Not all of us live in the US. Here in Australia, I get 4 weeks of leave in my first year of employment, plus a day off each month (RDO) ... so not counting stat holidays, I get 6.4 weeks of leave. If I added stats into that it would be more like 8.4 weeks of leave. And this is just my first year. If I were to remain in my job a number of years, the leave time would go up.

I think it is a similar situation for those who live in Europe as well.


That said, I was living in Canada when I did my 3-month tour of Australia. I was up to about 4.5 weeks of leave at my job (not counting stats), and was taking that to travel to various parts of the world, but I wanted to make a life change, so I quit my job, toured Australia for 3 months, then returned to Canada to go back to Uni and get another degree.

While in Uni getting the degree, I picked up temp work which was wonderful. If your priority is to travel lots, I highly recommend going with temp (recruitment) agencies. They aren't just for 1-day labourers and occasional office work anymore, engineers and other professionals use the temp (recruitment) agencies to get longer term employment ... on their terms. When I did it, I could say when I wanted to start and finish, and I could tell them when I wanted time off in the middle ... it was all on my terms. So each year, while in Uni, I took a month or so off to travel.

If your career is really important to you, and you want to spend all but 2 weeks out of the year working ... that's your choice. But if you'd rather spend more time cycling and travelling ... that choice is available to you too. It is all about priorities.