How I've Funded 7 years of Adventure Travel Without Working "Normal" Jobs - How I Fund My Thru Hikes 

Huge inspiration 👏, I am going to change my life so I can finally start living 🙌

@@Casual_BackPacking good luck!!

This is "Healthy Gamer", right? If so, congrats man, cool job/life 🤘😎

@@twalke0555 It is, I decided to change my channel name to reflect more of what I'm doing now.

@@QuadzillaHikes Good idea considering Healthy Gamers GG exists

Good luck to your future plans :)

You are so welcome

Totally agree. More videos like this please.

I appreciate you watching!

I still love ramen. Oh man, can't wait to go back to Japan and eat more ramen. $5 a bowl!!

Yes! Loved Walden, that would be a fun experiment to do today, plant a buncha beans and live for a bit haha. Maybe someone will let me do that on their land. Yep 100% never made sense to me to work your whole life and then get a few years to enjoy when you're old and can't do anything anymore. I always said I'd rather live now and if I'm 70 or 80 and can't support myself, well then I can just die. Of course I'm sure I won't want to die at that age, but also feel it's very unlikely if I work hard for all these years and live happily that I'll be in a spot where I will literally starve to death or be homeless at that age.

Watched some of your music videos, great stuff! And thank you, yeah that's a message I try to get to people, like you only see the final products and not the whole picture of the decades it takes to get there.

@@QuadzillaHikes yeah that's a funny thing - people watch your hiking videos and yet I suspect most viewers don't fully grasp either side of the WORK, even other hikers, let alone couch adventurers. The work of hiking at that intensity over a long period of time, and the work of creating the videos. They want some sort of shortcut where they can make low-effort phone reels, be an influencer without being an exemplary athlete, and still somehow make money. And sometimes it does seem to occasionally work out that way for a few folks. Mostly you just get people posing though.

@@caitlin.hardee Yes! I had to unsubscribe to all the entrepreneur, business subreddits because everyone just goes on there asking what kind of business they can start to make money with minimal work... like, that's just not how things work!

Thanks for watching!

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching.

Thanks friend!

Appreciate you watching everything!!

Yes! I think that's the biggest one. Taking your first big trip is SO eye-opening, and will really shape the trajectory of the rest of your life.

Thanks for watching!

I appreciate that!

Appreciate you taking the time to watch all that.

Thank you so much!

Thank you!

Haha maybe one day I'll actually write, I want to, just too busy walking :)

Appreciate the comment, yeah like these long hikes if you have a destination and then walk toward it everyday it's incredible how far you'll get.

Yes indeed the fear is the thing. My life has expanded so much once I started not letting that fear hold me back.

Yeah, get rid of that expectation for perfect, go back I have like 500 videos on my account now, look at how crappy the early ones were, but it was by putting those out that I learned, so if you never start you'll never improve.

Thanks for watching! I'll be back hiking stateside again this summer.

I really appreciate you saying that, thank you!

The hard work pays off, and it's crazy how fast time goes. If I'd stayed 20 years in the Army I'd be like 2 years from retirement now, so that long term thinking certainly pays off.

I know that feeling. I felt pretty stuck and like I was wasting a lot of my life in my 20s until I started hiking, and then it was like I was on a rocket and my trajectory has been crazy ever since.

Love that!

Thank you :)

I appreciate that very much!

Thank you! 😊

Thanks for the comment and thanks for watching!

Congrats on quitting, good luck to ya!

Definitely no rush. Follow your heart/gut and stay on your path :)

Yes! Doesn't help that we're all programmed to consume consume consume. Thru hikes were very helpful for me to break out of that mindset.

Haha such a good little van!! So great for road tripping, and nobody ever suspects you're living in one.

Where there's the will and intention you'll find a way, good luck and thanks for watching.

Glad it was helpful!

Thank you! Yes just go do the damn thing!!

Heck yeah getting in the van will be a really nice sense of freedom! Thanks for sharing.

I think for most people their priorities lie more with family and friends, and that's totally okay, it's important to figure those things out and then not be left with a bunch of FOMO from watching other people's paths.

That's one of the many things on my list, hopefully I can get a block of writing time this year and knock it out. Hell yeah you can have such amazing adventures with that 20 year pension. If I'd stayed in I'd be retiring in 2 years. Really take advantage of it, that's such a nice safety net to allow you to do whatever you want, especially with the VA healthcare as well! Come out to Thailand and train Muay Thai if ya want! I'll be out there again this winter.

I'll be doing some more hikes this summer stateside with some fun challenging twists :)

Sounds awesome, would you recommend trying e-commerce. Sounds like that opportunity really propelled you forward.

@@Cody-Craven If you can find an opportunity to sell something that people want and are able to source the product at a price that leaves you a good margin, I wouldn't recommend just trying to get into ecommerce to make money without identifying opportunities first, and usually finding opportunities means being really knowledgeable about a specific industry, for example I'd never enter fashion or fishing industries cause I have no knowledge of those markets.

My pleasure!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Welcome aboard!

Yeah people only see the highlights and not the million steps it takes to get there.

Thanks for watching :)

Really appreciate the detailed response. I agree that our system is designed to put people into states of fear, otherwise imo you couldn't keep people working these shitty jobs just throwing their lives away. They need to fear that there's something even worse than their already miserable existence and that something worse will happen if they stop working the job they hate. You brought up an idea that I want to touch on in a future video, it has been my experience that we can actually effect reality with our thoughts, and this works through intention and only works when we're following our heart and our path. The first step of which is to step off into the unknown and face our fear. I like the quote from Paulo Coelho "And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.'"

Man that was a long time ago! Thanks for sticking around.

Much appreciated!

love that quote, thanks for sharing it.

Yes exactly never a perfect time. And definitely your gut/intuition knows best and can lead us on a wild adventure that we can't even imagine!

Yeah I gotta just stop hiking for a bit to have more time for this stuff haha

@@QuadzillaHikes makes sense, but what about off the cuff “story time” type videos, ones that you could easily film from your phone and splice together like that? I know I would watch something like that, even if it was just you talking to the camera while hiking on a trail and nothing more

Appreciate it!

Thanks for watching!

Happy for you! I don't think I'm quite there yet on the wanting to settle down part. Thanks for watching!

Thank you!

I think vanlife really is a great bridge to allow freedom, rent is such a huge expense, when you cut that out you can save tens of thousands each year without changing much else about your lifestyle. And then if you're able to arbitrage HCOL area with high pay while not paying rent and living out of the van that can increase your savings rate tremendously.

That's pretty impressive that you managed to work during the hikes. I would just be too tired I think. Cool life that you've built, what route are you looking at kayaking? That's something I've never done but could be a cool avenue to travel. I would love to be able to fish and catch dinners every night on a trip like that.

@@QuadzillaHikes I usually only need to work for several hours over a couple days every 7-10 days to get caught up with maintenance, and then here and there a solid block of 3-4 days of focusing on code. Hiking actually helps me think about programming problems with all the time my mind has to wander. A few friends have kayaked the Mississippi, I am looking at the Missouri River, Montana to St Louis. The pace is different from hiking or bike touring, you can get pinned down by wind and you find yourself with downtime, especially on the great plains. On the plus side, it's easy to carry a lot of food.

@@davidsixtwo That would be a cool trip, especially t he history with Lewis and Clark.

Such a good little van for road tripping! Haha the few times I'd see another built out NV200 we'd always be so happy.

I've carried ACA for most of my time. Some years if I know I'm going to hike the whole year I can list my expected income very low, there's no real penalty for estimating it wrong, it's an estimate after all. And I am able to off-set my travel hike expenses against my income to produce very low taxable income(since I actually make money from my hikes, I can write off my hiking expenses against my business income). Honestly, my plan is just not pay the bill if I get some crazy hospital bill after breaking a leg. They can come try to find me and collect. I think the insurance and medical system is so screwed up in this country that I have zero moral qualms about that, and financially, since I don't have hard assets or a wage for them to garnish, and they'd have a helluva time finding me to even sue me, so you want to charge me $50k for a broken leg, good luck collecting! That was a lesson I learned while working as an accountant. Debts really scare people but... it's actually pretty difficult to collect and often not worth the trouble, just if you're willing to take the hit to your credit score these debts often have very little impact on your life. Retirement, I always figured I'd either figure it out or I can die when I can no longer support myself. My entrepreneurial pursuits play a large role, I know that if I can keep building these platforms and growing my skills that I should be able to greatly increase my income. And that's generally played out, I expect to be earning quite a lot more in the next few years as I'm getting more traction on these online platforms. Other than that I try to max out Roth IRA and just invest and save what I can. But lots of psychedelic trips and such have made me much more okay with the idea of death, and it's worth it to me to live the life I want today even if that means I won't have enough money to retire by 70 or 80 or whatever and I can just die then. Plus, the whole existential thing of the world going to absolute shit with climate change and authoritarian regimes, I don't know how good of a retirement plan anyone is going to have...

