How I Saved €20,000 in Two Years to Travel the World

Not because I didn't want to travel. I simply didn't think I had the money to do it. Half of my salary disappeared into rent. The other half? Honestly, I had no idea where it went.

And yet, two years later, I had saved around €20,000, quit a perfectly good job and left for what was supposed to be one year of travelling.

We came back 15 months later. And somehow, we still hadn't run out of money.

But before this starts sounding like one of those “I stopped buying takeaway coffee and became financially free” stories, let me tell you something: I made plenty of mistakes.

Looking back, I can see things I would do very differently today. When I started saving, I didn't understand money nearly as well as I thought I did. I made questionable investment decisions, kept too much money sitting around doing absolutely nothing and learned a lot through trial and error.

Today, I work as a financial advisor, so I know how much more I could have done with the money I was earning and saving back then.

Funny how life works. Besides helping women create financial plans that actually fit their lives, I eventually went back to my original profession in a very unexpected way: teaching. Through Fin Balans Institute, I now teach women about personal finance, investing and practical money management, but also about something I wish I had understood much earlier: our relationship with money, our money mindset and the subconscious beliefs influencing the financial decisions we make.

Because saving €20,000 wasn't really just about money. It was about deciding that something mattered enough to change the way I was living.

It Started With One Question

A couple of years before the trip, my life looked completely different. I had moved from the Czech Republic to Slovenia after university. My degree was in primary education, but after moving abroad my teaching career pretty much disappeared overnight.

So I started translating. Translation work eventually led me to my first full-time job at one of Slovenia's largest online retailers. I stayed there for several years, moved up the career ladder and continued translating on the side.

On paper, things were going well. I had a secure job, a decent salary and opportunities to grow. And then life decided to shake everything up.

Within a relatively short period, my father died, my long-term relationship ended and I started understanding what living abroad, far away from your family, actually means. I had friends. Lots of them. And somehow I still felt incredibly alone.

Then one day my phone rang. It was a friend. “Would you like to travel around the world with me?” I laughed.

Seriously. With what money? I was paying rent, living my normal life and spending pretty much everything I earned.

And quitting my job? I had spent six years building my life in Slovenia from scratch. Walking away from a safe job, a good salary and career opportunities sounded completely insane. Except...

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

What if I actually could?

For the First Time, I Started Paying Attention to My Money

That question changed everything. I sat down and started calculating. 

How much do I earn?

How much do I spend?

How much would travelling actually cost?

How could I earn more?

And where could I spend less?

It sounds ridiculously basic now. At the time, it was revolutionary. Because until then, my approach to money had basically been:

Salary comes in → life happens → salary disappears.

Now my money suddenly had a job. It had to buy me freedom. And once I knew what I wanted it to do, my decisions started changing.

I Didn't Just Cut Expenses. I Increased My Income.

This is one of the things I think gets lost in many conversations about saving money. There is a limit to how much you can cut. But there are two sides to the equation. I already had my full-time job, but I also had my translation business.

So I worked. A lot. There were periods when I worked 12-hour days. I worked evenings, Saturdays, Sundays and sometimes holidays.

Was that the perfectly balanced lifestyle I would recommend forever? Absolutely not. But I had a very specific goal and a timeframe.

Every additional translation meant more money towards that backpack. More money towards another month somewhere in South America. More freedom. For those two years, that mattered to me more than having lots of free time.

Then I Made My Life Cheaper

I also looked at my biggest expenses. The obvious one was housing. I moved out of my studio apartment and into a shared flat.

My Thursdays and Fridays in bars slowly turned into Saturdays hiking in the mountains — or working. I cut other expenses to a minimum.

Not because spending money was suddenly bad. I simply had something I wanted more. And I think that's one of the biggest differences between saving because you “should” and saving for something you genuinely care about. One feels like restriction. The other feels like progress.

Every month I could see myself getting closer. The crazy idea was becoming a real plan.

And Then the Plan Fell Apart

Of course it did. Because apparently my life has never received the memo that plans are supposed to go according to plan.

My friend and I had already started discussing where we would go first. Then we both fell in love.

Just not with each other.

He met someone. I met someone.

The phone calls became less frequent and our grand around-the-world plan slowly disappeared. Except my desire to travel didn't.

Now I had a different problem. I had the money. But suddenly I wasn't sure whether I still had the courage. I loved my life. I loved my boyfriend. I had a good job. I had security.

And with the money I had saved, we could have done something very sensible. We could have put a deposit on an apartment in Ljubljana and taken out a mortgage. With our salaries, we probably wouldn't have had a problem getting one. It was the grown-up thing to do and for a while, I seriously considered it.

Then a Stranger Said Something I Never Forgot

One day I was hiking with my boyfriend's family and friends for his uncle's birthday. Yes, a birthday party starting with a hike is a very Slovenian thing.

I was talking to a friend about the whole dilemma. The trip, the job, the relationship, the money, the apartment.

The fear of leaving a life I actually loved. An older woman had been walking ahead of us and had apparently heard parts of our conversation. Later, while we were sitting on top of the hill eating sandwiches, she walked over to me.

She apologized for listening. And then she said something incredibly simple:

“The only things I've regretted in my life are the things I didn't do.” Then she smiled and walked away.

And I just sat there. Because I realized she was right. I didn't regret moving to another country after university, even though my degree suddenly meant very little and I had to start again.

I didn't regret leaving a relationship that no longer felt right, even though it meant starting again. The things I regretted were usually the opportunities I hadn't taken. The things I hadn't said. The things I had been too afraid to try. So I made my decision.

“Would You Travel Around the World With Me?”

This time, I asked my boyfriend. He only needed about six months to think about it. Eventually, he said yes.

I quit my job. We packed our backpacks. And we left. The original plan was to travel for about a year.

We ended up travelling around South America for 15 months. And here's the funny part. Money wasn't what brought us home. We had enough.

I was translating and writing while travelling, and my original idea was to become a digital nomad permanently. Financially, it worked. Emotionally? After more than a year, I was done. I missed my family. I missed my friends. I missed having a home. I missed some kind of routine.

Apparently even freedom can become exhausting when you have to figure out where you're sleeping next Tuesday. So we came home.

And I Spent Almost Everything That Was Left

You'd think that after successfully saving €20,000 and travelling for 15 months, I would have returned as some kind of financial genius. Nope. 

I bought a car. And pretty much emptied what was left of my savings. So I started again. This time, instead of saving for another plane ticket, we started saving for a house.

Years later, we're still building it. Slowly. We chose to build as we had the money available rather than financing the whole project with loans.

Which sounds wonderfully romantic until I tell you that I only got proper wardrobes a few months ago. There is nothing like living without enough storage space to make you deeply grateful for a cupboard. 

But that house represents the same lesson my €20,000 travel fund taught me years ago. Money works differently when you know what you want it to do for you.

What I Would Do Differently Today

This is probably the part I find most interesting now that I work with money professionally. Would I still save for the trip? 100%.

Would I still quit the job? Yes. Would I still spend 15 months travelling? Without hesitation. But I would manage the money differently. Back then, my strategy was basically:

earn more + spend less + save everything = go travelling.

And it worked. But today I would add more structure. I would create a clear budget for the goal. I would separate my emergency reserve from my travel money. I would think more carefully about where different parts of my savings should sit depending on when I would need them.

I would plan for coming home as carefully as I planned for leaving. And I would start investing for my long-term goals alongside saving for the short-term one. Because one of the biggest things I've learned since entering the financial world is that saving and investing are different tools for different jobs.

Back then, I was very good at having a goal. I just didn't yet know how to build the most efficient financial system around it.

The €20,000 Wasn't the Most Important Part

People tend to focus on the number. €20,000. But that's not really what changed my life.

The important part was discovering that a goal that initially seemed completely unrealistic could become possible once I started making financial decisions around it. I didn't have the perfect plan. I made investment mistakes. I made career mistakes. I definitely made travel mistakes.

I also got on the wrong buses more times than I'd like to admit. But I still got there.

And that lesson has followed me through pretty much every big transition since.

From teacher...

to translator...

to employee...

to digital nomad...

back to employee...

to mother...

to entrepreneur...

and eventually to financial advisor and educator.

I've started from zero more times than I can count. And every single time, I've learned the same thing: You don't need to have the perfect plan before you start.

You need to know where you want to go. Then you take the first step. And another. And another.

Sometimes you end up exactly where you planned. Sometimes you end up somewhere completely different. And sometimes you save €20,000 to travel the world and accidentally build the life you're living fifteen years later. I think that was a pretty good return on investment.