Travel Without Draining Your Finances

That makes a lot of sense — you want to see the world, grow, and still stay responsible about your children’s education. That’s not selfish travel; that’s wise, values-driven travel.

Let’s look at realistic ways you can travel without draining your finances... one of them beiing WWOOF! Look at the experience below:

Credit Wwoof PlayStore

I wwoofed for many reasons, I was part-way through retraining as a gardener anyway, and I have a big personal interest in organic permaculture. I have also never been able to afford to travel in my life, and have worked and studied pretty much back to back since I was a kid (I’m 23 now). I had little to do in life this summer and I felt very lost, so this felt like a perfect time to do some soul-searching as well as see the world a bit and learn about growing.  This is a long post but I feel I have more experience in wwoofing and workawaying than most now, and I have some good advice to give others, especially single women planning some work exchange. There are many things that I wish someone had told me at the start.  Context: I travelled to Scotland, Ireland, around Wales, Greece, Netherlands, Italy&Austria April - August.  I am a 23 year old British female solo traveller I had a small amount of savings, enough to get by  I was highly selective with where I went  I am not saying this is everyone’s experience. It may gel with yours, it may not. Wwoof is far different than it used to be. Wwoofing was quite a big thing back in the day - perhaps 90s, early 2000s, where it was a real countercultural community and very fresh and vibrant. Many older hosts I met who’d been having wwoofers for 10+ years talked about a much different time when they began. Now, many growers and farmers cannot sustain more than one volunteer to make their labour worth it, and many after COVID simply stopped hosting. In some countries like Greece labour rules have been tightened and hosts are afraid of incurring fines. You will find most hosts will not respond to you and are not really active.  2. Wwoof can often be meh or sh*t. Do not expect paradise Social media especially makes wwoofers and workawaying seem like a dream (i.e. check the tiktok tag, especially from places like farms in Hawaii) with lots of sun and vegetable harvesting and lots of volunteers. Some places truly do feel like that, like wow - how lucky am I to be here!! especially if you are like me and you are a nature-lover. However, the reality of most places is different. The agricultural work you will be doing is sometimes wonderful and educational like growing, planting, harvesting - but sometimes you are chopping wood for a week, cleaning up rubbish, or just cleaning your hosts house. You are drafted into a family life often - that life will not stop or change for you, you will witness marital arguments or screaming kids… you exist as a wwoofer in a strange middle-ground between the most basic labour worker who sometimes is literally a live-in maid who can be asked to do anything & does not have to be paid, and special guest of their house and family. Often it’s hard to navigate these spaces, and find out what’s expected on you, and relations are often a little stressful. I would say in general, as a woofer you work for your agreed hours, spend time in your accommodation away on your own until dinner and then eat with the family, wash up and go to bed. I would say this is an average day in the life of a wwoofer.  3. The ideal wwoofer is extremely independent, passive and amicable. What I mean by this is that - if you have a strong personality and don’t like being treated like a lesser, or being bossed around, then you will struggle with wwoofing, so it is better to be passive as such and let whatever it is run like water off a ducks back. You need independence especially if you are at farms as a solo volunteer as not only are the jobs often self-directed and taught in a very loose way, but your free time is empty and you must fill it. Rarely will hosts be so sociable that they will fill your free time with wonderful things to do, see and eat. They have an independent life to take care of, and they are probably extremely busy, hence why they need the help - they have no time for the work themselves, so don’t expect them to have round-the-clock time for you. Furthermore, I found during wwoofing I had to put up with a lot of situations, so amicability and a general over-friendliness helped me not cause conflict with others.  4. There are two types of wwoof hosts - those that love having volunteers, and those that need them. I would advise trying as hard as possible to find the first. You can tell as soon as you arrive - some hosts like having people around, up for a chat, interested in their volunteers, go out of their way to make sure you have a happy and wonderful time, and these are the hosts who’s kindness will stay in my heart forever. The others are in difficult situations, and desperately need help on their land, and someone has told them about wwoof sites and other help exchange, and they have thought it’s a good way to get free work, and all they need is to cook a meal for them. No hate to these hosts - but it’s a different experience. They would rather you stick to yourself and get the work done.  My advice  wwoof for a short period of time. If you want to do more, break it up in stints - don’t do what I did, basically. It’s far too much on one person.  Try and explicitly find places with multiple volunteers. As an introvert, I did not even consider that I would get so lonely.  Phone them, check photos, Google them, video call if you can. Do everything to make sure the place is your vibe before you turn up. Often farms are in isolated places that are awkward to leave. Its far harder to awkwardly leave early than to repeatedly ask for a long phone call - If hosts aren’t willing to do that, that is an issue in itself. Which brings me on to… LEAVE IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY - IF YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE BEING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF YOU PROBABLY ARE! this seems obvious but it is absolutely not. You are there for an exchange, and even the most un-empathetic among us will find it hard to walk up to the family whom you are living with, eating their food and living in their house, and say that you will leave when they are depending on your help. I thought I knew this before I went, and a few times only looking back did I realise I was being treated poorly and I stayed out of awkwardness. This slightly relates back to what I said about not expecting paradise, though. You will probably not have the best time of your life. Most of the time you will simply eek out an existence passing each day with nice activities, at best you will meet some amazing friends and have a near spiritual experience about the love you can find in the earth & organic communities. But there’s a difference between a wwoofing placement being “meh” and learning a few things, and being treated poorly, taken advantage of or abused. These situations won’t get better as they get to know you, it is probably just the hosts idea of what is expected of a volunteer worker - save yourself the time, just leave. Establish clear boundaries with hosts and communicate when these are violated. Some hosts will give you specific times to work between, i.e 8-3 with a 1hr lunch break, some will simply give you tasks to complete per day, some will just come see you throughout the day to ask for help with things. Find out what works for both you and the host and clearly agree on this (before you confirm/ arrive) and if at any point that agreement is broken on either side, bring it up as soon as possible. Do not let it turn into bitterness and upset - in the end you are here to do the job you signed up to do. See it as an exercise in conflict conversation lol.  Do not expect hosts to adhere to the 4-5hr rule. One host I stayed with, it was 9-5 with a half hour break and only one day off in 15 days (meaning I worked 115 hours for them in 2 weeks…), another host was 2 hours a day every so often with so much room for doing your own thing. This is what I mean by the above RE establishing clear boundaries early. However, don’t be surprised when hosts that you turn up to expect 6 hours 5 days a week, I have found this to be common, either you go with it or you don’t. Again, don’t expect paradise.  Also general advice - shop around on WWOOF, HelpX, workaway and Worldpackers. In the months I was away I used a mixture of those. In general I had a good time. I could never expect to travel around Europe on only about £1000 for 5 months and still have such an incredible time, I met friends for life and I now know SO much about organic gardening and vegetable growing that I hope to get a job in it now I’m back in the UK. 

- A Reddit User