The Best Tips to Travel More with a Full-Time Job

How many times have you put off vacation due to work?

Probably too many. 

Clearly, work is an important part of life. But whether we’re pursuing our passion or just working for the money, we do need breaks. An early 2025 study found that 66% of employees have experienced burnout recently — an alarming statistic.

The good thing is, we all know the solution when burnout hits. It’s travel!

But how do you travel more with a full-time job?

The answer lies in prioritization, planning, negotiating, and travel hacking. In this article, we’ll go over tips that will help you travel more while maintaining a full-time job. Whether you work in the office, at the factory, or from home, you’ll find advice here that works for you. And if you’re savvy enough, you may be able to spend 50+ days on vacation over the next year!

1. Prioritize maximizing travel days

This sounds more mental than tangible, but there are actionable steps you can take to ensure you can travel more with a full-time job, including:

• Fully utilizing your employer’s vacation policy: Do you have a set number of days each year? Can you roll over the days? Plan to use all these paid days off. If your employer offers unlimited PTO, a good guideline to follow, according to HR specialists, is to take 3-4 weeks off each year (15-20 days).
• Listing out places you’d like to visit: Perhaps Instagram posts of Peruvian cuisine caught your eye. Maybe you’re looking for wellness destinations. Or, perhaps you just want to take America’s most beautiful train ride. Make a list of all these destinations so you can start checking them off!
• Saving a portion of each paycheck for travel: We wish you could travel without money, but you’ll need some, even after using travel hacks discussed later in this article.

2. Plan out potential travel windows

We recommend breaking travel planning into 6-month periods. Examine your calendar over the next half year and see what times make the most sense for travel. The key is to stay flexible, as prices for destinations fluctuate and life happens. Here are a few more tips:

• Travel around holidays if you can afford it  — it’s an easy way to maximize vacation time.
• Try to travel when work is a bit slower (so you leave less for your colleagues to pick up).
• Request time off as much in advance as possible.
• Stay flexible — you may have to go with option B or C instead of A because it makes more sense in terms of finances and your work and personal obligations.

3. Take advantage of national holidays for short and long vacations

Many countries, including the United States, have holidays on Mondays to avoid splitting the work week. Utilizing these paid days off is key to maximizing vacation time, especially if you use them to take mini-vacations. If you work in the USA, here’s an example of how you could spend a total of 21 days in 2026 traveling while only using 7 vacation days:

• 4-day winter trip with 1 vacation day used: Travel from Friday, January 16th through Monday, January 19th (Dr. Martin Luther King Day). You’d just have to take off the Friday before.
• 4-day spring trip with 1 vacation day used: Travel from Saturday, May 22nd through Tuesday, May 26th (May 25th is Memorial Day). You’d just have to take off on Tuesday after the holiday.
• 9-day summer trip with 4 vacation days used: Travel from Saturday, June 27th through July 5th. You’d be off a whole work week, but would only use 4 vacation days due to the July 4th holiday.
• 4-day end of summer trip with 1 vacation day used: Travel from Friday, September 4th through Monday, September 7th (Labor Day). You’d just have to take off the Friday before.

As you can see, by structuring trips around holidays, you can extend vacation time. This example shows just 7 vacation days used, with 21 days total of travel. That means if you get 15 days of PTO annually, you could easily get a total of 40-50 vacation days.

4. Take a workcation if you can

While the Covid-19 pandemic brought remote work into the mainstream, there’s a trend against remote work now. According to recent jobs data, only 15% of job opportunities are fully remote. However, roughly 40% of jobs still offer some remote work flexibility. Use the following action plan according to your situation:

• Fully remote workers: You have the best situation to travel more with a full-time job. Travel to your destination on a weekend, and work from there for a week or two. You could even consider embracing the digital nomad lifestyle, which means the opportunity for endless travel.
• Hybrid workers: Utilize your remote days to work from a destination. For instance, if you work from home every Thursday and Friday, take a flight on Wednesday evening, and work from the hotel for a few days, and enjoy the destination in the evening and on the weekend.
• In-office workers: It can be tricky, but you could ask your boss to work remotely during a certain week of the year. If it’s only a once- or twice-a-year thing, they may agree. Read our guide on how to ask your boss to work remotely.
• Essential workers who must be physically present: It is almost impossible to take a workcation, unless you go on business trips. The best solution here is to see if you can work longer shifts to meet your full-time requirements and give yourself 3 or 4 days off each week. For example, if you’re a nurse, 12-hour shifts are common, which means you could have a 3- or 4-day weekend for travel quite often.

5. Travel hack to save money

As mentioned, saving money each paycheck is a good way to travel more with a full-time job. You should also travel hack to save money and reduce stress. The best travel hacks are:

• Signing up for credit card bonuses that enable you to get free flights and/or hotel stays
• Visiting destinations during the off-season (prices are substantially cheaper)
• Using the fly anywhere tool to find cheap flights to places you like
• Opting for cheaper lodging, meals, sightseeing, etc

It’s time to travel more, even with a full-time job!

We hope this article has helped you learn how to travel more with a full-time job. Keep checking back, as we’ll be regularly adding more tips to help you maximize vacation time each year.

Now, all that’s left for you to do is employ these tips. With careful planning and execution, you could spend 50+ days per year traveling while working full time. There’s a big, beautiful world out there, and you can see it even while fulfilling job obligations.

Do you have any other tips on how to travel more with a full-time job? Visit our Facebook page and start the conversation!

About the Author

Nick Callos has always had a passion for reading, writing, and discovering the new and unknown. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Nick holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Boston College. He currently splits his time between his hometown, Chengdu, China, and the open road. A full-time travel writer, Nick hopes his work can inspire others to explore the world more deeply and enjoy the digital nomad lifestyle.

Featured image by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash