The 5 Reasons Other People Don’t Get Your Nomad Travel Plans

Have you excitedly announced you’re going to go travel around the world or work remotely from another country, but the response from your friends and relatives was kind of muted? Was their first reaction “Be safe!” “Be Careful!” Did they say something dumb like, “Gosh, that must be nice to be rich!”?

As a backpacker, a long-term travel, or someone trying out places to move abroad, you’re going to face a lot of skepticism when you tell people about your nomad travel plans. 

If you live in the UK, Holland, or Australia and you tell people you’re going to go backpacking around the world for a year, you’ll probably get a lot of nods and slaps on the back. If you say you’re moving abroad somewhere, they’ll probably ask when they can come crash at your place. You probably won’t be looked at as a loony.

In much of the Americas, however, it’s still a different story when you bring up long-term travel. It’s more accepted than it was when I first took off in the mid-90s for a year and then did it twice more, but it’s still an oddity. The first step in making plans to make the leap is to understand that a lot of people just aren’t going to get it. This is especially true in the workaholic USA, where not taking your measly two-week vacation is perversely seen as a necessary evil sometimes. Or even worse, admirable.

Maybe if you put yourself in their shoes and really understand these motivations though, you’ll be able to back off when someone starts criticizing your plans you put all that work into instead of getting red in the face. Instead 0f telling them off you can just say, “Excuse me, there’s someone over there I need to talk to now.”

Here are five primary reasons they’re not nearly as excited as you are about your nomad travel plans or your move abroad. 

1) They haven’t traveled much themselves.

Most people who don’t understand why you would travel around the world for a year or move to another country haven’t spent much time outside their own country. (In many cases, that’s a good thing for the rest of the world.) You’ve probably seen a map at some point of which states have the most passport holders and which don’t.

The highest percentage of passport holders are the states of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Delaware, and oddly enough, Alaska.

The lowest are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The lineup has not budged for much over the years, even as we have climbed toward a 50% rate of passport ownership nationwide and even when they measure the number of people who actually used the passport and left the country. 

Apart from Alaska, which is full of transplants, this trend coincides pretty directly with the degree that states vote red and and have the lowest education levels. If you’ve seen a red state/blue state presidential election map, a diversity map, or  college education percentage map, it’ll look pretty similar to the passport ownership map with just a few exceptions. Here’s what it looks like for passports issued per 100 people, keeping in mind that you only need one every 10 years. The darker the color, the higher the percentage.

 

According to the 2024 study, “The three states with the lowest rates of overseas travel are Mississippi, Arkansas, and Idaho, each recording international travel rates of about one-third the national average or lower.”

The more people watch one of the news stations designed to frighten them and anger them on a daily basis, the more likely they are to be afraid of the big scary world out there. If your favorite TV news network tells you every day that America is the greatest country in the world and every other place out there is screwed up and scary, you’re liable to look at foreign lands in a more negative light than others.

If you live in Chicago, San Francisco, or Seattle, making this big announcement you are going to go traveling around the world will be no big thing. If you live in Mississippi or Kentucky, different story.

When I left on my first trip around the world, I think some of my relatives in rural Virginia and Texas sincerely thought I’d come back in a body bag. Now that I am living in Mexico again, they’re probably waiting for the news that I’ve been beheaded. It’s the devil they don’t know since they rarely leave the USA, if ever. 

A reader once told me about all the dire warnings she got from people she knew when she said she was picking up and moving to Colombia.

I was amazed at the lack of encouragement I received. The idea of a single woman moving to Colombia (of all places) generated comments like “The ELN will get you”, “There are drug gang shootouts on the streets”, “You don’t speak Spanish well enough” People had visions of my body being hacked to pieces with a machete and sent back to the US in pieces.

I wish I could say this was uncommon, but the main question I get from strangers when I say I live in Mexico is, “What’s the safety situation like?” Really, you live in the gun-crazy land of weekly shootings and you’re asking me that?!

Let’s admit though that there are some people who don’t like to travel. They’re pure homebodies and they just really don’t like going very far from where they live. They hate crowds, they hate strange beds, they hate uncertainty. Give them a boring routine for 30 years and they’re set. So you can’t expect them to understand wanderlust or a thirst for adventure. It’s just not in their DNA. Accept that and talk about sports or the weather. 