Honestly my main health insurance plan was just stay healthy and not get hurt. Most of these years I've been on ACA insurance, the highest deductible plan which is mostly subsidized because my income was low enough. Overseas I just rely on travel insurance(not really health insurance, but will cover catastrophic events and evacuation) and then rely on the fact that healthcare is much less expensive. In Thailand we got our teeth cleaned for $30 and a broken leg will only be a few hundred, not tens of thousands. This plan works reasonably well if you're young and healthy, and don't have assets to protect. I don't know of great options otherwise. ACA, but if you have decent income that can be quite expensive. Really wish our health insurance wasn't tied to jobs the way it is. This is one of the things driving me to want to live overseas more in the next years, it's a nice peace of mind knowing that if I needed medical treatment that I'm not going to go rack up ridiculous amounts of debt.

@@QuadzillaHikes Thanks for taking the time to respond! I assumed this was the case. I do have assets to protect and don't qualify for these low rates as your second paragraph says :/ I couldn't agree more about the desire for health insurance to *NOT* (edit) be tied to jobs.

@@stephenvolpe4338 Yeah out of all the options ACA is still the best option if you're not on an employer healthplan :/

Thank you!

Let's make it happen :)

Thanks!

@@QuadzillaHikes Absolutely buddy! I've been working on getting back in shape so I can make some of these things part of my life

Thank you and thanks for watching!

Haha awesome! What kinda crew were you on? It's such a fun job but damn wish they could pay us a living wage.

@@QuadzillaHikes I was part of the trail maintenance crew based out of Bozeman. Funnily enough the majority of our hitches were in Wyoming. Did a few in the Tetons and Wind Rivers. The pay was garbage, however they had host families in and around Bozeman that housed some of us. My rent was $30 a month. Others lived in the hostel or car camped. Good times.

@@ParaditeRs Love bozeman! Tetons and Wind's are some of my favorite places in the US, awesome that you got to work out there.

Thank you!

I'm building income and experience, if I can't survive on that when I'm old then it's time to die

I edit these with Davinci resolve when I'm off trail and with Inshot when I'm on trail.

Hah it was selling g_n parts. Think 2A. RU-vid really penalizes any mention of that entire field. That market was hot hot hot in 2020/21.

Presidential election year 🤔

We met on a hike and traveled together quite a lot but this lifestyle isn't very conducive to long term relationships

Especially post-covid. I honestly can't imagine myself living a non-nomadic life in the US anymore, how does anyone survive paying multiple thousands of dollars a month for rent?? Yeah I've met people that lived on boats, pretty cool they can sail from port to port and live in the boat and travel that way. I mostly had ACA insurance, my income always fell low enough that I could get a large chunk of it subsidized.

@@QuadzillaHikes I went to stop and shop today here in N.J. I saw the price of Boars Head Pastrami at 18.49 a pound in the deli, I never saw anything that high! I did not buy it. I do not know where they are coming up with these prices. A few years ago that was $11.00 a pound. Everything is going wild.

Some people hike long trails with their dogs, but otherwise you'd have to find someone to take care of them.

You can make it happen :)

I'm not qualified to answer specific things like that but I think overall, reduce your expenses as much as possible and pay off the highest interest rates. If you have some really low interest rate debt it might make more sense to invest/HYSA and pay the minimum, you gotta figure out that kinda math, but that golden rule of reduce your spending so you can either save more or pay down the debt more still applies.

@@QuadzillaHikes absolutely. Thank you for your time and reply and I'll be back

Gotta get to know an industry intimately, and then see where the needs are in that market. The key really is having the skills to fulfill orders quickly and have great customer service, when you're selling the same thing as everyone being able to get your products in-front of the right people and then fulfill those orders faster than the competition are the keys. Identifying the actual product opportunity is only a small part of the process.