Thank you for this!

Thank you for the insight! Yes, I am way more concerned about not having any regrets with my (fleeting) 20s. I also think it will make me a better person overall. I just want to execute in the smartest way.

This gave me a lot to think about! Thank you for the extensive answer!

I'm definitely more interested in spending quality time in a few countries than a little time in a lot of countries. I'm willing to cut some countries from the list. Are there any countries from my list that are absolute musts in Europe?

Also, if I were to extend the Europe leg to say, 3 months, am I pushing my budget? I would arrive in Europe after SEA and Japan, so I'd be down from my $30k budget already.

So your advice would be to just get to 1 country, and then plan from there? I'm not a planner so that sounds great to me!

Thank you for the insight!

Understood. What countries from my list would you say are absolutely musts, and which can I skip for my first time solo traveling?

Understood. Do most people do the WHV just for the experience?

Thank you!

Would you recommend 1 leg over the other?

Chop Europe completely! I have to visit at least 2 countries!

Thanks for the insight for the other countries. Any reason why you skipped Indonesia?

Forgive me, my knowledge of Europe as an American is super low! As far as the Netherlands, I had a large IKEA portrait of Amsterdam in my childhood room, so that has always been as absolute must. Not familiar with the other places in the NL.

Would you say it's worth it to make some extra money? What type of job did you do?

Thank you for the insight! I'm willing to drop some countries in order to see more. If I could only see 5 of the places I listed, do you have any recommendations for which 5 those should be?

This is a main concern of mine. I'm not sure how people navigate this with their jobs - if I keep my job, I can only leave for a max of 2 weeks, but that might not be enough. If I quit my job, I can leave for as long as I like, but if I might get burnt out in 3 months it may be no reason to quit at all.

It's just hard to gauge if you haven't traveled long-term before. We'll see!

That makes sense. This is definitely personal development. I guess my main issue is that the alternative is for me to stay where I am, keep the mundane job, and just coast through life until he's out of school, then *maybe* we can go travel together (that's if everything works out perfectly relationship wise, finance wise, health wise which it probably will not). That sounds so much worse.

Absolutely true. Thank you.

Thanks for the insight.

Are you saying I should wait? I really want the full 20-something, backpacking, hostel, social experience of traveling. I really want to accomplish this before 30 so that I can focus solely on building my business/getting out of the 9-5 hellscape in my 30s. I don't feel like I can move on to other things in life because I haven't yet accomplished this dream.

Thanks for the insight.

I'm surprised at the reactions here, I thought people would be a lot more receptive to a temporary period of long distance. I don't think what I want to do is in direct opposition of my relationship. If he had to do an internship in another state for a few months, I would completely understand, but maybe that's just me.

I hate making decisions, haha.

Thanks for the insight.

The travel would be 6 months to a year, but I feel like temporary long distance is way more normalized than we think (maybe I just made that up, not sure).

I wouldn't be traveling to party. It's a dream of mine to teach English in a foreign country. I of course would want to see other parts of the world while I'm doing that.

I can figure out the afterwards. He'll have way less savings and way more student debt than I will when I return. I'm a firm believer that everything will work itself out. It's not the end of the world.

I don't know, maybe I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too.

Thanks for the insight.

Do you truly think there's no way to have both? I feel like I see couples go long distance for a while all the time (military, traveling jobs, etc). I know it's not ideal, but if we both know I'll be back in 6-12 months, is it that bad?

Let me know what you think. Thank you!!

Gonna start with SE Asia, then Europe (just a few countries on my list) and end in Central/South America! I also want to fit Japan in there somewhere for a few weeks.