A Gen Zer who decided to quit his job as an estate agent to travel the world has explained how he manages to afford it.
To begin 2025, some Gen Z and millennials have decided to embark on a new career trend known as ‘microretirement’.
While a warning has been issued to those wanting to try it, the opportunity of taking a career break to travel the world is too good for many to turn down.
In January 2023, George Buckley, 23, decided to leave his career as an estate agent and book a one-way flight to Bangkok, Thailand.
“I went in as a trainee sales negotiator, frontline, hammering the calls,” George told UNILAD.
“Gradually I found my feet and began to love it. I really enjoyed working with my colleagues.”
But long-term, George knew it wasn’t something he wanted to do, as he tried to balance his full-time job with content he posted to his popular TikTok channel.
He ultimately decided to leave the role after ten months.
George quickly decided Thailand’s bustling capital would be an ideal starting point for his travels, before exploring the rest of south-east Asia.
“I went solo traveling,” George said. “So I kind of threw myself into the deep end. I didn’t do much research prior to arrival; I just wanted to throw myself in and see what happened and just deal with it.”
The content creator continued: “I’ve grown tremendously as a person because of it, and I’ve never looked back since it’s the best decision I’ve made.”
It all sounds great, right? But many will wonder how they’ll be able to afford such a venture.
Well, George told UNILAD he’s always been good with cash and managed to save prior to leaving his day job.
A part-time job at the UK supermarket chain Tesco also helped George’s finances, and he also has an emergency fund ready in case anything goes wrong.
Now he has made traveling the world a reality, the 23-year-old has said he doesn’t see himself returning to the typical ‘9-5’ for the ‘foreseeable’.
“I’m young, I’ve got energy for it [travel and content creation],” George said.
“It’s my passion, and I’m going to pursue that as much as I can and really go for it and see how far I can really take it. But I’d never write off going back into that nine-to-five role.”
Despite that, George admitted he does have some ‘envy’ for those in standard corporate jobs for the routine and steady income they provide.
But George is also earning money while traveling and is currently documenting his experience in Bali on TikTok – which is one of his main avenues of revenue.
“I’m not going to try and sugarcoat it and say it’s going to happen overnight,” George said about getting into content creation.
He went on: “I didn’t earn any money for the first two-and-a-half years of making videos and eventually built it up to the point where I realized I could do it full-time.
“I made sure that [my] income was high enough, which is especially important when traveling. Whether that’s making videos for brands or stuff that I’d earn off my personal social pages like TikTok and YouTube, to the point where that is steady enough.
“And I’ve also got that security fund as well for a fallback option if anything goes wrong.
“I would recommend if anybody is looking to go down this path, you build it [following] up first and get in the habit of posting regularly and actually getting some traction before taking that leap.”
George concluded: “And once you are fully confident you have some money behind you, go and take the risk, give it 100 percent and go from there.”
