How this woman has afforded to travel for five years straight

A GLOBETROTTER who left home in 2011 to visit every continent on earth has revealed the secret to how she affords her non-stop travelling lifestyle.

NIna Ragusa travelled the world for five years. Picture: Facebook

A WOMAN who has been travelling around the world for five years has revealed the secret to how she manages to afford her jet set lifestyle.

Nina Ragusa, now 31, from Florida, US, departed for Bangkok, Thailand a month before her 26th birthday — and has only returned home twice since.

She had been saving up for her trip for two years, working at a foreclosure law firm during the day and moonlighting at bars and promotional events several evenings a week, The Sun reports.

Nina managed to save $21,000 - $13,000 of which she used to pay off her credit-card bills and eight months of her $40,000 student loan in advance.

She left in May 2011 with $8000 in her pocket.

Since heading off, Nina, currently in Darwin, has climbed down a volcanic crater to see blue flames arise from the ground in Indonesia, jetskied in Mozambique, snorkelled with blacktip reef sharks in Malaysia and hiked with orang-utans in Sumatra, to name but a few adventures.

She told Business Insider what it’s like to stay abroad for five years, the common pitfalls of long-term travel, and, crucially, how she affords it.

“I’m not rich, but I definitely want to stay longer than a couple of weeks, longer than a few months,” Nina said.

“I decided to teach English so I could make money while living abroad and travelling.”

Nina got herself a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate before she left, enabling her to teach while on her trip.

She managed to land a teaching job north of Bangkok within days of arriving and stayed to work there for two terms.

In 2012, Nina bagged two more jobs — teaching English online and freelance writing.

She said: “Because I fell into those two jobs accidentally, I learned that even if you’re not sure how something is going to go down, if you keep searching, take risks on what you go for, and make a solid effort, you can really make something happen.”

While travelling around Southeast Asia, she made between $1300 and $2600 a month, and was able to live on just $927 a month — sometimes less.

Nina said her favourite way of travelling was to stay put in one place for a substantial amount of time.

“I live abroad so I can get to know the country and the region a bit better,” she said.

“I then use that place to jump over to the neighbours to adventure around.”

In a typical day she tries out the local lingo and methods of transports, buys food from markets, meets new people, experiences the culture, tries to see something “breathtaking” and “has a beer”.

She’s currently working in a bar and a surfing shop, saving for her next adventure — a campervan trip across Australia with her boyfriend, Garrett Galvan, of the vlog The Travel Human.

She intends to visit all seven continents before she’s done.

“It’s funny, the live-abroad lifestyle looks so easy when you’re on the outside. You just see the bikini with a karst mountain background picture or the perfectly timed sunset photo,” she said.

“But the irony is obvious if you really think about it.

“Work is inevitable, despite what story the photo might portray. This life isn’t always easy to maintain.

“It’s a constant flow of challenges that you have to overcome, but it’s worth every drop of sweat, tears, and beers.

“Finding opportunities to live abroad is also more attainable than most think.

“You just need the right mindset to manage yourself well, which is something I learned quick when I was solo travelling years ago for the first time on a continent I’ve never been to.

“It’s going to be scary, confusing, and you will fail. I know I did. But knowing that you failed because you tried is better than not knowing what could have been.”

Follow Nina’s adventures on her website, Where in the World Is Nina, or through her Facebook or Instagram.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission.