all your debts now so you don’t have minimum payments to address in the future.
- Prepare for the opportunity of this trip by getting your budget in place and listing out all your required expenses that you can’t remove and which ones you can get rid of. This organization will prepare you to take action during the chaos of job changes.
- Consider moving your belongings to storage and liquidating/selling items you haven’t used in the last two years.
These are some ideas on how to prepare for a job change that will give you the opportunity of taking an adventurous journey on the Camino de Santiago. Since the trip is relatively inexpensive, you will not only get a crazy awesome experience, but your bank won’t take as much of a hit as taking other vacations. Use the opportunity of job changes as the ideal option for large trips that give you more encouragement to live a passionate career moving forward.
You can read more about how others have found themselves on the Camino by reading more books about the Camino de Santiago. You can find Camino books and the ideal backpacking gear or Camino packing list for the trip at different blogs that are specialized in the Camino de Santiago journey.
About the Author:
Caleb walked the Camino de Santiago in the fall of 2016 and is planning another trip with his family and newborn baby in the fall of 2021. He works as a NetSuite developer at a family business in Wisconsin providing IT services to mid-market organizations. This career field is perfect for the Camino because it allows him to occasionally take longer vacations and work remotely. He wrote his first book about the Camino de Santiago and publish The Way of the Cross and the Struggle for Holiness a year after he completed the Way of Saint James.
