Retired and Still Working

It is the dream of millions: being paid to travel around the country or around the world.  To reach this goal some people decide to become travel writers.  Others consider becoming tour guides to make their paid travel dreams comes true.  

Both working as a travel writer and being a tour guide are much more challenging than the jobs might seem initially.  

The highway to added income Millions of people want to write travel articles and fewer and fewer magazines and newspapers are willing to pay for them.  If you have your heart set on helping defer part of your costs by writing about your travels, consider setting up a website or paid-for blog and being your own publisher.

To earn money you can go to Google's Adsense and sign up to have ads automatically provided to your website.  Then when visitors to your website click on the ads, you will be paid by Google.  The chances are you will not earn a lot of money, but you can make some if your site becomes popular.

For more information about setting up a travel or tourist website, visit our "making money online" page.

Tour guide or 24 hour nanny?

"Grueling" is the best word to describe being a guide for tourists traveling for weeks on vacation.  Yes, you get to travel for free--and will be paid very little.  Your responsibilities include dealing with tired and sometimes difficult tourists, solving problems on the run, occasionally facing a health  crisis, and being on-call 24 hours a day.  

Consider another alternative: becoming a local or regional tour guide.  For this job you get on the bus in the morning with a bunch of tourists, tell them about local sites, local history, and local tales.  At the end of the day you go home and can get on with your life.  You are spared much of the hand-holding and caretaker responsibilities of tour guides who travel internationally.

Working at National Parks and resorts can be found here...