2) They don’t believe you can travel on the cheap

You could buy some people The World’s Cheapest Destinations, send them weekly blog posts with prices, and pull up hotel sites to show them rates in other countries and they still won’t believe you can travel long-term for cheap. You will never convince them that you can circle the globe for a year and spend less than you did on your regular living expenses in the country of your birth.

To many Americans, travel means a trip to Disney World or a Caribbean Cruise — maybe London or Cancun if they’re really going to get adventurous. They simply can’t fathom that you could eat a nutritious meal for $2, get an hour-long massage for $5, or find a decent double room somewhere for $12. To them, traveling to a foreign country and spending less than you would at home on bills each month just does…not…compute.

3) They’re envious because their own boring life is stuck in place

“Going on an adventure” is a depressingly rare event for nearly all the adult population of my home country. Vacations are strictly planned, time off is a too-rare commodity that can’t be spent spontaneously. The race for more stuff and more money to pay a bloated health care and university system saps the life out of most people who have managed to land a good job and keep it.

Ask them how their life will be different in five or ten years and they may not be able to think of anything. Or they’ll just say something weak about a hoped-for promotion, retirement, or their kids going to college. Any dreams of adventure they once had got pushed back for decades and now they’re not in good enough shape to do half of them. 

They’ll lamely say, “I wish I could travel more” but they don’t really mean it. Collecting more stuff, getting a bigger lawn to mow, and having a nicer car are higher priorities. They have no intention of exercising their freedom of movement. Their life is all mapped out, pre-ordained, set in stone.

For a majority, the closest they’ll get to a real adventure is having an illicit affair with a co-worker or staying up late “getting crazy” at the next convention in Vegas. They save money for 51 weeks to blow off steam on a too-short vacation. Then back to the grind.

They are slaves to routines, commutes, the kids’ activity schedules, and the big-screen TV. You represent a threat because you’re showing them it doesn’t have to be that way. And that’s as scary as the revelation in The Matrix.

4) If you’re leaving, that means this place is maybe not so great

If you’re in some kind of club and people start dropping out, that makes you wonder. If the star performers in your company start taking jobs elsewhere, you’re going to think that’s a bad sign. You feel like a sucker for still being there.

If someone tells you they’re moving away from where you live and that they think this whole lifestyle they’ve been living in your town is not the best they can do, how’s that going to make you feel?

Some people will just think you’re nuts (see #1). Some will feel envious and maybe a bit bitter (see #3). Others will start wondering if this club they thought was cool may not be so great after all. Then when the news channel they watch keeps showing clips of a politician telling them how awful things are and that they need a savior like him, it gets even worse.

Altogether it’s a little scary, a little hurtful, and a bit threatening. It creates unease each time you talk about the great time you’re going to have or the wonderful experiences you had already. 

You don’t want to hear your mother say “You’re an idiot for doing this and you should feel guilty for leaving me.”

But then again, hearing “We’re so happy for you” while seeing a dark cloud pass over your mother’s face is not so great either.

5) Your nomad travel plans are a threat to the status quo

Get good grades. Graduate from university. Get a good job. Work your way up the ladder. Have 2.1 kids and a few cars in the garage. That’s the good life right? 

If you’re rejecting all of that and you don’t even have a car, they see you as some kind of alien that “just doesn’t get how things work.” You’re not supposed to go galivanting around the world just because it’s more fun. You’re not supposed to move to Bulgaria to go skiing or hiking all year.

You’re not supposed to stop working at 2 p.m. just because the surf’s up in Sayulita! Especially if you’re a woman, good god. How are you going to meet the right man to marry if you’re just playing around and not going to office functions? 

While I’m mostly focused on the USA since that’s where I’m from, these attitudes can exist in European countries too. One British reader of the Cheapest Destinations Blog told me this: 

A few people get it but mostly they don’t. Even the ones that are envious say “You’re so lucky” and I have to patiently explain, again, that no I am not lucky. You only have to choose — and I did. Everybody I know back home hates their job. I tell them to quite, to go travel and see the world. The excuses are varied but they mostly come down to inertia.

Understand that your radical decision (in their eyes) can spur heavy emotions and soul-searching, no matter how much that person knows you’re going to have an amazing time. There may be some guilt infliction, some vocal questioning of your decision, and real fear that you’re leaving the known cocoon for the great unknown beyond.

This might be tough to bear when you’re super excited about your nomad travel plans or a move abroad. Conversations and goodbyes may be uncomfortable. But it’s your decision and it’s probably one that will make you a happier person, so lock the storage shed door and go!