Life on the Road Less Travelled

As a full-time traveller for the past six years, I’ve learned four valuable lessons from my life on the road less travelled. Stress is the biggest curse of our time, and removing it from my life brought me clarity and contentment. While travelling is exciting, the constant change can be overwhelming and make it hard to establish a sense of belonging. With expert advice, I developed a strategy to balance my freedom and lifestyle while securing my financial future, and now I would love to share it with you.

By Lisa Jansen

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I was 33 when I started to question whether the traditional path in life—the one that revolves around marriage, kids and career—would be right for me. It wasn’t that I knew for sure I didn’t want that life. At the time, most of my friends were getting married and started having kids, and it was easy to see how much joy and purpose it was giving them. I wanted that same joy and purpose. I just wasn’t sure if the way to get there would be the same for me.

Desperate to find answers, I set off on a big adventure. I bought a campervan, packed up all my belongings, quit my job and left the city behind. I spent the next 4 ½ years travelling around New Zealand in my campervan, a journey I share in my book Life Done Differently: One Woman’s Journey on the Road Less Travelled. Since selling my camper in 2022, I’ve been travelling as a full-time housesitter. I haven’t had a fixed address for over six years—the best six years of my life. Turns out my suspicion was correct: I don’t want the traditional life.

Life on the road less travelled has been a lot of fun, but it’s also been challenging at times. I’ve embraced the freedom and opportunities but also felt lonely occasionally. I’ve loved exploring beautiful New Zealand, but also felt overwhelmed by the constant change and never-ending decisions. I’ve loved meeting interesting people from all walks of life, but I’ve also missed being part of an in-person community.

However, at the end of the day, I would do it all again without hesitation, not least because of the many valuable lessons I learned about life, society and myself. Here are four of them:

There is no guarantee for happiness. But there is a fast track to unhappiness.

Over the last six or seven years, I’ve learned a lot about being different and not fitting in. As much as I know that the choices I’ve made are right for me, it’s not always easy to swim against the current.

We live in a society that isn’t very good at embracing and celebrating our differences. Instead, we’re often scared and intimidated by anything that’s different and that we don’t understand. That is why it’s so hard to swim against the current. It makes you an outsider in a society that values conformity and fitting in.

However, while there is no guarantee for happiness no matter how you live your life, I believe there is a fast track to unhappiness, which is not being true to ourselves.

Being different is hard sometimes. But I’m convinced that living a life that isn’t authentically yours is much harder in the long run. I remind myself of that every time I have doubts or feel a longing to fit in and to just do what everyone else is doing. As tempting as it is sometimes, I know that not being true to myself is a fast track to being unhappy—and, for me, being true to myself means doing things a little differently.

Stress is the biggest curse of our time.

Eight years ago, I was living a career-focused life in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city. I was busy, but if you had asked me back then, I wouldn’t have said that I was particularly stressed or that being busy was negatively impacting my life. I felt good about being busy. It made me feel important and valuable. But then I stepped away from it all.

I went from working 45-50 hours a week in an office, a busy commute and an active social life to living in a small van by myself, working 10-15 hours a week remotely. It changed everything. In my book, I describe it as feeling like I had been vision-impaired without knowing, and now someone had given me glasses. I thought I had been seeing things clearly, but now that I had removed stress from my life, I felt a sense of clarity and contentment like never before.

I didn’t get rid of stress for good. Since then, there have been many times when life has become stressful again. I wrote and published three books, built a successful career as a virtual marketing consultant, dealt with van breakdowns and a global pandemic, and struggled with uncertainty about my future. Every time stress comes back into my life, I’m hyperaware of the difference it makes. I’m less focused, don’t sleep well, have less energy, experience less gratitude and neglect friendships.

Luckily, because I’m so hyperaware of it these days, I’m usually pretty good at removing stress from life again as quickly as possible. And each time, I feel so much better as soon as the stress is gone.

If I could share one piece of advice with people—regardless of how they choose to live their lives—it would be to look for ways to be and feel less stressed. I honestly believe that stress, and our collective belief that we always need to do more, achieve more and be more to be worthy and successful, is the biggest curse of our time.

Full-time travel isn’t just nonstop fun

Travelling, exploring new places and going on adventures all over New Zealand has absolutely been one of the best parts of my life these past six years. I feel so incredibly grateful that I get to live this way. It’s fun, exciting, rewarding and grounding. However, there is another side to being a full-time traveller that doesn’t get talked about as much.

The constant change can get overwhelming. Small tasks that you do almost on autopilot in everyday life, like getting groceries or a coffee, become an adventure. You constantly have to get used to new environments and people. You have to make many small and large decisions every day, from where to go next to what to do, where to eat and who to spend time with.

All of that makes travel exciting and fun. But when you do it full-time and long-term, it can also get tiring.

In addition, it’s hard to feel a sense of belonging and community. You’re always on the move, so it’s hard to establish deeper connections with the people you meet, and while “the world is my home” might sound inspiring, in reality, the whole world is too big to feel like a real home in the long-run—at least for most.

You don’t have to work 40+ hours a week to build wealth

When I first set off on my big adventure, I worried that, from a financial point of view, it would set me back. I thought the way to build wealth and financial security was to work 40+ hours per week.

For the last six years, I have, on average, worked around 25 hours a week. I’m by no means rich, but I bought an investment property, have some savings and am putting money into a retirement account.

I am lucky that, as a writer and marketing consultant, I have not one but two jobs I can do from anywhere, and that the marketing job also pays relatively well. With a minimum-wage job, it would be much harder to do what I did. However, two other vital factors enabled me to get ahead financially without long days in an office. Firstly, I significantly reduced my living costs. Thanks to living in my campervan and now being a housesitter, I haven’t had to pay rent in over six years. In addition, I don’t spend much money on things like clothes or eating out. Travelling mainly in New Zealand means I don’t have to cover expensive airfares, and exploring on foot or by bike instead of paying for tours, attractions, and activities saves money, too.

Secondly, I got help from a financial advisor to develop a strategy to be financially secure in the long run without having to give up my freedom and lifestyle. Getting that expert advice has been really valuable, and with a plan in place, I feel confident that I can enjoy this level of freedom and flexibility long-term without risking my financial future and security.

Those are four of the most valuable lessons I learned from life on the road less travelled. If you’re curious to learn more about my unconventional life, check out my book Life Done Differently, subscribe to my blog or connect with me on social media.

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